The Girl Who Played at the Downer Theatre

The rumors were out there, but it's not until you see it on the marquee that you know it's true. The Girl Who Played with Fire opens at the Downer Theatre on Friday, July 16th.

Sales continue to rise for the first two volumes in the series and are opening sales for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest were more the double the previous title.

Playing at the Downer this week are "Ondine" and "Please Give." More at their website.

Who Got the Print Event Calendar/Newsletter and Why?

If you are a regular customer of ours, you may have gotten our new event calendar/newsletter in your mailbox. But you may not have. Here's the scoop.

We had enough budgeted to send a bit over 1000 newsletters. You you had to be on the Boswell Benefits program, you needed to give us your street address, and you had to spend, as it turned out, $31.27 since we opened on the program for qualifying purchases (newspapers, textbooks and certain other items excluded). And for the most part, we only sent locally, since the mailing was to try to get folks to come back to the store to shop. We've got lots of ways to keep in touch for folks further afield, such as the email newsletter and this blog.

Oh, and one other thing. If we added your info after your purchase, that purchase counted towards your Benefits, but not towards whether you got the newsletter. Hey, the system ain't perfect. Did I mention it's DOS?

Lanora at Next Chapter suggested to me that an occasional mailing is really worthwhile (Thanks, Lanora). Though folks often tell us they prefer email newsletters to print, it turns out they respond better to print mailings. We have many theories:

1) Overwhelmed by emails and they aren't opened. We currently have a 1/3 open rate, which I hear is actually quite good. We try to keep it high by limiting our mailings, by promising you that we will have interesting and unique writing inside (very little repurposing).

2. Emails are opened, but they aren't followed up on. Folks are afraid to print out emails. And sometimes they are very long. I printed out a friend's bookstore email and it was 19 pages. I've been trying to keep ours to five, but the last one was eight. But if you don't print it, you forget about it.

3. Emails disappear unless you actively find them; print newsletters stick around till you throw them away. There's also the bathroom factor. Everyone needs fresh reading material, right? Is this too gauche to mention? Maybe, but you know it's true.

4. And there's the clutter. Your email inbox is packed, but if you're like me, you get very little mail, and even less that's interesting. So we'll be very interested to see how folks respond to our newsletter. We've got over 20 events and most of them are book related. We've also got new Boswell's Best titles, and staff picks from almost every bookseller (see the newsletter for why one's missing).

Here are our picks:
Amie: Stitches, by David Small

Anne: The Calligrapher's Daughter, by Eugenia Kim

Carl: Love and Summer, by William Trevor

Conrad: Friends like These, by Danny Wallace

Daniel: Blame, by Michelle Huneven

Greg: The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

Jason: Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon

Jocelyn: The Child Thief, by Brom

Mark: Sleeping Naked is Green, by Vanessa Farquharson

Melissa: A Big Little Life, by Dean Koontz

Pam: Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

Rebecca: This is Where I leave You, by Jonathan Tropper

Sharon: The Girl who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson

Stacie: The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood

It took a while for Bev to get into The Help, but she wound up liking it alright.

The letter from me that graces the first page? That's repurposed on our web site.

And yes, you can pick up the newsletter in our store too.

August Rush--Stieg Larrson's Word of Mouth Bestseller Explodes

One of the books highlighted in Geeta Sharma-Jensen's column about hot books for fall, The Girl Who Played with Fire, has been our bestselling non-event hardcover fiction novel since we've opened. I spoke to my friends at Micawbers and they concurred--and they've been open a lot longer than we have. Great word-of-mouth on the first book that continued throughout its hardcover life have led to the likelihood this will be #1 on the New York Times for its first week out. Ingram, our primary wholesaler, totally sold out, reinforcing that belief.

It didn't hurt that Michiko Kakutani jumped the gun at the New York Times with a good review; folks came in surprised that the book wasn't coming out for a few weeks. Why does she do this? To set the tone for the book I think. She gets credit for a good review if she likes a book and it sells; for a bad review, she is effectively responded to by other critics who like the book.

It's a big August for names, repeating last year. Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice lands today (August 4th) as well as Richard Russo's That Old Cape Magic lands today. Pat Conroy, Terry Goodkind, Philippa Gregory follow. Oh, and there are plans to release a James Patterson book every day, from August 15th through 31st. (No they aren't.)

Last year, publishers were trying to get out of the way of election coverage. This year they are trying to get folks to open their wallets before they shell out for Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. Look for that long-awaited thriller on September 15th. That should probably break our new record for first week hardcover fiction sales.