Sunday, December 12, 2010

What's Selling for the Week Ending December 11th, with Just a Few Asides

Hi. No, I didn't have Wordcatcher either. When I realized I was going to talk about the book, I started chasing it, but it wasn't at either nearby wholesaler warehouse, so I had to go to the publisher! We're taking names. The other book mentioned that folks have been coming for is Jennifer Fosberry's My Name is Not Isabella. There are way more on order (lots more than for the book I recommended)--we're taking names. Picture books are always tougher to reprint (it's mostly from China) so good luck to Sourcebooks and nice job, Ms. Brinlee! You can still get Alain de Botton's A Week at the Airport, and Howard Norman's What is Left the Daughter. David Rutledge's Where we Know, the New Orleans anthology, is a mite tougher. Here's the list again.

This week we closed out sales from the JCC Book and Culture fair. Dorene did a great job coming up with numbers for books this year, and the sell through was very good. I do include their numbers on the official lists we sent out (bulk orders are usually excluded from tabulators, but event sales where customers buy individually are generally ok). Our best sale was for Louisa Shafia's beautiful and very well priced cookbook, Lucid Food. After that were Dani Shapiro's Devotion and Baxter, the Pig who Wanted to be Kosher, by Laurel Snyder.

But in the store? Our top five fiction were:
1. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, by David Sedaris
2. Object of Beauty, by Steve Martin
3. Dead or Alive, by Tom Clancy (look at us, we're selling technothrillers!)
4. The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson
5. Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen

The two phenoms of this year (4 & 5) are selling just fine but not exploding. That's becauuse everyone and their grandmother's nail salon (on her website www.bubbanails.net) are also carrying them. There's nothing like The Help this year in hardcover fiction, but honestly, that doesn't come around all the year. And yes, we're still selling The Help. Stephen King put it on his top ten books of the year.*
And nonfiction?
1. The Autobiography of Mark Twain, volume one, edited by Smith, Griffin, Fischer, Frank, and Goetz
2. Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff
3. I Remember Nothing, by Nora Ephron
(Yes, a customer brought this back because she couldn't remember if this was the book she was supposed to buy, and then went home without returning it because she decided it was).
4. Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand
5. Life, by Keith Richards

The only surprise is that there really aren't any surprises. Though we don't exactly look like the national bestsellers lists, it's probably identical to many other indies around the country. In paperback, we're selling Tinkers (probably picked up because we're promoting an event), Cutting for Stone, and Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. In nonfiction, Just Kids is selling very well.

We're all handselling books, but this fall we don't seem to all be gravitating to the same few books. I hoped to whip up some collaborative furty, but alas. Folks are buying recs out of the newsletter. Last week's winner was Jason's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Wu.
*Here are Stephen King's top ten, from Entertainment Weekly.
1. Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
2. Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
3. I'd Know you Anywhre, by Laura Lippman
4. Savages, by Don Winslow
5. Last Night in Twisted River, by John Irving
6. Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes
7. Blood's a Rover, by James Ellroy
8. Swamplandia, by Karen Russell (he always likes to include a forthcoming title)
9. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (she's my Rachael Ray, I always forget to spell her name right, and yes, it was wrong in our database)
10. City of Thieves, by David Benioff

1 comment:

Rebecca said...

I REALLY liked What is Left the Daughter. As I'm sure I've told you :)