Booksellers Weigh In on Black Friday Sales

It turns out that shoppers were purchasing more than plasma flat-screen televisions on Black Friday. As more than 140 million Americans began checking items off their holiday shopping lists, many were browsing, and buying, in bookstores, according to independents nationwide contacted by Bookselling This Week. Sales were up for many, while, for others, Black Friday was more gray than solid black. However, assessing the opening days, most booksellers contacted were upbeat, reported a notable range of titles selling in their stores, reviewed their marketing plans, and looked forward to busy weeks ahead.

At Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, Texas, Black Friday "was quite brisk," said Valerie Koehler. Blue Willow, which is located in a strip mall, is "not the get-up-early-with-the-family kind of Best Buy location," she said, but this year, "I was pleased with Friday and Saturday."

Helping to drive sales, about a week ago, the bookstore sent its holiday newsletter to its customer list. "We e-mailed 900 customers and snail-mailed [the catalogue] to about 2,000," Koehler reported. The store normally publishes a monthly newsletter, but because the holiday newsletter covers both November and December "it's more like a catalogue."

In addition, Blue Willow launched a new holiday campaign -- the store is offering children a direct line to the North Pole, Koehler said. Parents can pick up some special Santa stationery at the bookstore, which their kids can use to write a letter to Santa Claus. To ensure the letter makes it safe and sound to the North Pole and is answered by Santa's elves, the children must mail it in Blue Willow's special gingerbread cottage mailbox.

Each letter receives two responses -- the children receive a letter from Santa's elves (Blue Willow staff), while the parents receive a handwritten note from Koehler, in which she tells them how much she appreciates their business, and explains the services her store offers, among other things. Thus far, the campaign has been successful in getting parents and children to make multiple trips to the bookstore, offering more opportunities for parents to buy. Moreover, it provides Blue Willow with wish lists that can provide relatives with a great source of gift ideas. "The response from parents has been, 'This is so wonderful, we really appreciate it,'" Koehler said.

Top-selling titles over the weekend included Art of the Cross by Mary Emmerling (Gibbs Smith), one of the gift books showcased in Blue Willow's holiday newsletter, and I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron (Knopf), Koehler said.

Fayetteville, Arkansas, is only about 25 miles from Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, but Lisa Sharp of Nightbird Books joked to BTW that the Thanksgiving Day weekend was anything but "Wal-Mart-like." That said, the store, which opened about eight months ago, had "the best weekend I've ever had," she noted. "There were a whole lot of window shoppers [too] -- hopefully they'll be coming back." Nightbird is located just outside Fayetteville's downtown in an old seed mill that was renovated for retail and office space.

Sharp continued, "Friday and Saturday were really steady, and people were in here all the time. We had one extra staff person, and we needed it."

To draw in consumers over the weekend, the bookstore had the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) holiday insert placed in the November 24 issue of the Northwest Arkansas Times, Sharp said. "People came in with a lot of the SIBA titles circled," she noted, though there wasn't one particular title that stood out. "There were a lot of people buying out of that catalog."

In Jackson, Mississippi, John Evans of Lemuria Bookstore reported, "We did almost exactly the same as last year." Over the weekend, the bookstore had a book signing on Friday with Robert St. John (Deep South Parties, Hyperion), and on Saturday with Ben Wynneon (Mississippi's Civil War: A Narrative History, Mercer) to help drive sales.

Evans noted that the bookstore advertised "a little less than last year," and said that the Thanksgiving weekend tends to be the weakest holiday shopping weekend for the store. "Each weekend usually gets bigger and bigger," he added.

Popular titles over the weekend included Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier (Random House); The Innocent Man by John Grisham (Doubleday); The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Knopf); and Twilight by William Gay (MacAdam Cage).

Evans also reported that, while online sales were light this weekend, November was the Lemuriabooks.com's busiest month ever in terms of online sales. Prior to that, October had been its busiest, he noted. As for why the sudden increase in web sales, "I think we've become more efficient with service," he explained. "We have new people on staff, [which means] more timely service on [online] orders."

Andy Graves of the 32-year-old Happy Bookseller in Columbia, South Carolina, said that, each year, the state essentially shuts down over the weekend that Clemson and South Carolina play. This year, the heated rivalry was unfortunately scheduled for the Saturday after Thanksgiving (South Carolina beat 24th-ranked Clemson 31 - 28), so Graves wasn't sure what to expect in the way of sales. Fortunately, while things might have quieted a bit on Saturday during the football game, he reported, Friday was a big day and overall "our sales were up over last year.... so that's a good sign for the holidays."

Among the titles that did well this weekend were: The South Carolina Encyclopedia by Walter Edgar (University of South Carolina Press); signed editions of John Edward's Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives (Collins); The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama (Crown); Magnolia: Authentic Southern Cuisine by Donald Barickman (Wyrick & Company); Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf); and Charley's Columbia Backyard by Caroline Coleman Bennett (Palmetto Conservation Foundation).

In terms of marketing, Graves said the store promoted itself via e-mail and regular mail to its customer list, which it has cultivated through the years. In addition The Happy Bookseller is holding a storewide sale from December 1 through December 3. The store didn't hold the sale over the Thanksgiving weekend, he added, "because we don't try to compete" with the malls.

Sales were comparable with last year at both the Oakland and Malibu locations of DIESEL, A Bookstore, reported co-owner Alison Reid. "What we usually have is families bringing by visitors to show off their local bookstore. It makes us feel part of the community, but we don't get that many sales. Sales are always higher than other days but not that mind-blowing."

At DIESEL there was no clear top seller; however, Annie Leibovitz 's A Photographer's Life: 1990 - 2005 (Random House) was selling well, along with Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song, (Les Beletsky, Ed., Chronicle). At the Malibu store, surf books were popular, including Bend to Baja: A Biodiesel Powered Surfing and Climbing Road Trip (Jeff Johnson, Moonlight) and West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief (Steven Kotler, Bloomsbury).

Prior to the holidays, Reid said DIESEL had switched the focus of its print ads from author events to books. Books listed in the ads were chosen from a list of DIESEL's Top 100 Customer Picks.

DeDe Teeters, of Armchair Books in Port Orchard, Washington, was happy to report gains over 2005. "We had a good Friday and were probably up by 10 percent," she told BTW. Teeters ascribed the boost to the store's new corner location as well as to having added more sidelines. Sales would have been even higher for the weekend if not for an early snowstorm that dumped as much as two feet of snow on some parts of the state, she reported.

Top sellers at Armchair were from locals Erik Larson (Thunderstruck, Crown) and Timothy Egan (The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, Houghton). Another title Teeters has been handselling is Laura Kalpakian's novel (American Cookery, St. Martin's).

Sales were slightly off at the Sundance Bookstore in Reno, Nevada, said owner Christine Kelly. "It was a little heavier than usual, but not quite as busy as last year." She said that sales were slightly down for all of 2006. "The drop in sales has puzzled me for the entire year. My first knee-jerk reaction is to say the Internet continues to grab large portions of the business. But I don't think that that can account for all of it. The middle class is getting squeezed, and they're the ones who buy all the books." Book Sense gift card sales, however, were "significantly" up, Kelly said.

To advertise, Sundance continued with its weekly live radio spot on the local station KTHX-FM. "We find that pretty darned effective," Kelly said, adding that the station invited her to list top picks in a three- to four-minute slot. "We also did a radio commercial that we produced and recorded on our own, as well as advertising on our website and newsletter."

Against the Day (Thomas Pynchon, Penguin), Nature Girl (Carl Hiaasen, Knopf), Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran (Jason Elliot, St. Martin's), and Snow (Orhan Pamuk, Vintage) all sold well.

The year-and-a-half old Children's Bookstore, Little Bookworms, in Bradenton, Florida, hit a record high. "This year far exceeded last year," said owner Heidi Allwood. "We were up by about 300 percent." She credited the improvement to both the bookstore's relocation to a more highly trafficked area and a well-attended neighborhood holiday celebration.

Allwood said that some of kids' favorites at Little Bookworms were The Giraffe Who Was Afraid of Heights (David A. Ufer, Kirsten Carlson, Illus., Sylvan Dell) and Just Like Heaven: A Mutts Children's Book (Patrick McDonnell, Little, Brown Young Readers).

Book Sense Gift Cards sold "really well," said Allwood. "We had a huge increase in gift card sales since we switched."

In Red Wing, Minnesota, Leslie Hakala, owner of Best of Times Bookstore, reported "excellent" sales all day on Black Friday. She explained that most of the business was driven by the town's annual Holiday Stroll, which attracts thousands of people from around the area. A large parade through the historic downtown, special events, and the lighting of the holiday lights, contribute to the excitement and translate into book sales. "Gift card sales were definitely higher than last year," Hakala told BTW, "We had more people coming into town than last year."

Book Sense gift cards also sold very well at the Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, a feminist bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota. "Our first four or five sales of the day were for gift cards," collective member Nicole Hoffman told BTW. She was referring to Saturday, which she noted, was a better day for the store than Friday. "There wasn't a huge crowd," she said, "But we had a good steady business throughout the weekend. I'd say it was on par with last year."

Popular titles included I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, Amy Sedaris's quirky guide to entertaining (Warner Books), Isabel Allende's Ines of My Soul (HarperCollins), and Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck (Knopf).

The BookMark Shoppe in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, had "nonstop sales on Saturday," said the store's co-owner Bina Valenzano. "Friday was busier than a usual Friday, but nothing like Saturday." The four-year-old general bookstore moved in October to the site vacated by A Novel Idea, which closed after 10 years at the location.

Valenzano noted that many titles were selling very well over the weekend, and once again Nora Ephron's "Neck" stuck out. Bestselling authors Mary Higgins Clark, James Patterson, Mitch Albom, and Nelson DeMille, were placed in many shoppers' bags, sharing space with a number of Robert Sabuda's pop-up books (Christmas, The Christmas Alphabet, Orchard) and Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier (Random House). Many cookbooks were doing well, but "Rachel Ray is slowing down," she said. "I think people have reached a saturation point."

Sales were off at 13-year-old Lowry's Books and More in Three Rivers, Michigan; numbers were slightly better at the four-year-old Lowry's store in nearby Sturgis. Thomas Lowry, owner of both stores and a 25-year bookselling veteran, had no simple explanation. "The economy here in southwest Michigan is pretty bad," he told BTW. "I'm not sure if that's it. The weather is beautiful, unseasonably mild, and our business [for the weekend] was off by a third."

Lowry, who also sells toys, was considering options, including featuring more sale items in the store.

Schuler Books & Music in Okemos, Michigan, one of the four stores owned by Bill and Cecile Fehsenfeld, experienced an uptick in sales on Friday, but Saturday and Sunday were slower than last year. Audrey Brockhaus, promotions coordinator for the Okemos store, described the store's extended holiday hours and a "buy back" coupon on receipts. "If people spend more than $100, they get a free coffee and 10 percent off their next purchase. Customers seem very happy with it."

Hot titles included Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope (Crown), John Grisham's first nonfiction book, The Innocent Man (Doubleday), and a local favorite that celebrates this year's American League pennant winners, the Detroit Tigers: Roar Restored (Mark Francescutti, Ed., Triumph Books).

In Maine's Brunswick Bookland & Cafe, co-owner Scott Adams told BTW that sales were steady, a couple of percentage points below last year's, but about what the staff expected. A new Borders store recently opened in the area and, as predicted, took some of Bookland's sales. Adams said that the owners of the store are optimistic because, "We have a lot of good customers who only shop at our bookstore and we're happy to have them. We're planning on a strong holiday season."

At Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, North Carolina, Rich Rennicks told BTW in an email that the operative word for the atmosphere in the store was "hopping." He said that the past weekend was very busy. -David Grogan, Karen Schechner, and Nomi Schwartz