It's a Wonderful Life won't be the only re-run this Christmas, and you can blame the situation (at least partly) on John Grisham. Having sold two million copies of his comic novel, Skipping Christmas, Doubleday will reissue 1.5 million more copies of the $14.95 hardcover this year with a fresh jacket treatment and enthusiastic support from the chains. "It was golden last year, and we're hoping it will strike gold again," said Borders PR manager, Carlin.
Viking is also hoping to regain some momentum for Jan Karon's Mitford Snowmen, which remained on PW's bestseller list for the 11 weeks leading up to Christmas last year. More of a stocking stuffer than a full-fledged book, the 32-page hardcover has just gone back to press, bringing the total number of copies in print to 587,000. But Viking isn't stopping there. The house has just shipped 500,000 copies of Esther's Gift, a new Christmas title set in Karon's fictional town of Mitford, in the same small format that worked so well last year.
This year, Janet Evanovich also enters the scene with her first Christmas adventure, Visions of Sugar Plums (St. Martin's, Nov.). Backed by a six-figure advertising campaign and a 500,000-copy first printing, the $20 hardcover features Stephanie Plum, the zany New Jersey bounty hunter at the center of the bestselling author's ongoing mystery series.
"Of this year's Christmas titles, the Evanovich should be the strongest out of the gate," predicted Borders's Carlin. Over at barnesandnoble.com, the 160-page novel has remained among the top 10 preorders since early October. "These books really work only if you already have a huge audience, and this author has a large and rabid fan base," explained St. Martin's executive editor Jennifer Enderlin. Indeed, Evanovich's last hardcover, Hard Eight, debuted at #1 on the PW bestseller list in July and remained on the list for seven weeks.
Another new face in the Christmas book sweepstakes is David Baldacci, who departs from his usual thrillers to offer a romantic tale chock full of railroad lore, The Christmas Train (Warner, Nov.), which PW called "more warmhearted and enjoyable than Grisham's comparable holiday offering." Retailing at $19.95, the 260-page hardcover has an announced first printing of 600,000 copies, slightly lower than the printings for Baldacci's suspense novels, according to Warner publisher Maureen Egen.
To some observers, Baldacci's Christmas book is another example of his penchant for mirroring Grisham's career moves. Baldacci first broke from thrillers with the historical melodrama Wish You Well (Dec. 2000), published around the same time as Grisham's first historical novel, A Painted House (Feb. 2001).
The year's most ho-hum Christmas book by a bestselling author is the omnibus edition of two Mary Higgins Clark titles that have already been published in hardcover and mass market: He Sees You When You're Sleeping (Nov. 2001) and Deck the Halls (Nov. 2000). Then again, the numbers aren't so bad: Simon & Schuster has shipped 190,000 copies of the 205,000-copy first printing. The $14.95 pricetag and in-store displays should fuel sales, along with cross-promotion with Clark's memoir, Kitchen Privileges (Nov.).
Perhaps because these Christmas titles are likely to perform best at national chains where they're discounted, it's hard to find independent booksellers who are enthusiastic about them. At the six-store Copperfield's chain in California's Sonoma and Napa Valleys, co-owner Paul Jaffe is dubious about Skipping Christmas's prospects the second time around. "I've only sold 15 copies of the Grisham this year," he reported, "so I can't say it's had a lot of legs." Healthy Christmas sellers at his stores are more along the lines of Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales and Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory. "Who knows, though," he added, "maybe in 10 years we'll be looking back nostalgically at the Grisham and Karon titles."
