Blog Stats, Why Australia?, Expert Business Advice Possibly Coming Soon!

Here’s an interesting tidbit, some blog stats for 2010. I have no idea if this is considered good (I suspect it's not great for blogs in general, but decent for bookstores), but we had 36,000 hits to the blog, with about 15,000 absolutely unique visitors. About half of those hits were to the general blog site. However, we also get people linking to specific posts.

Here were the top Boswell and Books posts:
557 hits, Breaking my Rule About Waiting…on Day for Night

550 hits, Listen to the Mockingjay

502 hits, I Receive Official Consumer Product Survey…on A Reliable Wife

348 hits, A Mini Milwaukee Tour of Happy Days, with an assortment of book mentions

348 hits, Books that Sell Themselves…on Murder on the Eiffel Tower and The Power of Kindness

It seems there are two ways to get a lot of hits. The first is to get picked up in an industry roundup, which is responsible for the success of number one and five. The second is to write about a topic that people are searching for. In some cases, like number two, that is the book. Though the Mockingjay piece is short, it shows the picture of the free tattoos, which seemed to grab people.

In the case of three and four, as much as I'd like to say I'm the definitive source for all things about A Reliable Wife, it's actually the Official Consumer Products Survey that folks are looking for. Interestingly enough, since that post (which was actually posted two days before we opened), I've never gotten another survey.

Similarly, my recounting of my trip with my friends Michael and Scot to the prominent Milwaukee-area locations that reference Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley comes from folks searching for Happy Days, and is not proof that there is a cult following for Captain Fredom. Or it could be Scot rereading the blog post in his free time, remembering his best trip ever.

Both these blog posts are from 2009. Conspicuously absent is the top clicked blog post of 2009, Schwartz Bookshops to close. Here's a little bit of geographic distribution. From within the United States, here are the top state clicks:

1. Wisconsin (the lion's share)

2. New York

3. California

4. Illinois

5. Minnesota

That's good, as the first duty of this blog is to connect with Boswell customers. And the other states account for the the four other states that have a substantial amount of publishing folk we deal with, both publishers and reps. I also know that just like I read a lot of bookseller blogs, booksellers read mine.

Here are top 5 countries for hits in 2010:
1. United States
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom
4. Australia
5. India

I have no idea, except needless to say, countries that speak a lot of English are involved. Now of course the reason Brisbane is the top Australian spot is our pal Denise, who visited last summer with my sister Merrill. Denise recently sent me this great note about Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and how she almost didn't read it because the jacket didn't speak to her, but then she did and loved it. Here's the Australian jacket. Simonson was at Next Chapter last night. If you want a signed copy, they probably have one for you.

So that's it for blog stats. I don't know if I'll ever get to the level of Gary Vaynerchuk, the author of Crush It, who used social networking to increase his customer base dramatically. Keep posted, because I'm hoping to get some more advice from the master--there's discussion about booking the wine master/business guru for an event for his new book, The Thank You Economy. And maybe also in the midst of buying a cheap video camera. Tomorrow I'll let you know how our first outing went with our new projector.

Two of a Kind Part One: Romance is Camel Colored

Maybe you don't see it. But we had these two books next to each other on Boswell's Best this week and to me, they look like two volumes of the same series. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is a modern twist on the English village novel--the English gentleman is in love with a Pakistani shopkeeper. The book's been selling well at lots of bookstores; at Boswell, Bev's been leading the charge.

The Lotus Eaters has little in common, except that there is a romance at its heart. A female combat photographer in the Vietnam War is torn between two admirers. I don't know too much about it, except that the advance reviews from Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly were all very good.

Here's just a snippet from LJ: "Like Marianne Wiggins's Eveless Eden and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried before it, Soli's poignant work will grab the attention of most readers. A powerful new writer to watch."

We're Temporarily Out of Jenkins--Browse our Austenalia Instead

Having sold out our first order of The Tortoise and the Hare, by Elizabeth Jenkins, I am greedily awaiting the second. Jenkins wrote 12 novels, but as my friend John Eklund pointed out, none of the others are readily available.

He saw that as a terrible thing. I thought that the singular availability makes it easier for me to sell 100 copies of The Tortoise and the Hare. No "paradox of choice" problems here.

As you read recently, Jenkins was one of the founders of the Jane Austen Society, and as we always have fans, why not have a display that caters to the groupie. We've got Austen notecards, journals, and action figures.

If you're looking for an Austenesque novel that we do have in stock, and is also winning raves from booksellers, you could do worse than Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, which we touted in our last email newsletter.