It's been a sweet couple of years for the Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury. Sales during the holiday season in 2011 were the highest since Becky Dayton and her husband, Chris, purchased the store in 2005. Sales were also up overall last year, a trend that has continued this year. In addition, the store won the Addison County Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year Award in September.
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| Photo: vermontguides.com | |
For Dayton, sales and the public recognition are indications "that people have accepted my ownership of the store and like what I've done with it." The biggest thing she did: a complete remodeling of the store's interior in 2007, while maintaining the building's historic features. Before that, little had changed since the beloved institution's founding in 1949 (bard Robert Frost was among its earliest clientele).
So far this season, daily sales at the Vermont Book Shop are solid, although shoppers traditionally don't buy in abundance until closer to Christmas. The shop local movement is strong in Middlebury--customers make purchases and share with others that they're keeping their business in the community. Residents from neighboring towns help boost sales in December, drawn in by the robust line-up of "A Very Merry Middlebury" festivities taking place throughout the month, as do people who come to visit family in the area and shop at the last minute.
This year Dayton has increased the number of holiday-themed e-newsletters, sending one per week and each focusing on a different type of book: nonfiction, fiction, children's picture books and local authors. The newsletters "really do seem to help people figure out what they want," noted Dayton. The tomes promoted are also given visibility in the window and on a front-of-the-store table display.
Three of the Vermont Book Shop's current top sellers were featured in the nonfiction newsletter, along with a coupon for a 15% discount--Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, Cheryl Strayed's Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail and Andrew Solomon's 976-page Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity.
Among the titles touted in the fiction newsletter are B.A. Shapiro's The Art Forger, a Dayton favorite (she describes herself as a junkie for books featuring art history), and signed copies of One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper, an author the store's buyer turned her on to. Not a frequent thriller reader, she delved into William Landay's Defending Jacob at the suggestion of a sales rep and enjoyed the "fun, Grisham-like" story.
In the highly popular staff picks section, Dayton recommends Eowyn Ivey's "absolutely magical" novel, The Snow Child, and Jeanne Darst's "hilarious" memoir, Fiction Ruined My Family. Another favorite staff handsell is the picture book Hippo and Monkey by Josh Yunger, a woodcut artist and former Vermont Book Shop employee.
Vermont-related merchandise, including offerings by local writers, is particularly popular this time of year. Some of the titles highlighted for gift-giving are the YA novel Walking into the Wild by Nancy Means Wright, the story of three siblings and their journey through the state in 1782, and Gary Margolis's Seeing the Songs: A Poet's Journey to the Shamans in Ecuador. Megan Price has a good shot at a repeat performance as the store's #1-selling scribe this holiday season. Volumes one and two in her humorous series Vermont Wild: Adventures of Fish & Game Wardens--equally enticing to both kids and grown-ups--were runaway hits in 2010 and 2011. The recently published third installment could cement Price's place in Vermont Book Shop history by unseating J.K. Rowling on the store's bestselling author roster.
Items only to be found at the Vermont Book Shop are cycling jerseys emblazoned with the store name, available in men's and women's sizes and a variety of styles. "It's where the other part of my life touches my work," said Dayton, an avid road biker. (Area novelist Chris Bohjalian's wife bought him a jersey.)
Dayton sometimes makes home deliveries to elderly customers who no longer drive and occasionally to others as well. A regular who does his annual holiday shopping at the store recently placed a $600 order. Felled by the flu, he couldn't make it to the shop to pick up the merchandise and so Dayton drove it to his doorstep.
"He was horrified that I had gone so far out of my way, but I enjoy doing that kind of thing for customers," Dayton said. "One thing we can do really different from Amazon is personally deliver you your books. It felt good to do it, and it served us well because we now have more room on our hold shelf for other people's books." --Shannon McKenna Schmidt