Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston, Tex., is a general bookstore that sells
half adult and half children's titles. While the store used to sell
more children's than adult titles, dollar sales were split evenly (since adult
titles tend to be more expensive). Now both ratios are near equal.
This season the store is focusing on titles by authors who visited the store and made good impressions, which led the staff to read the books and get excited about them. Among the children's titles the store is promoting:
Adult book that are doing well include Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, which "a lot of the staff have read and really like," owner Valerie Koehler said, and Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Blue Willow services 35 book clubs, and "every single one" did The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant, making the book the store's "topselling title of the year."
"Pretty much a fiction store," Blue Willow also sells a lot of chick lit and romance--but not under those labels. Instead the store likes to call those titles weekend fiction. "When we had a romance section, we never sold anything out of it," Koehler noted. But after adding some lighter weight fiction, romance was mixed together with some fiction and moved across from mysteries and thrillers. "People are not embarrassed to buy bodice rippers when they're not in the romance section," Koehler said.
This season the store is focusing on titles by authors who visited the store and made good impressions, which led the staff to read the books and get excited about them. Among the children's titles the store is promoting:
- The Spiderwick Chronicles titles by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, including The Field Guide, The Seeing Stone, Lucinda's Secret, The Ironwood Tree and The Wrath of Mulgarath.
- Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons.
- Wizardology: The Book of the Secrets of Merlin.
- Egyptology
- I, Coriander by Sally Gardner
- Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
Adult book that are doing well include Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, which "a lot of the staff have read and really like," owner Valerie Koehler said, and Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Blue Willow services 35 book clubs, and "every single one" did The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant, making the book the store's "topselling title of the year."
"Pretty much a fiction store," Blue Willow also sells a lot of chick lit and romance--but not under those labels. Instead the store likes to call those titles weekend fiction. "When we had a romance section, we never sold anything out of it," Koehler noted. But after adding some lighter weight fiction, romance was mixed together with some fiction and moved across from mysteries and thrillers. "People are not embarrassed to buy bodice rippers when they're not in the romance section," Koehler said.