Bookstore Year One
Setting You Up for Success
Bookstore Year One starts spring 2026. Registration opens 10/20/2025.
Register Now for 2026
Note: With the addition of Cal Crosby as Co-Dean, along with Karen Torres, Bookstore Year One is moving back our starting date to spring 2026. We are using this time to further refine our monthly topics and bring in more instructors to provide a wider range of experience and store models.
Bookstore Year One walks new bookstore owners through their all-important first year to help build systems, schedules, policies and procedures that will set stores up for success. Enrollment is rolling, so stores can join as soon as they open and stay for a full year, moving through a different topic each month.
How does the program work?
Each month will cover a new topic, with videos and readings to watch, then a live online discussion/Q&A with the instructors. Owners will also have a space to share ideas, chat, and ask questions outside of the live meetings.
The monthly meetings will be on the final Monday of each month at 12 pm ET / 11 am CT / 9 am PT. There will also be a monthly orientation meeting for new members.
Download 2026 Schedule
Who is this for?
For our first year, stores open 3 years or less are welcome to join. In 2027, the program will be available only to stores open less than one year. The program is designed for brick-and-mortar, pop-up, mobile, pocket, and hybrid profit/nonprofit. stores.
The program is also available for existing stores with new owners.
Stores must be open, or the new ownership in place, before they register. Registration is rolling, so stores can join any month and stay a full year.
This program is not for online-only stores or resellers.
How much will the program cost?
For our first year we will be offering Bookstore Year One at a substantial discount: $500 if you pay up front or slightly more if you pay in two installments. After the first year, the fee will $1000.
Stores that are current members of their Regional Trade Associations may have access to discount codes. See this page for more information, and contact your trade association for any codes before enrolling; refunds cannot be given after enrolling.
Meet Your Deans
Dean Cal Crosby
Cal Crosby, a proud member of the Cherokee Nation, has dedicated over three decades to fostering community and promoting literacy through his career in bookselling, driven by a lifelong mission to establish equity and access to books and reading for all. As an owner of The King's English Bookshop and the Executive Director of Brain Food Books, a 501(c)(3) organization committed to providing books to under-recognized communities, he champions the power of reading to uplift and transform. His extensive leadership within the literary world, coupled with his recognition as a recipient of the Duende-Word BIPOC Leadership Award and a juror for the National Book Award Foundation, as well as for the Kirkus Star Award in nonfiction. Cal has been part of Book Passage and Books Inc., wearing many hats, but always in a leadership role. He was the Executive Director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association and the inaugural Executive Director of the California Independent Booksellers Alliance. He is the current co-chair of the Utah Chapter of PEN America, which underscores his profound commitment to the written word and its impact on individuals and communities.
Dean Karen Torres
A graduate of NYU and Cooper Union in New York City, Karen was publishing executive for 36 plus years at the Hachette Book Group.
Her dream of one day owning a bookstore changed once she entered publishing. Working in sales and concentrating her efforts in the Indie marketplace, she came to realize and appreciate that she could be of great help to the independent bookstores from the position she held inside the publishing house. That dream morphed into doing everything she could in her career to help the bookselling community thrive and become a vital part of the success of all books and authors.
She is currently consulting (see KarenTorresConsulting.com), where she is available to bookstores, authors, publishers, Literary Agencies, and Book clubs.
In 2023, she was a Publishers Weekly Notable Person of the Year. And she continues to serve on the Professional Bookseller School Board of Trustees.