This past year I have noticed a real surge in a certain type of bookstore customer: the grandparent, usually grandma, with a grandchild. As the economy has tightened, it seems more and more grandparents are providing childcare. And a favorite activity is coming to the bookstore.
Every Tuesday, a grandma I’ll call Nono comes in every morning with Addie, who is about two and a half. I usually see them at the coffee shop when I pick up my iced latte, they are there having a hot chocolate and a snack. I love the ritual of this day.
I spoke to Nono about her Tuesdays. She said she picks Addie in the morning and has her until about three. And every week, Nono asks Addie if she wants to go to the library or the bookstore. Happily for us, she almost always wants to come to the store.
I’ve noticed two things about grandparents and their grandkids. The first is, oftentimes, when there is more than one child, the grandparents can seems a little more flustered by the kids than their parent. I attribute this only to not being around kids a lot. Most adults who don’t have children actually hear every word the kids say. They hear all the “mom” “mom” and want to attend to each utterance. This can make for a long day for a care provider. Smart kids know they can get a lot of attention by doing this.
The second thing I’ve noticed is grandparents don’t often say no when a child expresses interest in a book. They are thrilled to share a story. What I hear a lot is Nono telling Addie stories about her child. “When your mom was little she loved Maybelle the Cable Car.” It’s just lovely. And usually, Nono buys a book, or two and sometimes three if they’re paperback. Sometimes older kids will “forget” the rules of the house and say it’s okay to get a book when they know full well they can’t. There’s nothing I can do about this even if I know the house rules. But if I see this happening, I might guide the purchase to something affordable.
There is something special about the grandchild/grandparent relationship. And I, too, love Nono’s Tuesday.
 

I have to admit, being closed for a week has been bliss. I didn’t go anywhere or actually do anything amazingly fun. But the joy of knowing I didn’t have to work was very enjoyable. Now that the store is open again, I find myself making lists like crazy about what needs to get done this year to have a better sales year and generally, more fun. Yes, this year I vowed to have more fun at work. I think, too often, fun can get lost with the daily routine of ordering, receiving, planning events, paying bills, etc.
So, just how am I going to this? Well, I’ve got a multi-pronged approach that mostly involves staying focused on what really matters, which is enjoying books, customers and authors. I’m going to try to not let anxiety get the best of me. It’s all too easy to worry about every little thing. Did that order get sent? Have the orders been shelved? Am I ready for my frontlist meeting? Here’s the thing: the orders almost always get sent, shelving is seldom vital (necessary, yes, but it doesn’t have to happen the minute the books are on the back counter) and meetings are still productive if I haven’t totally prepared.
When it comes to author events my new approach is to actually enjoy the event. We were really fortunate last fall to have some truly extraordinary authors come to the store. I found myself, and the staff, all too often, caught up in the persnickety details of event planning, rather than focusing on the fact that someone whose work we love was coming. It’s not every day Judy Schachner comes to the store and tells a room full of rapt Skippyjon Jones fans that she’s going to dig up his body from the garden and put the bones back together. If I had been too worried about the room set-up or if we had enough books, this bizarrely lovely moment might have been lost. Basically, I want events to mean more.
The more events mean to me, the more likely I am to speak passionately about them to customers, and that passion has a ripple effect with everyone I talk to about an event. An event is not a reason to be anxious, it’s a chance to bring an experience to customers. I remember after our event with Judith Jones, people were wiping away tears because they were so moved by her. This is why we have events. Yes, selling books is always a plus, but to move people, to introduce them face to face with an author they’ve loved since they were kids or to see the look on kids’ faces when they meet an author for the first time, this is the gift of owning a bookstore.
Of course you still have to work at events: actually get authors, promote the events, order the books, etc. But without the joy, really — what’s the point?

Every year we close the store for one to two weeks after the holidays. This year we are only taking this week off. Our Christmas was so busy we thought it best to be open for folks to use gift cards and bring visiting family into the store and then close. Some readers might think we’re crazy, but in a rural town we have a little more latitude to be more human than a larger store in a big city where there are expectations of being open 362 days a year, closing only for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Our town is such that our customers actually applaud us for just shutting the doors and giving staff a real rest and allowing people to have quality family time. Commerce is not the driving force of our decision to be booksellers. It’s about connecting with people and helping them find the right book. And after the Christmas season we had, shuttering the doors is the only real way to recharge our batteries.
Because we are closed this week, we are also going very light on the blog posts. Nothing says a true vacation then actually having nothing hanging over our heads. I encourage readers to revisit the Who’s Winning Awards in January and make some predictions for the upcoming ALA Midwinter announcements.

During the holidays, lots of little kids came shopping with their parents. This can make it hard for the parents to shop for them. So, if we have time we’ll try to divert the child while the parent runs around gathering things that get rung up on the sly, wrapped and bagged before the little one has any idea what happened.
One technique I found very helpful in distracting little ones was asking what was on their list for Santa. One little girl gave the best answer ever.
“I only have three things on my list: a stroller for my baby doll, a real live dog, and a PlayMobil castle that has everything a real castle has.” It was all I could not to laugh. I imagined the castle coming with a moat, horses and some marauding townsmen. The mom and I made eye contact and I asked, so which is she getting? The stroller for the baby doll was the practical gift. “We’ve got allergies and space limitations,” the mom said.
So every time I imagine this lovely, articulate five-year-old strolling around her neighborhood with her baby all tucked in snug in her new stroller, it makes me smile.

To ring in the New Year, we’re setting up our Flying Pig table with books designed to inspire resolutions. Oh, sure, we’ll have an obligatory healthy eating guide or two, but the focus will be on creative pursuits: books on writing, drawing, watercolor, comedy. So many people have secret (or semi-secret) back-burner passions, and the New Year is a terrific time to bring them to the forefront.
Of course, we’re also thinking about our own resolutions. Not just personal goals, but plans for the bookstore. Although a certain amount of winging it defines the Flying Pig approach, we do like to map out our year in hopes both pragmatic and poetic. These range from annual resolutions like, “Do more publisher orders” and “Claim co-op” (which are the bookstore equivalent of “Lose weight” and “Eat more veggies”) to specific visions of events (increasing our Tuesday Tastings and Sneak Peek Suppers series) to plans for expanding our customer base.
It should be a good year for resolutions. 2012 is full of anniversaries, achievements and oddities. It’s a leap year (so we’re tempted to host a frog-jumping contest and celebrate Mark Twain). The world’s first Winter Youth Olympics will take place later this month in Innsbruck, and London will host the Summer Olympics (for the third time). Queen Elizabeth will have been on the throne for 60 years on February 6. Books set in 2012 are listed in Wikipedia. Apparently, sunspot activity will peak in 2012, so don’t get too attached to your GPS systems and electronics. A NASA probe (the ‘New Horizons’) is expected to arrive close to Pluto for the first time sometime in the coming year. 2012 has also been designated Alan Turing Year; this might be a fine time to check out Chelsea House’s Alan Turing: Computing Genius and Wartime Code Breaker (Makers of Modern Science series), by Harry Henderson (9780816061754).
If you’re the type to ponder the Mayan calendar and global spiritual transformation, take a gander at the so-called “2012 phenomenon.” The world might end, or it may mark the beginning of a brand new era. Either way, we’re intrigued.
2012 is also the Year of the Dragon, an auspicious augur of success and happiness for everyone. Wahoo!
It is also, perhaps most importantly for ShelfTalker readers, the Year of the Picture Book, so designated by New England Children’s Booksellers at a conference in 2010, and enthusiastically embraced by the Association of Booksellers for Children. Expect to see some great initiatives this coming year on behalf of that most delicious and irreplaceable art form.
One of my personal book resolutions is to read at least one picture book a day, and find meaningful ways to highlight the best of the best, both old and new, in honor of The Year of the Picture Book. I’ll keep you posted on how this takes shape. One thing we’d like to do is celebrate a different picture book author/artist team each week all year long, both at the store and in this blog.
Another is to read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, one of those classics I’ve never picked up (and I’m one of about 134 people in the country never to have seen the show).
A third is to contribute more reviews to the NECBA Review Project! I love this semi-annual resource for MG and YA book recommendations and ratings from my colleagues, and want to get my reviews back up to pre-2011 levels.
What does 2012 mean to you? What book-related resolutions have you made, that you can share to inspire others?

A retailer’s mad dash from Thanksgiving to Christmas is always crazy and stressful and wild, but it can also be wonderful. At the Flying Pig, this year’s holiday retail season was especially fun, and it wasn’t just because registers were ringing and people packed the store (although of course that was a big part of it). There was just something extra this year, and I think it was… appreciation. Customers really seemed to appreciate our being part of the community. They seemed to be more aware of shopping locally than during any season in our 15-year history. They appreciated the personal recommendations and extra effort we put in to tracking down their gift ideas, no matter how hard to get. And we certainly appreciated their business.
We heard so many heartening comments from customers. Some of our favorites:

• “I hate Christmas shopping. But coming here is fun!” (We heard this a lot, especially in the last couple of weeks when we were all giddy and overcaffeinated and oversugared and basically swept up in the high-energy Preakness that is the 12 final days of retail. Our staff does have a lot of fun together, and since so many of us are working during the holiday season, there’s added festivity. It also helps that we offer sugar plums—bought from the Shelburne Country Store up the street—to all of our shoppers in a little dish by the registers. Who doesn’t love a treat, especially when a little overwhelmed by the mountain of Things to Get Done?)
• “I found ALL of my Christmas/Chanukah presents here. And I didn’t spend a dime online.” (Local win!)
• “You guys have the best stocking stuffers around.” (Sidelines are so so so much fun to buy for fourth quarter, and we love finding unusual, well-designed, snazzy items.)
• “You got in that book so fast!” (Heh heh. One of the lesser-known advantages of being an indie is the ability to do just-in-time ordering overnight or in a couple of days. By the way, Random House gets huge kudos for shipping re-orders so fast they rival the distributors.)
• “No one else had [fill in the title]! I can’t believe it was on your shelf!” (We have an inexplicable, slightly psychic thing that happens this time of year, where we re-order, on a whim, obscure titles no one’s asked for in a dog’s age; inevitably, someone comes a-looking and is pleasantly surprised.)
• And the most delightful: when thanking customers after a purchase, we so often heard, with such sincere fervor, “No, thank YOU for being here. We love this bookstore.” It brings a lump to my throat just remembering that. It means so much to be appreciated, and to appreciate right back.

I think all of the Shop Local efforts and the economy’s ups and downs and the end of the war in Iraq and many other global realities have brought people’s thoughts and hearts close to home. And while we all love our gadgets and new technologies, it seems to me that the shiny-new-toy daze we can succumb to has worn off just enough to sharpen our senses and clear our eyes and make us re-embrace a certain measure of simplicity. It’s heartening to me that people, at least in our small spot of the world, seem appreciative again of their own communities—the solid, bricks-and-mortar gathering places where friends meet and laugh and share sugar plums—not to mention the simple, eternally satisfying feeling of a good book in the hands.
What have you found yourself appreciating this holiday season?

There comes a time when every bookseller realizes they have run out of time to order books at the holidays. I love this moment. It takes the pressure off. Gone are the frantic stock checks to see which distributor has the coveted special order for a customer. The last few days before this moment are some of the most intense for booksellers.
Every phone call or customer request during the week of Christmas and Hanukkah is a sprint. Gone is the leisurely ordering pace of other months. I found myself sending two, sometimes three orders a day to ensure securing a particular title and delivery when I need it. Some books are so hot (Plenty and Death Comes to Pemberley, to mention a few) that when they turn up in a stock check you order immediately to get the book rather than waiting until the end of the day and risk losing out because it’s now out of stock.
As I left work yesterday, Elizabeth was on hold with Baker and Taylor checking on a CD for South Pacific while making a note about just how to get the Complete Peanuts 1963-1966 that seemed to only be out of stock right now, but was in stock when the order was placed. It’s a very frustrating situation to explain to customers that stock levels fluctuate constantly. I tried in vain to explain to someone why the said Peanuts book was now really hard to get fast. She made it clear she didn’t really care about that. What she cared about, and rightly so, was when her book was going to come in.
I did not tear my hair out, but rather called the small publisher and asked about shipping. I was told I had just missed the cut-off for standard free shipping to get to me in time, so I had to do express, and order 25 more books that I wasn’t sure I could sell. But it was that or getting half my usual discount. Every day is like this. Over and over. As we help customers find books for every member of their family we are still putting out other fires. Where is the missing box from the distributor? Why am I being told I missed the order cut-off for next day shipping by two minutes? Why does the cash drawer that was perfect this morning now only contains twenties, five dollar bills, and dimes? We are so busy there is literally not enough time in the day to get it all done. That would explain why Elizabeth toils in the store well past dinner; it’s the only time she can think and get organized.
Oh, add to this chaos of calling in the myriad of special orders and the day can fly by at an alarmingly fast rate. It’s often 4 pm when there is a lull and all of us booksellers look at each other and someone says, “Have you eaten?” and we all realize we’re starving. Pizza is ordered and we snack on Christmas cookies and coffee while we wait for the delivery. No one has eaten since breakfast. It feels a little bit like a siege, but a very fun one. It didn’t help that the local newspaper had a front page article about a book we only had two of and said we were one of the two bookstores in the state that had the book. We were able to get 10 books and in the span of two hours we already had 15 special orders for it. We allocated the last stock in the warehouse and will keep our fingers crossed come Friday that the books actually come in. Had we had a week’s heads up, we could have brought in enough copies for all the folks who wanted one.
We are ready for anything. In one minute the store can go from three people browsing to completely full. And it stays full for hours. The two main registers are flying and the back computer in the office is also used to process sales. Customers stand in the office and look around. Some look  a little scared by all the stuff, although it’s actually pretty neat. Others love it. One guy today said he loved the energy of “the little room.” It was charming.
There are more people working than normal and that adds to the bustle. Our back counter area is not large enough to easily contain more than two people, so when up to three more folks are working, it can feel like a dance to just pull a special order from the shelf. And we have our Christmas miracles: books found that we thought we couldn’t get, finding a book that delights the customer, someone giving up a book after seeing someone else really, really wants it.
So, the time has come to stop ordering and I can breathe a little easier. I need that breath because the next two and a half days are the busiest of the year and it’ll be a blast.

Last night the entire staff of the Flying Pig had a holiday party. Sad as it might sound, this is the first one in four years. We decided to have a dinner in a private room at the local Italian restaurant whose chef shops at the store. In the midst of another record-breaking holiday season, celebrating together seemed very restorative and important.
We all work hard and there are several staffers who never work together and only see each during staff meetings, so a dinner with everyone and their spouses was great fun.  Elizabeth, the grand master of fun things, had managed to find flying pig trophies for everyone. Each woman (we are without a male co-worker at the moment) received her own trophy with a brief description of her merits. For instance, PJ, our youngest staffer’s said: Fantasy pro and lover of projects.  Everyone loved their trophies. Elizabeth even surprised me with one and I was touched.
Elizabeth made a toast thanking everyone for their hard work this year and there were several tears shed. It was a lovely speech. We all made toasts, some spot on imitations of each other and some much needed venting about a few of the more ridiculous retail moments we’ve had. We pretty much laughed through the dinner, causing one staffer’s husband to say, “No wonder you love working at the bookstore.”
Sometimes it’s easy in the day-to-day work world to forget to just spend time with these great people. It was so delightful to get out of the store and look around the table and think, “Damn, these guys are fun.’

Our friend and colleague—and occasional ShelfTalker guest blogger—Kenny Brechner of DDG Booksellers in Farmington, Maine, often brings the gift of wry mirth to stressful situations. While most of us are happily and completely brain-fried at the end of long days rushing around doing a hundred things at once—making recommendations, ringing sales, wrapping gifts, following up on special orders, tracking down elusive titles, unpacking and receiving and shelving and displaying boxes of books and sidelines, making signs, restocking items, calling special order folks, filling website orders, fielding sales calls, paying bills, etc. and so on—Kenny somehow manages to have enough creative energy to come up with really funny stuff after hours. I don’t know how he does it—I don’t want to know; probably some moldering portrait of a wag somewhere in his closet—but I’m really glad he does.
This season’s silliness resulted from Kenny noticing something sinister about holiday reading fare. Looking at a pile of Christmas romances, he started to wonder why there were no comparable Hanukkah titles. One punny title idea led to another, and soon, Kenny had a full-blown contest idea on his hands.
Join me in snortling over the following, direct from DDG Booksellers’ website, which has the added attraction of cover art.
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Hanukkah Heat Contest!
When one sees a glaring imbalance in life one’s natural inclination is to correct it. Each holiday season we see a new batch of Christmas romances being published such as A Highlander for the Holidays, Lady Sophie’s Christmas Wish, and A Texas Christmas. What of Hanukkah romances though? Think about it for a moment. The shocking truth will appear quickly. There isn’t a single Hanukkah bodice ripper in existence! That’s why we’re launching Hanukkah Heat, a new line of books to fill this glaring void with books like…
The Reluctant Rabbi
Rabbi Sam Davidson, serious and seriously handsome, was passionate only about Torah studies. Ruth Rosen was the most widely courted young woman in town. All eyes are on the dazzling Ruth but she has eyes only for the bookish young Rabbi. Ruth was in the office, polishing the congregation’s menorah and setting its supply of candles in neat, suggestive stacks and Sam was in the library delving into Talmudic lore, when they are unexpectedly trapped together in the Temple by a sudden spring snowstorm. Can Ruth awaken a different sort of passion in Sam’s scholarly breast?
Captured By A Maccabee
Sunday School teacher Esther Klein, widowed untimely, had settled into a life of uneasy calm. This Sunday was passing by just like the last 28 Sundays had passed since Marvin’s death. Esther put the Kugel she had prepared at home for snack time into the Temple’s oven and walked into the crowded classroom. Suddenly, an odd shimmering light appeared behind her accompanied by a crackling hum. From out of the light a Maccabeen warrior from the 2nd century BCE burst forth, his bare, rippling chest, brawny thews, and giant sword seeming somehow out of place in the Sunday School Classroom. With a shout the warrior leapt forward, threw Esther over his shoulder, and bounded back into the portal. Would Esther ever return to the 21st century, would anyone realize a kugel was left baking in the oven, would she find love in the brawny arms of Mattathias? All that Esther knew for now was that life had taken a decidedly spicier turn!
Other book suggestions we have received and that are already in the pipleline:
Let’s All Do the Hora!
Brazen Shamash
Lighting Her Lamp
You Say Gelt, I Say Guilt
Eight Steamy Nights
It’s Gimmel My Love
Under The Menorah
You Put The Magic In The Magic Oil
The Rakish Cantor
Still, this is barely a start, so we’re having a contest to get some more potential titles in the works. Just submit your title and a brief synopsis on the DDG bookseller site. The grand prize will be a DDG T-Shirt and lasting fame.
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[Back to Elizabeth and ShelfTalker now:]
A couple of the above titles are mine, but my favorite, Let’s All Do the Hora!, comes from Flying Pig Bookseller Sandy First. When she texted that idea to me last night (as I worked until 2 am redoing displays and putting out new goodies at the store), I actually laughed aloud. I needed that.
Here’s another to add to the mix:
He Was Hanukkah, She Chanukah: A Mixed Marriage for Muriel

And I just know something clever can be done with hei and nun, not to mention shin.
Readers, please post your titles and synopses here, too, even if you enter the contest. I can’t wait to read them. Happy Hanukkah, everyone (First Night is December 20); may you always land on gimel.

In the past few weeks I’ve had a few uncomfortable moments with authors questioning me about why I either don’t have their books or why their books aren’t more prominently featured. So, I’ve decided to address the inventory issue. Obviously, without authors, I’d have another job, and probably one far less satisfying that working in a bookstore. But there are somethings I wished all authors understood about my end of the business.
First off, I’m thrilled that you have gotten a book published — envious, in fact. But just because you wrote it, doesn’t mean I have to carry it. More than 200,000 books came out in 2009, according to Wikipedia. We cannot carry all of them, or even a large percent of them; actually it’s more like 8-10% of them. In a world where space was not an issue, I’d carry a lot more titles than I do, but I’m limited in what I can actually have on a shelf. I do my best to have my shelves represent what I believe will sell in my community.
We never mean to be hurtful when your book is not stocked. It’s not personal, it’s shelf space and it’s important to put it in perspective. My middle grade section, including Newbery and other award winners (where a lot of middle grade books also live), is exactly 63 linear feet. That’s not really a very large amount of shelf space, or actual shelves for that matter. We constantly juggle many needs to fill these shelves.
Our stock rotates so that we can make room for the season’s newer titles. Essentially, like a library, we periodically cull our stock and make returns. Finances right now, more than space, are driving the number of returns we make. There aren’t many bookstores that can afford to have an unsold book on their shelves for too long. Some stores give six weeks for a new title before they return it. For us, it’s far longer, probably too long, but I do like to give books more than a fair shake.
While I may not have your book on the shelf, it doesn’t mean I won’t carry it. I happily order books for customers every day. And often these are books that are new to me. I order books all the time and with the speed of distributors, and some publishers, I can have books in 24 hours at the earliest, three days at the latest. Being able to order so quickly really lets me carry hundreds of thousands of books. Let’s face it, most people can wait a day to get a book.
So, authors, I love you all, but I just wanted you to know what life looks like on my side of the counter. Have a great holiday and keep writing.