Neither torrential rains in Southern California nor snows in the Midwest dampened shoppers this holiday season, particularly those looking for children’s books. Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, N.C., saw a steady increase in sales for the entire month of December. But “the last week was giant,” says general manager Linda Barrett-Knopp. “Every day was the equivalent of three or four days during the year. It was great.”
Like many independents contacted by PW, sales at Malaprop’s—up at least 8% for the holidays; 4% for the year—were fueled at least in part by kids’ books. Children’s and YA sales at Malaprop’s grew to 30% of overall business. Similarly, Rick Riordan’s The Red Pyramid and The Lost Hero, as well as Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, the Hunger Games trilogy, and Tickle Monster by Josie Bissett boosted children’s sales at the Learned Owl in Hudson, Ohio, to 30%.
At City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, where sales for the year were essentially flat, children’s has grown 12 to 15% for each of the past two years, which head buyer Paul Yamazaki attributes to the efforts of two senior staffers who began curating the children’s section 18 months ago. Holiday sales for the past 30 days also jumped by 9.5%. “The importance of shopping locally and having the curatorial experience was much more prominent this year,” says Yamazaki. “People appreciate the indies like never before.”
For some, an early Hanukkah proved a boon. “People started shopping earlier this year, particularly at Brentwood, where customers were buying for Christmas before Thanksgiving,” says John Evans, owner of Diesel Books in both Oakland and Brentwood, who also found that customers were especially upbeat. “Some referred to Diesel as ‘a sanctuary’ and ‘a relief from the atmosphere of the chain stores.’ There was a joyfulness that I haven’t noticed in a while.” Margot Sage-EL, owner of Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, N.J., also saw strong sales throughout December. “It was good to have Hanukkah early,” she said. “It helps us know what’s hot.”
Although the two adult “gets”—The Autobiography of Mark Twain and Cleopatra— were at the top of the bestsellers list at children’s specialty store Eight Cousins in Falmouth, Mass., a children’s book by a local author outsold both. The bookstore blew through over 400 copies of Salley Mavor’s nursery rhyme collection illustrated with pictures of embroidered fabric, Pocketful of Posies, according to owner Carol Chittenden. Children’s continues to be the backbone of the store, but with the closing of a nearby general bookstore, Inkwell, adult books have doubled in sales. Eight Cousins now stocks about 1,000 adult titles shelved with YA books for mature teens.
At the Bookies, a children’s specialty bookstore in Denver, the holiday season couldn’t have been better, says owner Sue Lubeck, who attributes the uptick to their starting to advertise in area newspapers. She’s one of several booksellers who reported counting sheep in December. She sold 300 copies of Mem Fox’s Where Is the Green Sheep?, illustrated by Judy Horacek. She also did well with Ian Falconer’s Olivia Goes to Venice.
If one more indication that news of the demise of picture books was premature is needed, this was the season. At Children’s Book World in Los Angeles, picture books outsold the teen category. “There was no must-have YA book for us this year like we had a year ago with The Hunger Games,” says bookseller Cherry O’Meara. One of her big picture books was the president’s Of Thee I Sing. At Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, Colo., perennial favorites like Chris Van Allsburg’s The Polar Express and the 50-year-old The Story of Ferdinand were especially strong.
The one thing missing for the first time in many years was a surprise picture book. “Of Thee I Sing did nicely, but it wasn’t so hot we couldn’t keep up with it,” says Vicky Eaves, president of Partners/West in Renton, Wash. “I’m used to there being picture books we couldn’t get.” Collette Morgan, owner of Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis, did experience some trouble getting Barney Saltzberg’s Beautiful Oops, one of the store’s top three sellers for the holidays, but not forother strong titles like Peter Brown’s Children Make Terrible Pets or Lane Smith’s It’s a Book.
In contrast, at Elm Street Books in New Canaan, Ct., which had a “great” holiday season, according to manager Kathleen Millard, “YA did very nicely,” including Mockingjay, the final volume in the Hunger Games series. Other big YA books included Ally Condie’s Matched and Gordon Korman’s Pop.
Series did particularly well this season. Rick Riordan’s The Heroes of Olympus and Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid topped a number of in-store children’s bestsellers lists, including the one for Eagle Eye Book Shop in Atlanta, which does only about 5% of its business in kids. “They are the ones that really blew out,” adds Jim Di Miero, v-p of New Jersey-based Bookazine, which had a good holiday season overall. “We sold a heck of a lot of books. Did we sell as many as last year? Probably not. The bottom line is customers were happy we had the titles they were looking for.”
At Partners/West, the biggest children’s seller in November/December was Wimpy Kid, followed closely by The Lost Hero and the paperback of The Hunger Games. The wholesaler also saw a new cycle of sales for Harry Potter. “I was surprised that it picked back up before Christmas; it had really been dead,” says Eaves, who even saw a boost for The Tales of Beedle the Bard. She observed that nearly half of Partners’s top 50 children’s titles were written by five authors—Collins, Kinney, Riordan, Rowling, and Willems.
Unusual packaging worked well at Kids Ink in Indianapolis. Kaaren Pixton’s Indestructibles board books printed on tyvek, the same paper-like material used in shipping envelopes, sold so well that owner Shirley Mullins had to keep reordering. “We restocked about four or five times,” she says. Her customers also gobbled up Allen and Max Kurzweil’s Potato Chip Science. This year Mullins experimented with inserting the Great Lakes independent Booksellers Association’s holiday catalogue in a local entertainment magazine. She ordered all the children’s books in the catalogue and selective adult titles, like cookbooks, and got a lot of new customers as a result.
Watchung’s Sage-EL commented on a phenomenon that several other booksellers experienced: children’s books peaked early, because parents did most of their shopping ahead of time. She theorizes that the kids’ sales that took place later in the season came from aunts and uncles, who tended to stick with the books they grew up, with like John Knowles’s A Separate Peace and Vonnegut for teen readers and Mercer Mayer for the very young.
Although many stores haven’t run their 2010 numbers yet, most like Sage-EL say that they’re doing “pretty well.” Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Ga., definitely came out ahead. Sales were up 20% in November and 5% in December after co-owner Dave Shallenberger backed out sales from a Neil Gaiman visit in December 2009. The store finished out the year up 12% thanks to Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, Matched, andEric Litwin’s Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, illustrated by James Dean.
For some stores, raising sales has meant both cutting expenses and increasing sidelines. Misty Valley Books in Chester, Vt., is selling more Oriental rugs. “You sell one rug, and you’ve sold 20 books,” says co-owner Lynne Reed. “They’re pretty and we put them down on the floor and it makes it seem like our home and not a retail establishment.” The store is also expanding its language classes, adding Spanish in January and more French in addition to a Russian course during the summer. At Village Books, sidelines were up, while book sales were down a little, largely because of the three B’s: Book Seats, Banagrams, and Buckyballs.
Google Editions came too late to help independents this year. Early adopter Village Books sold only a handful. “We’d like to hold on to our customers. It would be foolish to think that they won’t buy e-books if they can’t get them from us,” says co-owner Chuck Robinson. For Sage-EL, the impact of e-books is still the great unknown. Last year when her customers got Kindles, sales dropped in January and February then rebounded in March. Sue Lubeck of the Bookies is saying no to e-books for her store. “I hope we never see that with children’s books,” she says.
As for what’s ahead, Ivy owner Darielle Linehan is “very optimistic,” especially with the new Google partnership. “We think it will be a big boost,” she says. “This has been an interesting year. Things are moving so quickly in the industry. You just have to hang in there and come up with the confidence you’ll keep things moving.”
