In Ames, Iowa, Dog Eared Books has seen steadily growing sales since about November 1, with co-owner Amanda Lepper reporting that "people starting showing up in a different fashion" at that point. The biggest change has been in weekly daytime business, which Lepper said she found surprising. The store, which opened on March 8, had a good Small Business Saturday turnout but a "huge sales total" on Black Friday. She noted that she and co-owner Ellyn Grimm never pushed the shop-early message particularly strongly, but they would mention potential supply-chain issues when customers placed special orders.
When it came to preparing for the season and potential supply chain problems, Grimm and Lepper kept an eye on what sold well all year, which titles were already hard to keep in stock, and how quickly different publishers shipped things. They were able to "order really deep" on the titles that just kept selling, on staff favorites and on books that were seeing an uptick even if they weren't staff favorites. They filled the store's basement with "books and books" and, while ordering so heavily did make them a bit nervous, "we know the books we're ordering will sell eventually."
On the topic of supply-chain issues, Lepper said that for certain publishers and for Ingram it has indeed been as bad as expected, although some publishers, including Penguin, Scholastic and Simon & Schuster, are still "coming through." Despite how deeply the store ordered on many titles, they are still running out of some, such as The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow and The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, which "took off."
Asked whether the news of the Omicron variant has affected in-store shopping, Lepper noted that "we started in the pandemic, so we don't know any different." That said, after school began in the fall, the store once again started asking customers to wear masks while shopping. For the most part customers are happy to comply, and there are only a very few who ask the staff to bring their purchases out to their car. She added that the team will reexamine its mask requirement in mid-January, once the rush slows down.
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Maureen Palacios, owner of Once Upon a Time Bookstore in Montrose, Calif., reported that the store has been extremely busy compared to 2020 and the numbers "are well over pre-pandemic levels of 2019." Sales over Thanksgiving weekend were up 37% over 2020 and almost 27% over 2019. Palacios and her staff were "delighted to see so many loyal customers and new ones," and were "pleasantly surprised and overjoyed with love from our customers," especially one who brought in custom cookies.
Palacios said her store is facing supply issues primarily with sidelines like puppets, plush toys and puzzles. While the puzzles are "doing okay," the plush and puppets "can't be reordered fast enough" and the out-of-stock issues have started to become "problematic." Once Upon a Time ordered up on big titles, which are selling in droves, but the perennial issues of shipping damages and delayed shipping from certain publishers have reared their heads. It's created the team's favorite phase: "preparing to ship."
Online sales haven't gone away entirely, Palacios added, but it is more manageable this year than last December's "absolute craziness." Omicron news seems not to have put a dent in in-person shopping, and mask wearing continues to be an issue. "It doesn't shock us like it used to, though, and our responses are now less emotional."
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| (photo: Emma Nichols) | |
For Norwich Bookstore in Norwich, Vt., the holiday rush started early, co-owners Sam Kaas and Emma Nichols reported. The store had a "really strong November," and though they didn't host any special events for Indies First/Small Business Saturday, things were still bustling. They had a few large events the following week, and this past week "we've just been in full holiday swing."
Nichols and Kaas purchased Norwich Bookstore earlier this year. To prepare for this holiday season, they consulted the store's historicals and considered their own experiences in past holiday seasons. They ended up ordering key titles in higher quantities than normal, and bought copies of Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle and Amor Towles's The Lincoln Highway in cartons. They also bought a lot of frontlist and backlist staff picks and "made bets" on titles like Paul McCartney's The Lyrics, most of which have paid off. Like many of their peers, they've tried to focus their messaging on backlist favorites rather than what they can't acquire.
For a handful of publishers, Norwich Bookstore has already sent the last orders they expect to receive before Christmas, which "feels insane." For the publishers the store is having the most trouble with, Kaas pointed out, most of them had huge delays and shortages well before the holidays. Other publishers and distributors, however, seem to still be shipping with "reasonable reliability, for now." Kaas said he's been pleasantly surprised by a few hot titles that were reprinted when he didn't expect to see more until 2022. Overall, while things aren't quite as bad as Kaas and Nichols feared, they're still "definitely the worst they've ever been."
On the subject of the Omicron variant, Kaas said things are still very busy in-store, and although web order traffic has gone up in the past couple of weeks, it's hard to attribute any of that to Omicron. The community has a high vaccination rate, mask wearing is commonplace and there is an attitude of "careful pragmatism." --Alex Mutter