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2012 A Good Year For Independent Bookstores
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| To hear the media and many in publishing tell it, 2012 was all about digital content. Seemed you couldn't read a story about book publishing that didn't talk about the new online future of bookselling. And yet, one of the year's biggest - and largely unreported - stories was the yearlong, double digit sales growth of independent bookstores. While some individual stores faced challenges related to the economy or weather disasters, the independent bookselling channel as a whole defied the "experts" by quietly posting month after month of increased sales - mostly of good old-fashioned printed books.
Why? Well, apparently, there are still readers who like to buy real books in real bookstores. And independents have been helped by several factors, three of which bear noting.
The Borders bankruptcy was felt by all bookselling outlets, and independents have received their share of that business. Also, the Shop Local movement continues to gain steam (helped, interestingly, by a still-struggling economy that has many folks wanting to hunker down closer to home). That's good news for neighborhood- based indies that have long been touting the benefits of shopping with locally owned businesses. And Borders was a reminder of what can happen when customers choose to shop elsewhere for books.
Independent bookstores have also benefited from investments in their online presence, spending time and money that has led to more professional and sales-driven websites...and increased revenue.
One other factor that doesn't get much attention but that is pivotal to the success of independent booksellers is their association with American Booksellers Association and their regional organization. Trust me when I tell you that no other category of retailers has access to the kind of education, advocacy, information, and overall support that independent bookstores do. Furthermore, the ABA's influence in bettering publisher terms over the years has positively impacted the bottom line of every member bookstore.
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2012 Not So Bad
for NCIBA Either
| | The NCIBA handled two big transitions this year. The first was moving the trade show from the Oakland Convention Center (our home for more than two decades) to the cozier South San Francisco Convention Center. In spite of a few glitches (most involving public transportation), the new venue received rave reviews and worked well as a facility. We return there October 3-4 in 2013.
The second transition took place in the office where NCIBA Administrator and Trade Show manager Carol Seajay left in October to devote more time to her new independent bookkeeping business. She was replaced by Elsa Eder, who has proved a quick study as we prepare end-of-year books for the association and begin work on our annual Rep Directory and upcoming Spring Gathering.
Speaking of change, let's not forget September 15, the day on which Amazon.com was forced to begin collecting sales tax in the state. It was hard-fought victory that if nothing else proved that the king of corporate bullies wasn't completely invincible.
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Holiday Season a Happy One for Most Independents
| | Weather doesn't usually impact sales in California, but an Oregon blizzard that closed Interstate 5 on and off during the last five days before Christmas did deliver an unwelcome punch to many of our bookstores. Actually, it's what the storm caused not to be delivered that was the problem, as trucks collectively carrying thousands of special orders and re-stockings from Ingram and Partners were grounded.
Consequently, as might be expected, booksellers spent a fair amount of time on the day or two before Christmas calling customers to keep them apprised of their order status and offering IOUs or gift certificates as fill-ins for delayed fits. Not surprisingly, those efforts yielded much good will and understanding. Perhaps more surprisingly, many folks chose to keep their orders in place and pick the books up after the 25th. As a result, a few stores are reporting a busier-than-usual week after Christmas and hoping that will mitigate the lost foot traffic (from special orders not being on hand for pick up) on the busiest weekend of the year.
The 2012 holiday selling season was something of an anomaly, sales-wise - a year when small increases or even "flat" was just fine. That's because 2011 was such a big year for so many independents, following the final close-downs of hundreds of Borders stores. So while Judy Wheeler of Towne Center Books in Pleasanton noted almost apologetically that her 3% increase was "hardly anything to get excited about," she added that last year's 12th month had been the best December in the store's history. She added that December 24th, normally one of the store's busiest days, was up 33% from last year. Sounds pretty exciting to me.
The week before Christmas was also a wet one in the Bay Area, and Ann Seaton of Hicklebee's in San Jose worried that "all the rain would impact us and folks would head to the mall." She thinks heavy precipitation did affect Sunday the 23rd, but Christmas Eve "was our busiest ever," and the store was up 9% over 2011.
One of the questions we asked was whether online sales activity was up. At Green Apple, the answer was yes, thanks in part to the store's Apple-A-Month club, which delivers a new fiction paperback original title to your door each month. Readers can subscribe (for themselves or others) for three months ($60), six months ($115), or one year ($220) online at http://greenapplebooks.com/subscribe. According to co-owner Pete Mulvihill, Green Apple added about 50 new subscribers during the holiday season.
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Landon Becomes
'Book Hut' for A Day
| On the Thursday before Christmas, NCIBA executive director Hut Landon spent a day working at his neighborhood bookstore, Bookshop West Portal in San Francisco. Here is a short account of his time back on the floor:
I arrived just before the store opened at 10am in hopes of getting a brief refresher course on working the cash register. BWP's system is pretty straightforward, but it includes the store's customer loyalty program and requires typing in a phone number, so it takes a bit of practice - for me, at least.
But I didn't get much chance to rehearse, because shoppers followed me through the door and the store was never again without customers, averaging over $1000 an hour during my nine-hour stint. I quickly realized that my rusty register skills were slowing things down, so I switched to gift wrapping, which turned out to be the right move. My muscle memory kicked in, and I probably had wrapped 50 books by noon, when I was relieved (in more ways than one).
For the rest of the day - I stayed until almost 7pm - I roamed the floor helping customers, straightening shelves, and re-stocking books. I introduced Jacqueline Winspear to an older gentleman looking for a good mystery " with a female detective and not too much blood" for his wife, and then helped a father seeking a "Hunger Games-type book" for his daughter by selling him Veronica Roth's Divergent (not forgetting to tell him there was a sequel if she liked it). And I was able to figure out that a woman's vague request for "that book about witches" was actually Season of the Witch (a store favorite).
I also spent some time in the store's gift book area, which had become somewhat - um - muddled in recent days. I am a bit sheepish about acknowledging the sense of accomplishment I felt after sorting and shelving - art books were with other art books; photography instruction took up its own half-shelf, sharing happily with design books; and pop culture titles and their entertainment colleagues perched visibly (dare I say enticingly?) together.
My thanks to owner Neal Sofman and the Bookshop West Portal employees that day - Kevin, Jesse, Brian, and Linda - for letting me hang out. I wasn't much help on the cash register, but my wrapping skills are undiminished, my iPage knowledge allowed me to take some orders, and I even handsold a book or two. See you next year?
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Passages
Ed Kaufman - M Is For Mystery
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Edmund M. Kaufman, Partner emeritus at the law firm Irell & Manella in Los Angeles, and founder of a nationally-known mystery bookstore in San Mateo, CA, died peacefully on December 20, 2012, at the hospice care unit of the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, CA. He was 82. The cause was complications of kidney disease.
Ed, as he was known, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 23, 1930. His mother died at childbirth and he was raised by his grandparents, who were grocers, and an aunt. After graduating from Shaker Heights High School in Cleveland, he moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a sales rep for a textile firm. He was then drafted into the Army during the Korean War, and, ironically, was stationed back in Cleveland as a plainclothes Counter Intelligence Corps officer. After the army, he attended UCLA on the G.I. bill, graduating with honors in 1956. He was awarded scholarships to attend Columbia Law School, where he was named a Kent scholar, and was an editor of the Law Review. He received his LL.B. in 1959.
He was then offered a Supreme Court clerkship by Justice Potter Stewart. But at age 29, married, with a young family, he instead went west and joined Irell & Manella, then an 8-person taxation firm in Beverly Hills. He practiced with that firm for 41 years, most of the time as the the senior member of its corporate group. He was for many years a nationally prominent attorney in the area of mergers and acquisitions, and corporate finance, and was a regular speaker at many legal institutes. In the the mid-1980's, he opened the firm's downtown L.A. office, which he was head of until his retirement in 2000.
Ed was an avid collector of art, and for several years in the late 1970's owned an art gallery, The Image and the Myth, in Beverly Hills, which specialized in surrealist works of art. In 1980, he was among the original group of Founders of the Museum of Contemporary Art LA. His other passion was opera, and in the early 80's, he became president of a small, short-lived opera company, the Los Angeles Opera Theater. He subsequently joined the Board of Directors of the then-newly-formed Los Angeles Opera, serving actively for many years, and was named a Life Trustee.
In 1996, while still practicing law, and commuting between Los Angeles and his principal residence on the Peninsula south of San Francisco, Ed opened a mystery specialty bookstore called "M" is for Mystery, in downtown San Mateo. From 2000, he worked in the store full time, becoming an impresario of author signing events, which annually numbered nearly 200. The bookstore grew in size and prominence to become an important stop for major mystery authors, as well as many other literary writers, on book-signing tours. Ed was also an enthusiastic supporter of debut authors. The store developed a loyal clientele of collectors of signed first editions nationwide and abroad, through its online newsletter. In December, 2011, Ed retired and the store was closed.
In April, 2012, The Mystery Writers of America bestowed on him the 2012 Raven Award, a special award given for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing. He often said that his many years of six- and seven-day weeks as a lawyer prepared him for the rigors of independent bookselling.
He is survived by his wife, Jeannie, whom he married in 1978; adult children Idette, Paul, Deborah, Abram, and Nick; seven grandchildren; and a brother, Lance.
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Bookmarks Available for "Pearl Earring" Show at de Young Museum
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We've been contacted by the de Young museum in San Francisco about any interest that bookstores have in distributing bookmarks that promote the upcoming Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the 
Mauritshuis exhibition from January 26-June 2. The bookmarks also can be presented at the de Young for a 20% admission discount. If you would like to receive a quantity of bookmarks (probably 50-100), just let me know by Friday at hut@nciba.com. We're on a deadline, so please let me know quickly.
Here's a brief description of the exhibition:
Vermeer's enigmatic Girl with a Pearl Earring has intrigued art lovers for centuries. See this masterpiece
and more than 30 others by artists of the Dutch Golden Age - including Rembrandt, Hals, and Steen - from the collection of the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis
in its exclusive West Coast presentation. Accompanying this once-in-a-lifetime exhibition is Rembrandt's Century, a selection of more than 200 rarely seen prints and drawings by Rembrandt and his predecessors and contemporaries from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco's collection of works on paper.
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Bookseller Edits New Baghdad Anthology
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Local bookseller Beau Beausoleil from The Great Overland Book Company in San Francisco has co-edited a new book titled AL-MUTANABBI STREET STARTS HERE: Poets and Writers Respond to the March 5th, 2007, Bombing of Baghdad's "Street of the Booksellers." It's published by PM Press in Oakland - pmpress.org - and through wholesalers. Here's a brief description:
On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb was exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. More than thirty people  were killed and more than one hundred were wounded. This locale is the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, a winding street filled with bookstores and outdoor book stalls. Named after the famed 10th-century classical Arab poet al-Mutanabbi, it has been the heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community. This anthology begins with a historical introduction to al-Mutanabbi Street and includes the writing of Iraqis as well as a wide swath of international poets and writers who were outraged by this attack. This book seeks to show where al-Mutanabbi Street starts in all of us: personally, in our communities, and in our nations. It seeks to show the commonality between this small street in Baghdad and our own cultural centers, and why this attack was an attack on us all. This anthology sees al-Mutanabbi Street as a place for the free exchange of ideas; a place that has long offered its sanctuary to the complete spectrum of Iraqi voices. This is where the roots of democracy (in the best sense of that word) took hold many hundreds of years ago. This anthology looks toward al-Mutanabbi Street as an affirmation of all that we hope for in a more just society. |
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