The INDEPENDENT MYSTERY BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATION (IMBA)

Connecting Criminally Inclined Readers with Arresting Mysteries

Are you a bookseller interested in joining us?  You can apply online, but please read ABOUT IMBA first.

About IMBA

The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA) is a trade association of owners of retail businesses wholly or substantially devoted to the sale of mystery books. Our goals are:

* to promote specialty mystery booksellers to both the book-buying and the publishing communities

* to offer support to fellow booksellers.

If you're interested in becoming an IMBA member, click here for our online membership application.  To ask a question or submit a comment, click here.  Please note: we are loosely organized group that exists solely as a resource for our members.  If you are an author or publisher interested in promoting a mystery, you will need to contact each store individually – see our member list. 

The bestselling mysteries at reporting member stores are listed monthly on the IMBA Bestsellers page on the this site.  Once a year, members submit nominations for the mystery we most enjoyed handselling, and vote to select the winner.  Results are published on the Dilys Award page and the award presented at Left Coast Crime convention each year.. We select and publish Killer Book recommendations monthly on KillerBooks.org and distribute an annual catalogue of Killer Book titles and current and past Dilys winners, with a list of all member stores, to our membership and to all major mystery conventions.

IMBA also maintains an email forum where members can ask questions, make suggestions and exchange ideas.  One of our members recently submitted the following comment though this forum on the benefits of IMBA membership:

If there is anyone who could question whether $25 a year is worth it, it is probably me. Stuck here in Nowheresville, 10 miles off the Interstate. I've never seen a publisher's rep in 8 years, although the regional guy for Baker & Taylor dropped in once as he was passing through.

Yet, once or twice a year, I'll have a customer (or a couple of customers together) come in and tell me they found me on the IMBA website and decided to drop in while they were in the Springfield area visiting. Almost every time, they will spend $50 to $100 each. One bleak January day, a couple of weeks after I had finished radiation therapy (during which I had to close for a couple of weeks), I had a couple drop in and spend over $300 (that's after I gave them a discount). Talk about giving me a boost at a time when it was most welcome! On these experiences alone, I can easily justify $25 a year using any cost-benefit analysis.

But for several years I worked for a trade association in Chicago. I learned then how much membership in a trade or professional association can mean for one's own business or career without making any cost-benefit analysis. Here's another example. I find the posting of monthly best sellers by individual stores helpful in identifying books I overlooked or weren't aware of. And then there is the regular sharing of ideas and thoughts.

       (from George Rishel, The Sly Fox, Virden, IL 62690)

If you're interested in becoming an IMBA member, click here for our online membership application.