More on recent shopping trends: a report in today's New York Times on November sales held some positive news for the book business. The story noted that during the month "the higher the price [of a product], the more reluctant consumers were to spend." So while sales for electronics, appliances and luxury goods were down around 25%, as measured by SpendingPulse, a part of MasterCard Advisors, sales of other products did not drop so deeply. One measure of this was a comment about ShopperTrak's estimate that sales were up 1.9% this past Saturday and Sunday: "Consumers generally bought lower-priced items . . . like clothing, books and DVDs."
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On Sunday, December 7, at 4 p.m. at the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York City, the New Press, the Nation and the Indypendent are sponsoring a celebration of the life and work of Studs Terkel, who died October 31. Speakers will include Jimmy Breslin, Steve Earle, Allison Moorer, Laura Flanders, Sydney Lewis, Walter Mosley, Victor Navasky, André Schiffrin, Dan Terkell, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Gary Younge and Howard Zinn. The event is open to the public and free. For more information, contact jswanda@thenewpress.com or call 212-629-8811.
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eSuperbooks, an online bookstore that services 11 colleges in the Sacramento, Calif., area, has opened a bricks-and-mortar store in Gold River, near Sacramento and one block from Bryan College.
The 900-sq.-ft. store specializes in medical textbooks but also offers business and general textbooks as well as general trade books, graphic novels, children's books and Star Wars miniatures.
eSuperbooks's Lou Menditto wrote that the store will have books shipped from its warehouse. "With the struggling economy it's not feasible to have a large store with lots of inventory sitting on shelf so we scaled down and changed our buying habits. The result of this change has given us the ability to offer better discounts and free shipping to our customers. This way we can compete with the Barnes & Nobles and college bookstores in our area."
The store is located at 2377 Gold Meadow Way, Suite 100, Gold River, Calif. 95670; 916-526-2705.