Gift Cards and Balmy Weather Stoke January Retail Sales
On February 14, the U.S. Commerce Department delivered a valentine to the nation's economy. At 8:30 a.m., the agency released a monthly sales estimate for January showing that retail and food services sales were up 2.3 percent from December 2005 and had risen 8.8 percent over January 2005. Estimated January sales were $365.4 billion, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes.
Island Books, Judy Crosby's 13-year-old bookstore, is located in Middletown, on Aquidneck Island, one of the earliest colonial settlement sites in Rhode Island. Until 1731, Middletown was a part of neighboring Newport, the seaside town long famous as a vacation spot for the extraordinarily wealthy.
To be eligible to win prizes, stores with Book Sense that are participating in the Curious George promotion created by Houghton Mifflin and Book Sense must return disposable cameras, with undeveloped photos of special events and displays, to Book Sense by March 1. ABA will develop the film and return a CD of the photos to the bookstore.