In an effort to gauge the holiday season,
we'll be checking in regularly with booksellers at three stores in the weeks
leading up to Christmas. They have graciously (and bravely) agreed to
allow us to chronicle their adventures during the busiest selling
season of the year. Their stories start today.
The Flying Pig Bookstore
"Friday felt like the first shopping day of the season," said Josie
Leavitt of the Flying Pig Bookstore in Shelburne, Vt. "We've been
careful not to overwhelm people with Christmas music." While holiday
books, cards and advent calendars have been on display for two weeks,
it wasn't until Black Friday that holiday tunes began to play in
the store. Customers responded to the festive spirit, singing along and
spending money. "Our sales for the three-day weekend were up 11% over
last year," noted Leavitt.
This year was the store's second holiday season in its current
location. The Flying Pig Bookstore was in the neighboring
town of Charlotte for 10 years before Leavitt and co-owner Elizabeth Bluemle moved
into an 18th-century Shelburne building that once housed the oldest inn
in the state. "We tripled our customer base just by moving," Leavitt
said. In addition, because the store is located on one of the town's
main streets, it attracts more foot traffic.
Weekend sales were boosted by an event with Phoebe Damrosch, who signed copies of her book Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter.
The memoir is a favorite of several staffers, including Leavitt, who
expects to continue to handsell it through the season. Besides being
well-written and funny, she said, "it's a great book that crosses
gender lines. It appeals to men and women equally."
Other popular choices of shoppers included Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And You Can Too!), the backlist title Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris, and the children's tomes Olivia Helps with Christmas by Ian Falconer and Kate DiCamillo's Great Joy.
"I felt like everyone left happy with what they bought for the various
people on their lists," said Leavitt, "and that's what we strive for
here."
The Yellow Book Road
Olivia Helps with Christmas and Great Joy are also expected to be top
sellers this season at the children's store Yellow Book Road in La
Mesa, Calif. "Kate's book speaks for itself," said co-owner Kristin
Baranski. "It's beautiful."
The Yellow Book Road carries books for children from infants to young
adults, as well as teaching supplies, and is located
in San Diego County. Black Friday proved to be a slow start to the
holiday shopping season, noted Baranski. "If we were in a traditional
mall area, our sales may have been higher," she said. "We are generally
a destination store and our main customer base is teachers. With
teachers also being on vacation, they are out shopping in other retail
areas than children's books."
Sales increased on Saturday as patrons came in "looking for holiday
gift books," Baranski said, and the mood of shoppers was
upbeat. Buyers benefit from the expertise of the store's staffers, all
of whom have experience in education and can suggest books based on kids'
interests and reading levels. Six are current or former teachers,
including Baranski and co-owner Mary Hayward.
"Picture books were definitely the big sellers this weekend," said
Baranski. The classic Dr. Seuss tale How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
and The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola led the way. One of
the Yellow Book Road staff's favorite handsells for young bibliophiles
this year is Deborah Heiligman's festive pictorial tome Holidays Around
the World: Celebrate Christmas with Carols, Presents, and Peace.
Murder by the Book
Selecting books for gift recipients is a service rendered with
enthusiasm at Murder by the Book in Houston, Tex. Store staffers each
have a specialty category, from cozy to hard boiled and everything in
between, and they had ample opportunity to put their skills to use this
past weekend.
Black Friday started off sluggish, noted assistant manager David
Thompson. Customers didn't show up until late morning. Sales turned
brisk in the afternoon, though, and the store ended with one of its
best-ever Black Fridays. Saturday, typically the busiest day of the
week, proved even better with sales exceeding those of the day before
by about a third.
One of the store's biggest sellers this weekend was A Hell of a Woman:
An Anthology of Female Noir edited by Edgar Award-nominee Megan Abbott
and published by Thompson's Busted Flush Press. Another popular title
this season is Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, a reprint of a 1939
book that was recently selected by a Men's Journal editor as one of the
best thrillers ever written. "It really is an amazing book," said
Thompson, "and we have them at the counter to handsell to anyone who
buys a thriller." His pick for the best book of the year--staffers'
choices are prominently featured at the front of the store--is Martin
Limón's The Wandering Ghost, a military mystery set in Korea.
A display catching customers' interest is one chock full of mysteries
that take place at Christmas, Hanukah or New Year's. Among the
selections are The Alto Wore Tweed, a humorous tale by Mark Schweizer, one of the store's bestselling authors over the last several years; Slay Ride and Hell for the Holidays by Chris Grabenstein, which Thompson notes will appeal to James Patterson fans; and Frost at Christmas
by R. D. Wingfield, the first book in a series of police procedurals
set in England. The store has sold more than 100 copies of Wingfield's
book in the two months since Thompson discovered and read the backlist
page-turner, which he described as "a wonderfully perfect book for the
Christmas season."--Shannon McKenna Schmidt