Black Friday: Booksellers Hold Their Own -- Many Look for Gains as Holidays Near

While media reports about overall retail sales for the Thanksgiving weekend were mixed, with the New York Times reporting that "consumers mobbed discount chains ... but largely shopped right past other specialty retailers at the mall" and the National Retail Federation calling it a brisk start to the holiday shopping season, a sampling of independent booksellers from across the country found most meeting or slightly exceeding sales of a year ago. Noting that Black Friday was more a mall phenomenon, most of the independent booksellers contacted by Bookselling This Week expressed expectations of increasing sales as the holidays near and shoppers grow weary of crowded malls.

In Niceville, Florida, Bayou Book Company, a combination general bookstore and Hallmark store, experienced an increase in sales over last year, according to the store's assistant manager, Candice Foster. Selling well were bibles for children and Sudoku books. Other popular titles included Dog Train: A Wild Ride on the Rock-and-Roll Side, Sandra Boynton's book and CD from Workman; books from the Dora the Explorer series (S&S); The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (Little, Brown); and Shepherds Abiding by Jan Karon (Penguin).

Also seeing gains over last year was Allan Schmid, owner of Books, Etc. with locations in Portland and Falmouth, Maine. Schmid, who is president of the New England Booksellers Association, noted considerable interest in The Silver Spoon from Phaidon Press. The book, considered the "bible of Italian home cookery" since its initial publication in 1950, has been translated, updated, and adapted for English and American kitchens.

Sepia, Sand & Sable Books in Baltimore, Maryland, which specializes in African-American literature, did "better than last year," according to owner Clara Anthony, who added, "Black Friday is not big for us." Most of the post-Thanksgiving crowds begin at the larger stores and the malls, Anthony explained, echoing the observations of other booksellers. Of particular interest this year was Food for the Soul: Recipes From the Congregation of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church (Random House). The large church, which will celebrate its bicentennial in 2008, includes congregants (and their recipes) from around the world, including Ireland, Egypt, Japan, and Uganda. Anthony also mentioned as popular gift items the autobiography of educator and civil rights activist John Hope Franklin, Mirror to America (FSG), the store's large selection of Afro-centric calendars, and teen devotional bibles.

At the Wilton Open Book Shop in Wilton, Connecticut, manager Brian Giblin reported brisk businesses from Friday to Sunday. "The season started nicely," he told BTW, "but our business usually builds as the holiday season goes along." Giblin anticipates that Lynne Truss' Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today (Penguin) will fare well in this well-heeled, well-read community.

At Bank Square Books in the seaport city of Mystic, Connecticut, Stuart Lamson reported that Friday's sales were a bit lower than last year, but weekend sales were higher, resulting in a modest gain. Lamson noted that nearby big box stores, with 5:00 a.m. openings and "the discount mentality," left the downtown stores with smaller Black Friday crowds than years ago.

However, many families were enticed to the downtown for the annual lighted-boat parade -- 20 sail and power boats bedecked with lights. Lamson saw strong sales for children's books, such as The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, and nonfiction titles, such as Teacher Man: A Memoir by Frank McCourt (Scribner). Reflecting media reports on the increasing demand for gift cards, Lamson noted that Book Sense gift cards are growing in popularity. "We do great with gift cards," he added.

Sarah McNally, owner of McNally Robinson in New York City, will celebrate the store's first anniversary on December 4, so comparisons to year's past are nonexistent. The store is located in downtown Manhattan in a neighborhood now known as "Nolita," at the nexus of Soho, Noho, the Lower East Side, Chinatown, and Little Italy. Despite the broad fusion of cultures, McNally reported no crowds in the store during the post-Thanksgiving shopping days.

"It's not a big weekend for us," she told BTW. "All the New Yorkers who aren't [originally] from New York go back to their homes, and tourists weren't out either. We had a strong surge of sales in November, but not this weekend." Then there's the scaffolding -- McNally had strong opinions about the decision to hang scaffolding across the front of her building, effectively obscuring the storefront. "They put it up on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving," she said with her voice rising, "And it's not coming down until after Christmas." McNally wants to hang festive lights all around the obstruction, although she said, "I'm not sure if that's legal."

Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, Massachusetts, had reason to celebrate as Boston magazine named it "Best Bookstore" in its 2005 "Best of Boston" issue -- the store's fifth win in seven years. Dana Brigham, store manager and co-owner, said that although sales were better this Thanksgiving weekend than last, those three days are never overwhelmingly "black."

She noted, "People are at the malls and begin shopping here later on. We also have a lot of Jewish customers who are waiting until closer to Hanukah [which begins on December 25 in 2005].

Brigham has high hopes for new fiction by E.L. Doctorow and Joan Didion and for higher end gift books, such as the Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany by Graeme Gibson (Doubleday); The Complete New Yorker: Eighty Years of the Nation's Greatest Magazine, edited by David Remnick (Random House); and the Elements of Style Illustrated, Strunk and White's classic with illustrations by Maira Kalman (Penguin). "We've been doing a brisk business in gift cards," she said, " It's been growing over the years."

At Wild Rumpus Books for Young Readers in Minneapolis, sales were significantly better than last year, said Collette Morgan. "The surprising thing is the day before Thanksgiving was almost as big as the day after," she said. "The weekend continued strong. I would say we were up about 20 percent [over last year]. I was very pleased."

Morgan reported that top three sellers over the weekend were The Gift of Nothing by Patrick McDonnell (Little, Brown); Flush by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf Books for Young Readers); and Urban Babies Wear Black by Michelle Sinclair Colman (Tricycle Press).

Since New Orleans' Garden District Book Shop reopened on October 10 following Hurricane Katrina, sales have lagged. But Britton Trice said that he was "pleasantly surprised with sales [over the holiday weekend]; the first few weeks the store was open were dismal. But we bounced back nicely."

While Trice hasn't compared this year's Thanksgiving weekend sales to last year's, he said, "It was certainly a good weekend." Traditionally, though, the store's biggest sales day is the Saturday before Christmas.

Big sellers over the weekend were "new books on New Orleans," such as Why New Orleans Matters (Regan Books) by Tom Piazza. "We sold over 200 copies and reordered another 900," Trice said. Another top-seller was the self-published children's tale Louie the Buoy: A Hurricane Story by Allain C. Andrey (Sandy Hook Press), about a buoy that survives Hurricane Camille, the infamous storm that hit the New Orleans area in 1969.

To entice shoppers into the store and help keep sales going strong through the Christmas season, Trice said that the store will hold a couple of "doubleheader" book signings, featuring two authors in one day. This Saturday, Melvin Rodrigue will be signing his Galatoire's Cookbook: Recipes and Family History From the Time-Honored New Orleans Restaurant (Clarkson Potter) from noon to 2:00 p.m., and Tom Piazza will be signing Why New Orleans Matters from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. "We'll have another doubleheader next week," Trice said.

At the Book House in St. Louis, Missouri, Michelle Barron said that the store had "a real good Friday" and overall, sales over the weekend were "a little bit up.... We had a couple of nice, big sales. We carry a lot of rare, out-of print books." Still, "the traffic didn't seem as big" this year as compared to the previous year.

Among the bestselling titles this past weekend were Wizardology: The Book of the Secrets of Merlin (Candlewick), illustrated by Anne Yvonne Gilbert and others; Fairyopolis by Cicely Mary Barker (Frederick Warne); and several regional titles.

However, the Book House's biggest sales weekend is usually the first weekend of December when the store holds its Annual Holiday Party and Sale, and Barron doesn't expect this year to be any different.

In December, Barron said that store would have "three book signings." One of those signings will be this Saturday. As part of the weekend Christmas party, Rosemary Thornton will sign copies of Finding the Houses That Sears Built (Gentle Beam Publications) from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

In Houston, Texas, a terrible rainstorm came through the city over the holiday weekend, which quite possibly affected sales, said Valerie Koehler at Blue Willow Bookshop. Sales were "okay on Friday.... We're not in a mall, so [Black Friday] is not really our day." That said, the store was "definitely up from last year. Pretty much every month has been that way." In addition, Monday was "incredibly busy."

Koehler reported that the store was doing well with Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (S&S); Texas Coast by Joe Nick Patoski (University of Texas Press); Winter's Tale: An Original Pop-Up Journey by Robert Sabuda (Little Simon); Teacher Man: A Memoir by Frank McCourt (Scribner); Fairyopolis; and the "ologies" series from Candlewick, including Dragonology, Egyptology, and Wizardology.

At the Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, Montana, the holiday weekend "was a bit slower than usual -- we had our first huge snowstorm," said Mary Jane DiSanti. "Eighteen to 24 inches fell over the weekend." DiSanti said that Black Friday is never traditionally a huge day. "It was busy, but the snow slowed things down."

Popular titles included Marley & Me by John Grogan (William Morrow); Snowmen at Christmas by Caralyn Buehner (Dial); and The Lighthouse by P.D. James (Knopf), as well as some regional titles.

In San Diego, Patrick Heffernan of Mysterious Galaxy reported that post-Thanksgiving business "went as expected.... We have our loyal fan base. They're always here, but we don't see a bump like they see at the mall. It's like a regular weekend for us. We won't see real push till December.

"Currently, our top seller would have to be George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows [Spectra]. He was here, and we seem to be doing land-office business with signed copies. Signed books are the perfect Christmas present."

This year, Mysterious Galaxy sold slightly more Book Sense Gift Cards than the same weekend last year, said Heffernan, who expected gift card sales to soar closer to Christmas.

Adrian Newell, buyer for the past 10 years at Warwick's in La Jolla, California, tried to determine the reason for this year's flat sales figures. "The Da Vinci Code (Doubleday), The Secret Life of Bees (Penguin), and Kite Runner (Riverhead) were selling in huge numbers last year," she explained. "We have nothing to replace those this year. Last year, we sold over 1,000 copies of The Da Vinci Code. Other than Harry Potter (Scholastic) there hasn't been any book this year that sold in those numbers. The difference is $40,000 in sales."

The 2200-square-foot space is packed with 60,000 titles, so Warwick's has "all the right books," Newell said. "It's just a question of getting people to buy them." Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals and James Frey's A Million Little Pieces (Anchor) were "flying out the door." Also moving were The City of Falling Angels (Penguin), The Year of Magical Thinking, Julie & Julia (Little, Brown), and Marley & Me. However, about these top sellers, Newell noted, "We're talking 50 to100 copies instead of a thousand."

Newell said that she was still trying to predict sales for the next few weeks. "I would like to have a better sense of what holiday [sales] will be like by this late in the quarter." Though she couldn't offer a solid forecast for the season, she said gift cards would undoubtedly boost the bottom line. "We always do a lot with gift cards," she said. "We switched completely from certificates. It's a really significant part of our holiday business."

Echoing many other booksellers around the country, buyer Scott Foley at Grass Roots Books & Music in Corvallis, Oregon, said, "We did about the same as last year and the year before -- no great upswing or downturn in business." He added, "We've been happy with things so far." Regarding the store's strategy for the pre-Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanzaa blitz, he said, "We can influence sales with our promotions and by constantly handselling. The season's pretty young. We've still got a lot of bookselling to do."

Grass Root's bestsellers were largely regional titles. "We rely pretty heavily on the Pacific Northwest [Booksellers Association] catalog to bring in new customers," said Foley. Birds of the Willamette Valley Region (R.W. Morse) was "a great stocking stuffer for birders in the area."

Arundel Books, which has been in its new 1,900-square-foot location in the corner of the Alexis Hotel in Seattle for a year, had a "fine" Black Friday, said manager Dale Speicher. "We're in a downtown location, so our [holiday shopping] starts a little later than the malls. The traffic's heavier, but it doesn't kick in for us for another week or two. But it's comparable to last year."

As elsewhere, Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking was on customers' shopping lists, so were Rachael Ray's 365: No Repeats (Clarkson Potter) and Jimmy Carter's Our Endangered Values (S&S).

Speicher voiced a common apprehension of booksellers, "The industry trend is there are books in more places. I wouldn't say grocery and department stores are killing us, but it seems like there are more opportunities for buying books in nontraditional stores than there used to be."

At City Lights in San Francisco, coordinating buyer Paul Yamazaki reported that the post-Thanksgiving weekend went very well, and the bookstore enjoyed a 5.83 percent increase over last year. "I expected a one to three percent increase," said Yamazaki. "We're quite pleased."

Yamazaki said he couldn't attribute the gain to anything the store had done differently this year. Overall, the bookstore was "doing very well," he said. "I think we've traditionally done well by being really committed to the books that we bring in. We don't do any discounting, so I'm glad the public continues to support us the way it has."

Allen Ginberg's Howl (City Lights), marking its 50th anniversary this year, was selling especially well, along with "anything related to Ginsberg and the beats," said Yamazaki, who was also "delighted" with Joan Didion's book and Bob Dylan's Chronicles (S&S) Another top seller was San Francisco Noir (Akashic) edited by City Lights' own Peter Maravelis. --David Grogan, Karen Schechner, and Nomi Schwartz