Last Wednesday, Rakestraw Books in Danville, Calif., offered a rainy-day special to nearby customers: anyone who lived in the towns of Danville, Alamo or Diablo could call the store and order The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin (Algonquin) and receive it later the same day.
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Display at Rakestraw Books |
"We'd had a quiet Monday, which was a little discouraging, and Tuesday was a little better but we were counting on Wednesday to be really good," explained store owner Michael Barnard. "As I was driving to work, it started pouring. Rainy days tend to be quieter; we were so frustrated."
Barnard and his staff of five had all read and loved The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, a novel about a "sort of curmudgeonly man and his bookstore being brought back to life," and were eager to sell it. So that morning they sent an e-mail to customers advertising the following deal: call and place an order by 4 p.m., and receive The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry the same day, with no extra charge. The store had done some deliveries before on an ad hoc basis, but nothing on this scale.
"It's the perfect rainy day read, and we had enough people on staff to get all the orders out," Barnard related. In the e-mail to customers, he also mentioned that Storied Life was a book that "you must buy from a quirky, indie bookshop."
All told, Rakestraw Books received two dozen orders and did three rounds of deliveries. The first batch went out around 1 p.m., the next went out between 3:30 and 4, and the staff fulfilled the last orders as they headed home after closing.
"It got people excited," said Barnard, who added that his store sold 70 copies of Storied Life last week. "Making the offer drew a lot of attention. And the response has been great, very validating and affirming. People have said they read the book and loved it, and that it was a fun promotion. They were so amused and bemused by it." --Alex Mutter