No Big Hits, but Bookshops Say They’re Thriving
by Leslie Kaufman
Last year, there was a clear winner among books for the holiday gift of choice: “Steve Jobs,” by Walter Isaacson. This year, despite a lineup of offerings from literary heavyweights, many of whom have commanded strong sales in the past, there has not been a breakout hit for the holiday season, booksellers say.
Books like Bob Woodward’s “Price of Politics,” Tom Wolfe’s “Back to
Blood” and Salman Rushdie’s “Joseph Anton” have each sold well under
100,000 copies by the end of last week according to Nielsen Bookscan.
(In contrast, the Jobs biography sold 379,000 copies in the first week
after its release in October 2011.)
While Bookscan does not include e-books and covers only roughly 75
percent of retail outlets, this year’s figures provide a snapshot of the
fragmented holiday sales picture as a whole: independent bookstores
report that a range of books are moving nicely, but there are mixed
numbers from Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest book chain, and
solid but not stellar growth in digital sales. Independent bookstore
owners say they are thriving even without that surefire best seller
because of a wide array of options this year: everything from Barbara
Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior” (list price $28.99) to Chris Ware’s
expensive graphic novel “Building Stories” — which comes with 14
components, including bound volumes, a board and a tabloid newspaper
($50) — to attractive impulse buys like “I Could Pee on This: And Other
Poems by Cats” ($12.95).
Peter Aaron, the owner of the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, said
sales were up 15 percent over the Thanksgiving weekend and tracking well
for December. In addition to “Building Stories,” he said other surprise
sellers were “Dear Life,” by Alice Munro, and “Why Does the World
Exist?,” by Jim Holt, a treatise that combines cosmology and philosophy.
“It is not an easy book, but it is doing really well,” Mr. Aaron said.
There are many reasons bookstores point to for their successful holiday
season. President Obama, they note, set the stage when he took his
daughters, Sasha and Malia, to One More Page Books in Arlington, Va., on
the Saturday after Thanksgiving, where he snapped up 15 children’s books.
Small bookstores report that they are also benefiting from the
popularity of Kobo e-readers, which were designed for independent
bookstores and allow customers to buy e-books through the independents’
Web sites, as opposed to say, Amazon.
Steve Bercu, an owner of BookPeople in Austin, Tex., said sales were up
10 percent over last year. He said that shoppers were buying
coffee-table books but were also snapping up Kobo devices. “I was a
naysayer,” he said, “but they are buying the actual devices, which
surprised me.”
Becky Anderson, the owner of Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, Ill., said: “Our Black Friday and Small Business Saturday
sales were up considerably over last year. That includes hardcovers and
purchases made over the Internet, which we either ship or that you can
pick up at the store.”
Ms. Anderson’s was a familiar story across the nation, according to the
American Booksellers Association, a trade group for independent
bookstores. Dan Cullen, a spokesman for the association, said that
in-store book sales for November, which includes Black Friday and the
start of Christmas shopping, were up 10 percent compared with 2011
figures.
“And while we expect to see some leveling off in the year-over-year
numbers in December — due to the fact that December 2011 was a pretty
strong month — sales for the indies are continuing strong,” Mr. Cullen
said.
Barnes & Noble, by contrast, reported a slight decrease in retail
sales over the Thanksgiving weekend from those a year before. The
company said the decrease was expected because its sales last year were
bolstered by the closing of many Borders stores after that chain went out of business.
But Barnes & Noble’s sales of its Nook digital readers doubled in
that period compared with the similar period last year. The company
cited “promotional activity at channel partners, particularly Wal-Mart
and Target,” for the increase.
Sales of digital books themselves are a more complicated equation.
E-book sales are growing, but at a less rapid pace than in earlier
years, said Madeline McIntosh, chief operating officer of Random House.
Typically, the holiday spike in e-book sales starts on Christmas Day as
people who receive digital readers for gifts begin loading their
devices. But this year the post-Christmas picture is less clear, Ms.
McIntosh said.
“We have some questions about the post-Christmas sales dynamic,” she
said. “In the first years people were getting just e-readers. This year
they will be getting multifunctional tablets. You can put a lot of other
media besides e-books on these, and that may somewhat diminish the
ultimate focus on e-books.”
But she said Random House saw another positive trend for e-books. “We
are starting to see readers accept some more complex layouts in digital
form,” she said. “Ina Garten has done well” for example, with her new
book “Barefoot Contessa Foolproof.”
One thing independent bookstores seem to have going for them is the
close bond they retain with their customers. Bank Square Books in
Mystic, Conn., was flooded with six inches of water from Hurricane
Sandy, but Annie Philbrick, an owner, was able to open for the holiday
season because neighbors had helped pack crates of books and move them
to safety and back again. “People would come to our door and say, “What
can we do to help?’ ” she said.
When the store reopened in mid-November, sales were stronger, she said,
than they were for the whole month of October. In response, when she put
together her annual list of book recommendations for Christmas, she put
“Help, Thanks, Wow,” a spiritual book by Anne Lamott, at the top of the
list.
“It was our way of saying thank you,” she said.
