Strong Holiday Season, Healthy Sales Launch Booksellers Into 2016

In the first week of 2016, many indie booksellers were coming off an energetic and prosperous holiday sales season. Booksellers who spoke to Bookselling This Week reported healthy sales overall in 2015, spurred by a strong publishing list throughout the year, creative store promotions during the holidays, popular local and regional titles, and in-demand nonbook items.

Oblong Books & Music, which has locations in Rhinebeck and Millerton, New York, had its best year ever, said co-owner Suzanna Hermans, with sales at both stores up every month throughout the year.

“We had an incredible holiday season,” said Hermans, who attributed part of the sales growth to booming tourism in the Hudson Valley as people from New York City, as well as from abroad, discover how easy it is to visit the region. “It’s cool to run a store where you have a whole different set of customers every day,” she added.

Hermans has also seen a notable change in consumer attitudes toward books. “People are just excited about books again, about the printed book,” she said. “They’re so excited to discover a beautiful physical bookstore with a great selection that they can’t help but buy something.” Children’s books were particularly hot throughout the year at Oblong, with inventory turns double that of books for adults.

Oblong’s annual sale on New Year’s Day, a time when many neighboring businesses are closed, offered customers 20 percent off regularly priced merchandise, an extra 10 percent off sale and bargain books, and 40 percent off holiday items and 2015 calendars. “It’s taken some time to build it up, but this year both stores just did fantastically. The stores were packed all day. The word is finally out,” said Hermans, who said the sale is a great way to both reduce inventory and to thank customers for supporting the stores all year long.

One nonbook item that stole the show this holiday season was Oblong’s stash of Blue Q socks, a sideline Hermans discovered while visiting independent stores on her drive across the country to Pasadena for the ABC Children’s Institute last year. Since setting up the small display in the fiction section, Oblong has sold hundreds of pairs. “We had to do an emergency order the week of Christmas,” said Hermans. “We were selling so many every day that we were going to sell out.”

Sarah Goddin, general manager at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina, said her store had a good holiday selling season this year, with sales up 6.4 percent in November compared to the previous year and up about 2.4 percent in December, while total sales for the year increased by about 5 percent overall.

The store’s good luck was overshadowed a bit by a car accident on December 20, when an elderly driver crashed her Lexus into the storefront, breaking the front window glass and shutting down the main entrance. While no one was hurt, Goddin said the accident did affect sales somewhat over the few days before Christmas.

“We still just have a temporary front door that makes customers feel like they should knock before they come in, but that’s better than plywood!” she noted.

When it comes to huge sellers or sleeper hits on the book front, Goddin said there wasn’t one big book as in some years; however, this season had an amazing array of really strong literary titles.

“Our bestsellers were, as usual, books with a North Carolina connection, including Andy and Don by Daniel de Vise (S&S), The Wright Brothers by David McCullough (S&S), and The American President by UNC professor William Leuchtenberg (Oxford University Press), among others,” Goddin said.

“Non-local big sellers included Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe (HMH), Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik (Dey Street Books), All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doer (S&S), Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road (Random House), and lots and lots of coloring books,” said Goddin.

Brenda Weaver, owner of Hearthside Books & Toys in Juneau, Alaska, told BTW that though some of the shop’s neighboring stores reported slow sales, the bookstore was up significantly for 2015 over 2014, and the month of November was particularly prosperous, with sales up eight percent.

“People in Juneau love coming here and shopping,” said Weaver, who became owner of Hearthside in 2014. “People in town are really appreciative it’s still here. The big thing is the staff stayed — some of the staff has been here a very long time, and they were willing to go with the flow. They’re the ones that have truly been helping keep it afloat.”

Hearthside kicked off its 40th anniversary in September with a 40-day calendar of events and specials, followed by a signing with six local authors in November, plus a weekend stall at a local public market.

Pleasant weather in Juneau also contributed to stronger sales, said Weaver, as it was cold and crisp but heavy snow held off until after Christmas. “It was a great combination of things,” said Weaver, “getting the right merchandise, having the right people on the floor, having the right weather — it was a perfect trifecta.”

Jerry Brace, owner of Brace Books & More in Ponca City, Oklahoma, said his store’s holiday book sales in December showed an increase of about seven percent over last year.

“It was as good as it has ever been up through December 24, although after that we had some bad weather, which kicked us down a little bit,” said Brace. “Overall, it wasn’t the very best season we’ve ever done, but it was up there.”

Brace said he was pleased the store did well with some local and regional interest books, including cookbook writer and Food Network star Ree Drummond’s fourth cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime (William Morrow Cookbooks). The store had invited Drummond, who lives about 30 miles from the store, in for a signing in November.

At the 5,000-square-foot store, which is about 40 percent books, prime holiday sales also included a mix of toys, jewelry, fashion accessories, and kitchen items. “It’s lots of little pieces that fit together,” said Brace. “We sell a little of everything.”

Usually over Thanksgiving weekend, Brace said, the store discounts seasonal items such as Christmas cards and calendars, but the most successful sale event during the holiday season is always the store’s New Year’s Day event. “This last New Year’s Day sale was the best one that we ever had,” said Brace, who got the idea to discount all store items by 25 to 50 percent from Bob Sommers, co-owner of Changing Hands in Tempe, Arizona, which gives 25 percent off everything in the store for a period of a few hours every New Year’s Day. 

“We only did a four-hour sale,” said Brace. “We opened at 12:00 p.m., and by 12:15 the store was full. I was quite pleased. For this sale, I think we might be up from last year as much as 20 percent.”

At the end of 2015, overall sales were up at Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia, said owner Kelly Justice, who is looking forward to a strong 2016 as well, as Richmond was recently listed third on Travel + Leisure’s worldwide “Best Places to Travel in 2016” list.

Nonbook and gift items were popular this holiday season, and the store fulfilled a substantial amount of special orders, particularly for limited-edition copies of author and illustrator Maggie Stiefvater’s young adult book The Scorpio Races (Scholastic). In December, Stiefvater visited the bookstore to hand-sketch horses on the inside covers of more than 100 books, an item that proved in higher demand than anticipated.

Among nonbook items that flew off the shelves at Fountain Bookstore were the Blue Q brand of socks. “One day we sold more socks than we did books,” said Justice. Another surprise was the popularity of Blackwing pencils, which were used during the golden age of Hollywood and are now being reproduced. Between the pencils, the sharpener, and an eraser replacement pack, Justice said, “people would come in and they would buy $100 worth of pencils.”

Though sales were up during the holidays, Fountain’s business was affected this year by shipping delays, which included incoming shipments arriving late and outgoing packages failing to be picked up on time by various carriers. “They were really feeling the pressure,” said Justice, who believes that consumers’ focus on online shopping this year contributed to the problem.

Dante DiGenova, owner of Northtown Books in Arcata, California, said holiday sales were up about six or seven percent from last season. Sales were strong in part, he said, because a bookstore down the street had gone out of business in August. Northtown also took on supplying books and magazines to a grocery store a few blocks away at the end of July, which helped considerably.

When it came to popular holiday book choices, “titles that were selling continued to sell,” DiGenova said; these included The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (Ten Speed Press) and Being Mortal by Atul Gawande (Metropolitan Books).

"H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (Grove Press) had a little bit of a bump this holiday season, and the new Patti Smith book, M Train (Knopf), also did well," he said. One of the store’s top-selling books of the season was Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau), according to DiGenova, and aside from books, Merrymakers toys always do well at Northtown during the holidays.

DiGenova said his store discounted books from the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association bestseller list by 20 percent and discounted staff picks by 10 percent. His own pick, which he made an effort to handsell, was the Kickstarter-funded We Go to the Gallery by Miriam Elia, an illustrated satire of children’s early readers that parodies the art world.

“We had a pleasantly happy, successful season this year,” said Bev Denor, who owns LaDeDa Books & Beans in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. “I know that we are ahead of the last two years. I think this is partially because we had a couple more in-store activities this season than we have had in past seasons,” she explained, and on event days the store offered special discounts.

“We also had a couple of schools come to us this year to do in-store book fairs, so that was a first for us,” Denor said.

Total sales for the year were also up compared to the previous year by at least 10 or 11 percent, according to Denor. Some of the popular holiday sidelines sold at LaDeDa include offerings from the new game company the store began working with this year, ThinkFun.

“We just cleared out every single ThinkFun item we had, so that was the newest surprise for us this year. They do games for kids with developmental issues but also have some fun family games,” she said.

In Providence, Rhode Island, Books on the Square also fared well this holiday season, said sales floor manager Susan Schlesinger.

“Sales were up — we were really busy, and we were busier later in the season than we thought we would be,” she said. “People had a late start.”

Though the bookstore’s neighborhood does not have a dedicated buy-local campaign, there was strong interest in purchasing local products, such as the soaps, candles, and chocolates the bookstore carries. “I heard a lot of people commenting that they were glad there’s still a bookstore in the neighborhood,” Schlesinger said.

While sales at the store were strong for nonfiction titles such as H Is for Hawk and Notorious RBG, the most popular nonbook item was, once again, socks. People also came to the store to participate in a food drive for a nearby community center, during which a donation of a canned good earned the donor a free galley.

“We had a great season, we had fantastic customers, and we’re very happy with the results,” said Schlesinger. —Sydney Jarrard and Liz Button