With the gift-buying season off to a brisk start even before the last Halloween candy corn disappeared, booksellers have begun hand-selling books that light up the eyes or tickle the funny bone. While some books are picking up steam again after a strong burst of sales earlier this year, many newer titles are also popping out of their cartons with notable velocity.
For a preview of some of the season's highlights, PW asked an assortment of independent booksellers and wholesalers about the books that have caught their fancy. Favorites were drawn from all quarters of the industry, but it's clear that many retailers rely on the elves at Workman, Bloomsbury and Running Press to deliver some of the season's most captivating and quirky gift books, so our survey begins with them.
Workman's Latest Wonders
In a fresh twist on the knitting craze that has drawn four million "chicks with sticks" into the core group of 38 million knitters nationwide, ever-clever Workman is appealing to the retro-bikini set with Debbie Stoller's Stitch 'n Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook, which has become a special favorite of Bookazine marketing director Kathleen Willoughby. Published in October, the $13.95 trade paperback quickly established itself as the season's #1 craft book, according to Nielsen Bookscan, after selling out its 35,000-copy first printing and returning to press for another 25,000. Following an appearance on the Today show, Stoller was featured in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe and Miami Herald, as she toured 15 cities.
On the book-as-object front, Workman has also captivated consumers with My Granny's Purse by P.H. Hanson (May 1), a 14-page die-cut pocketbook that's overstuffed with a mirror, keys, passport, wrench, compass and other treasures hoarded by an independent and spirited lady. How they did get all that in there and keep the price at $15.95? Published as a children's book and featured in Real Simple and the New Yorker, it has caught on with an adult crossover audience, prompting six trips back to press for a total of 241,000 copies.
Tapping into post-September 11 wistfulness, Workman has also scored with 1,000 Places to See Before You Die by Patricia Schultz (Sept. 15), a thick paperback catalogue of grand hotels, breathtaking monuments and wildlife preserves, as well as neglected castles, writer's homes and hidden islands, paired with well-researched travel tips. After national hits in Newsweek and USA Today, attention in many major regional newspapers and a 15-city author tour, the book has 170,000 copies in print after six printings.
Next up is The Sound of One Thigh Clapping: Haiku for a Thinner You by Meredith Clair (Nov. 20), a trim $10.95 hardcover that will have readers "laughing their love handles off" (to quote one wag on Amazon) within 17 syllables. To wit: "With a private cook/ and a personal trainer/ I would lose weight too." Another Bookazine favorite, the book was also chosen as Glamour magazine's "Do Book" for December, and has 25,000 copies in print as Clair launches her 10-city tour.
Bloomsbury Takes a Bow
Having made a name for itself with idiosyncratic illustrated books over the past few years, Bloomsbury may have the sleeper of the season in Bitter with Baggage Seeks Same by Sloane Tanen (Oct.), according to Ingram senior buyer Nancy Stewart. Punctuated with wicked captions, each photographic spread (by Stefan Hagen) reveals meticulously crafted dioramas "in which fuzzy yellow toy chickens encounter all the traumas of modern life, from childbirth to blind dates to trips to Kentucky Fried Chicken," as Stewart put it. At Urban Outfitters, the book's out-of-the-gate sales prompted the hip clothing chain to take the unusual step of tripling its initial order. Though Bloomsbury bet the farm on a 100,000-copy first printing, sales director Sabrina Farber is confident that mentions in numerous holiday roundups, along with retail merchandising efforts, will keep the $14.95 hardcover selling not only in December, but on through Valentine's Day and Easter.
The house already has a leg up on holiday sales for Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott (Aug.). The $14.95 hardcover hit the New York Times miscellaneous list in September after finding a following among booksellers like Corey Messler, owner of Burke's Bookstore in Memphis, Tenn., who described it as "just the oddest little book, with miscellaneous lists of things like 'Some Famous Horses,' 'Poker Hands' and the people on the cover of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper album." With 130,000 copies in print, the book's strong weekly sales doubled in the week before Thanksgiving, according to Farber. Schott will return to the U.S. the week of December 15 to talk to media outlets that didn't catch him the first time around.
Of course, one of the vagaries of quirky books is that they can get unexpected breaks after the print run is set. Bloomsbury was caught by surprise when Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, performed by Gavin Friday and the Friday-Seezer Ensemble and illustrated by Bono (Nov.), started to attract attention. The house played it safe with 10,000 copies of the unorthodox shrink-wrapped package—which, for $22.95, includes a DVD-enhanced CD and a book illustrated by Bono and his two daughters—since it was uncertain whether the iconic Irish rocker would be available for promotion. But when his paintings were put up for auction at Christie's in New York to benefit the International Hospice Foundation, the book got a burst of publicity from NPR's All Things Considered and in USA Today. So booksellers like Stan Hynds at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vt., who praised the "fresh, fun and slightly adult interpretation of the much-loved classic," will have to stock up fast. Beyond the additional 1,000 copies that the house air-freighted from the U.K., no more will be available.
On the whole, Bloomsbury knows how to build on its success. James Innes Smith, the British author of last year's photo book Bad Hair, is back with Big Hair (Dec.), another $9.95 hardcover that teases laughs out of dorky 'dos. "More pictures of hair disasters with a straight face," declared Ingram's Stewart. "How could it miss?" With a first printing of 50,000 (compared to Bad Hair's initial printing of 20,000 copies), Big Hair will be featured on Barnes & Noble's impulse table, among others, amid media fanfare in People, Entertainment Weekly, Seventeen and USA Today, as well as from the Associated Press.
Running Press Gets Carried Away
By now, mini-kits have evolved into a mature market. But that hasn't stopped the folks at Running Press in Philadelphia from coming up with a fresh spin on the series. This year, You Bake 'Em Dog Biscuits by Pam Edge (July) leads the pack. At Ingram, the staff has embraced the book of recipes and three cookie cutters packed in a box and priced at $5.95 as "a great hostess gift, doggie stocking stuffer or add-on present." Given that the kit is up to 150,000 copies in print, after an initial printing of 50,000, the proof is in the pudding.
For romantics, Build Your Own Snow Globe by Alison Trulock (Oct.) includes a plastic globe, "snow" crystals, a snowman, leaf, flower and beach ball that interchangeably represent the seasons, and a 32-page guide to assembling them. For cynics, there's The Art of the Bonsai Potato: Zen—Without the Wait! (Sept.), a book written by Jeffrey Fitzsimmons and illustrated by Mike Dillon that lampoons "the twin desires for inner harmony and instant gratification," packaged with mini pruning shears and scissors. Both are staff favorites at Bookazine. After initial printings of 50,000, each has about 120,000 copies in print—and that's before the holiday media mentions kick in.
For the organized bibliophile, the house has assembled a software-based book cataloging system called Your Home Library (Nov.) by Kathie Coblentz, which is branded with the New York Public Library imprimatur and has become one of Stewart's favorites at Ingram. In addition to holiday mentions, publicity director Sam Caggiula expects that "new year, new you" coverage will help move the 20,000-copy first printing.
Laughing Stock
How would we survive the country's latest tribulation without Henry Beard to prompt some chuckles between the tears? The author of O.J.'s Legal Pad has conspired again with John Boswell and illustrators Ron Barrett and Gary Hallgren to create an irreverent zinger of a picture book inspired by George Bush's remark at an April 16 press conference that "if Saddam is alive, I would suggest he not pop his head up." In the pursuit of public enemy #2, the 28-page, four-color hardcover Where's Saddam? (Broadway, Aug.) capitalizes on the opportunity to poke fun at Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart and, yes, O.J. Though the humorous approach to a sensitive subject has made the book a bit of a publicity challenge, the $9.95 price no doubt helped it scale the Washington Post bestseller list in October, along with a two-week hand-selling contest among Washington, D.C., area chain stores coordinated by national account rep Emily Bruce, and an interview on NPR's Weekend Edition. With a 50,000-copy first printing, there's still enough stock for the holidays.
Okay, the next one's not a book, or even a mini-kit, but what politically minded person could resist the Axis of Evil Finger Puppets box set (The Unemployed Philosophers Guild, www.philosophersguild.com; 718-243-9492)? It's enough to make one wonder if it's true that, deep inside the Pentagon, there's a top-secret room where senior military leaders plan their global strategies using finger puppets instead of spy intelligence. How else could Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, the Ayatollah Khomeini and George W. Bush come together for $19.95? The display box doubles as a little stage, while a magnet inside each puppet allows for fridge door fun.
Nostalgia Trips
For those who love L. Frank Baum's world, All Things Oz, edited by Linda Sunshine in cooperation with the Willard Carroll Collection of more than 30,000 Wizard of Oz items (Clarkson Potter, Nov. 25), is just the ticket. According to buyers at Ingram, the nearly two-pound hardcover is a "charming, chunky-trim book that has real gift potential," though they warn that the excerpts from Baum's 14 Oz novels, poems, song lyrics and short stories, illustrated with original art and vintage photographs, are "not the Judy Garland version." At $29.95; they find the price no object, while the All Things Oz Journal and Notecards offer an unabashed merchandising opportunity.
Anyone who has ever wondered about the private life of mock-gothic illustrator and storyteller Edward Gorey now has the chance to tour his real-life rooms in Elephant House or, the Home of Edward Gorey (Pomegranate Press, Sept.). Writer and photographer Kevin McDermott's sensitive photographs and insightful text, packaged in a $35 hardcover, have attracted glowing reviews in the Washington Post, the Boston Herald, and a mention in Vanity Fair. As Dana Brigham, owner of Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, Mass., observed, "even if you're not a huge Gorey fan, the house is beautiful, odd and so filled with books, it's a gift that will make collectors and the organizationally challenged feel wonderful."
