Holiday Season Off to a Good Start

This year’s Black Friday weekend sales results gave retailers a reason to smile, according to the National Retail Federation, which noted that more people shopped and spent more than in 2009. And, based on BTW’s informal survey of ABA members, indie booksellers were also among the beneficiaries of consumers who have had enough of austerity.

Now, following a positive start, booksellers across the country are gearing up to continue the run, with Local First efforts, special sales and unique merchandise, in-store promotions, and good old-fashioned handselling.

“Black Friday was excellent for us,” said Ellen Burns, who co-owns Books on the Common in Ridgefield, Connecticut, with her husband, Darwin Ellis. “We started out a bit slow, but built during the day, ending at 8:00 p.m. with the downtown tree lighting.” The result, she said, was a 30 percent increase in sales over the same day in 2009, and a 66 percent increase over 2008. The latter could be explained in part by the bookstore’s move to a more heavily trafficked location in 2009.

Books on the Common had its inventory on track, Burns said. “Sales of particular titles were pretty much what we expected.”

The bookstore partnered with the Ridgefield Library for the weekend and donated a percentage of sales, which “worked out really well for us,” she said. “We get a lot of free publicity. We had a banner on the front of the store promoting the event and got local newspaper coverage. We have been doing this every year on Thanksgiving weekend since 2005. We received a very positive response from the community for this effort.”

Burns said that she is “feeling fairly positive about the holiday season. We hope to be up over 2009 by 10 percent. We shall see.”

The Book Cellar in Brattleboro, Vermont, saw a three percent increase for the weekend, said manager Ana McDaniel, and a 10 percent bump for the season, which she believes they will maintain.

About holiday survival strategies, McDaniel said, “I love the ABA tip about wrapping very popular books and keeping them in stacks on display with a sign that says, ‘Such and such title, wrapped and ready to go!’”

The Book Cellar’s marketing campaigns include a partnership with other downtown Brattleboro businesses during the first weekend of December for a town-wide sale called Holly Days. “This is always a very successful sales weekend for us!” said McDaniel. “We have to beef up both stock and personnel to accommodate the increased volume.”

After celebrating its first year in business, Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was busier than anticipated, said owner Jamie Fiocco.

“We thought the oxygen would be sucked out of the town businesses by the malls and a brand-new outlet mall, but we were quite steady.” Since the store has been open just a little more than a year, Fiocco expected the year-to-year gain to be high, but Flyleaf had an impressive 85 percent jump for the weekend.

Although Flyleaf didn’t actively take part in American Express’ Small Business Saturday promotion on November 27, that will most likely change next year. Fiocco said, “I had mixed feelings about promoting an AmEx event because they are so expensive to do business with as a merchant, but we received a number of calls from the public asking if we took AmEx because they wanted to come shop with us. I would say that next year we’d actively promote the event.”

Like other booksellers, Fiocco said there weren’t any unexpected bestsellers. “Cleopatra is still strong; Mark Twain is impossible to get. The other books that were doing well before still did well (Just Kids in paperback was a welcome addition).”

To help augment a good season, Flyleaf added a number of children’s events to its line-up, including a Hanukah and a Kwanzaa storytime.

The store usually wraps books for free during the year, but business has grown too busy for that. “So we purchased inexpensive gift bags,” Fiocco explained, “put tissue paper in them and our store sticker and are selling those for $1.50, our ‘grab and go gift bags.’ The price is low enough that folks don’t complain, and it’s a small unexpected revenue stream for us.”

Another of Fiocco’s holiday plans is to sell store decorations. “We’ve had several calls for the ‘flameless candles’ that we use on our cookbook display. We brought in some antiques from a local store to make our events room cozier, and those items are for sale and we’ll get a commission.”

Since this is the end of her store’s first year, Fiocco isn’t sure what to expect for the close of 2010. “Our sales last December were quite good, but after a strong November we have really high hopes of defining a new sales record. Spirits are high with customers; hardcover sales are great. Non-book and kids items are moving well; we’d like to think we’re firing on all cylinders.”

But, she added, “In my opinion, success hinges on our ability to analyze our sales daily, get the orders in at the right time, have the publishers get the orders out and all the boxes in a shipment come in together. We depend so much on the publishers and wholesalers to turn the orders around and to get the books out to us quickly. The reps have been great at smoothing out any early wrinkles.”

At Talking Leaves Bookstore in Buffalo, New York, “A black Friday, a blacker Saturday, and a black-eyed Junco gray Sunday went well,” said Lucy Kogler. “Since Buffalo is the third poorest city in the country, a lot of our young people leave, but come back at the holidays and come in to shop and to catch up, knowing they will see many of their chums. It makes for a festive atmosphere.”

Talking Leaves announced its annual sale by postcard timed to arrive by Thanksgiving. “Many of our regulars stayed away, but out-of-towners held court,” said Kogler. “It’s actually quite nice.”

The bookstore will participate in a Shop Local Week from November 26 through December 4 for which the Local First/Buffalo First group created a coupon book shaped like a deck of cards.

There were no big surprise bestsellers at Talking Leaves over the weekend, other than Jay Z ’s Decoded, and Kogler doesn’t plan to alter her inventory plan much. She’ll do her last-minute ordering on December 21, when, she said, “the store feels like the floor of the stock exchange… it’s exhilarating”

When asked for holiday tips, Kogler recommended that booksellers keep a supply of treats on hand. “On Christmas eve, when everyone is in line, hand out cookies and candy to folks. It’s a good way to keep an eye on the door and stock, as well as answer questions, and it lets people know you appreciate their business.”

And, she cautioned, keep an eye on depleted stock. “If you run out of the big titles on display, seed the table with multiple copies of books from other sections. People need to see a full table. It makes them feel as if they still have choices.”

To spread holiday cheer throughout the local community, Talking Leaves is collecting coats, gloves, hats, outer wear for its 16^th annual “Project Coat Tree.” Donations go to local organizations, and many customers give generously each year.

Kogler thinks that customers have come to see the importance of supporting local business. “I believe that people need to buy local; I mean that in a primal way. Deep down, they want where they’ve chosen to live to offer diversity – choices. They want to know that they are contributing to place. That doesn’t mean that they don’t participate in cyber Monday and 4:00 a.m. mall balls…. What we independents can count on is that our customers want to identify as individuals not as part of the herd, at least at this time of the year, savoring the fact of locality as well as the theory of it. And so, they show up, fully realizing that by supporting us, even seasonally, is far better than total abandonment.”

After a difficult spring and summer due to the BP oil spill, Kay Gough was happy to report a solid weekend of high sales at Bay Books in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. “We had much more business than we expected – lots better than last year,” she said.

Bay Books saw some benefits from American Express’ heavily advertised Small Business Saturday promotion. “We didn’t do any special promotion, but a number of customers mentioned that they had been ‘reminded’ to shop small businesses because of the advertising that they’d seen,” Gough said.

In a turnabout from this past spring, she added, “We have high hopes for December!” and there’s a similar optimism among her customers. “Overall, customers seem to be happier,” Gough said. “Many folks are not only shopping local, but they are also buying books by local and regional authors and books about our area. Maybe this is a hometown holiday.”

“People seemed incredibly happy!” at Wild Rumpus, said Collette Morgan. The store’s traditional holiday marketing includes a 42-page Buyer’s Guide with Wild Rumpus’ book reviews around which “a kind of a point and pick” display is built.

The store’s neighborhood business district is “very cohesive,” Morgan said, and has collectively organized holiday-themed events to draw in kids and adults. “Next weekend is ‘Reindeer Days,’ complete with an evening shopping promotion for adults on Friday night, a 5K Reindeer Run on Saturday, and multiple promotions throughout the neighborhood on Saturday for kids (including, of course, the requisite live reindeer).”

Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, also had a good Thanksgiving weekend. “I’m happy and a bit surprised to say we were up eight percent over last year for the three days,” said owner Daniel Goldin. “On Friday night, we took advantage of authors coming home for the holidays and hosted an event with Lori Tharps, author of Substitute Me .”

Asked about Small Business Saturday, Goldin said, “In a way, we participated in Small Business Friday by hosting the first of our three artisan craft fairs, where we let folks sell jewelry, knitwear, and pottery on our floor. It gets a little tight, but it seems to bring in new customers, and a number of our regulars like it as well. These fairs seem to be exploding in number every year in Milwaukee, so I have no idea how long this idea will work.”

Though there weren’t any doorbusters, Boswell did add an extra bargain book table to the front of the store and expanded its Boswell’s Best titles to include each bookseller’s favorite hardcovers of the year. “We were happy to get a new shipment of Autobiography of Mark Twain just before the weekend started,” Goldin added. “It seems like a stronger nonfiction Christmas this year.

“Our bestselling hardcover fiction books were Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter and Room.”

Also on tap at Boswell are four shopping nights that will benefit local schools, a shop local fair, and, because it worked well last year, an increase in the number of mini book fairs held at nearby senior housing. The store will also participate in a Friday evening multi-store Christmas program, which usually draws additional traffic.

A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland, California, had “the best Thanksgiving weekend ever!” said Kathleen Caldwell, who attributed some of its success to a customer appreciation sale (everything was 15 percent off), which helped keep some of her customers away from the malls.

Like other booksellers who spoke with BTW, Caldwell has high hopes for the holiday season of 2010. “If last weekend was an indicator, I think it’s going to be incredible!”

In Seattle, Washington, Mockingbird Books, a primarily children’s bookstore, saw average sales on Black Friday. “I think most shoppers were at stores that were offering special promotions,” said Mockingbird’s Alyson Stage. “Saturday, however, was very successful. We had an author event in the afternoon, which helped.”

The store is partnering in a cross promotion with the Seattle Chamber Music Society. Mockingbird is selling tickets for the society’s winter festival family concert, “The Story of Babar the Elephant,” and the society is listing Mockingbird Books on its website.

In another holiday promotion, Mockingbird is allowing a local photographer to use the bookstore as a backdrop for children’s photo shoots.

Heading into high season, Stage said, “My hope is for continued expansion of our customer base … so that more parents and teachers realize what a great resource we are for children’s literature.”