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| Copperfield's Books in Sebastopol | |
Sheryl Cotleur, head buyer of Copperfield's Books, with nine stores in Northern California, said the store "did very well this season" and better than expected, given the worries "about what's happening in our country affecting folks' buying habits."
Major titles included The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, The Gales of November: the Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon, What We Can Know by Ian McEwan, and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai. Cotleur was "heartened" to notice that price did not seem to be a huge issue for customers, as there were "very good sales" of hardcovers as well as trade paperbacks.
Cotleur said she and the Copperfield's team were calling 2025 "the year of the supply-side issues." For both books and sidelines, things were "off all over." The team "chased orders and ETAs constantly," and getting deliveries in a timely fashion was "awful."
Overall, though, "it was a better-than-expected and heartening end of 2025, book-wise," said Cotleur.
In Petoskey, Mich., the team at McLean & Eakin Booksellers was pleasantly surprised to see "robust holiday sales, despite predicted economic uncertainties," reported co-owner Jessilynn Norcross.
John U. Bacon's The Gales of November ended up as one of the store's top sellers, and there were "unexpected December sales pops" for Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid and 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Asked about the supply chain, Norcross said this year brought the "earliest and most delayed order fulfillment we've ever seen," and as of New Year's Eve, orders were still running two weeks behind.
For Books Are Magic in Brooklyn, N.Y., this holiday season "ended up exceeding expectations," said co-owner Michael Fusco-Straub. Going into the season, he assumed it was "going to be pretty quiet," but the season "ended up really taking off."
The store's top seller over the holidays was Alison Roman's new cookbook Something from Nothing; Fusco-Straub noted that the author is a friend of the store. The books on the New York Times' Top 10 list did "pretty well for us this year when we had them," while Audition by Katie Kitamura and Flesh by David Szalay were also big.
Fusco-Straub said supply chain issues were "really frustrating" this year, with one particular publisher being especially "unreliable and backed up this holiday season." The issues "really hurt us in a lot of ways," and he wished booksellers had a clearer picture of what happened.
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Reached for comment shortly before Christmas, an Ingram spokesperson said, "Ingram Content Group is experiencing a robust holiday season with sales growth at independent bookstores and general retail, including dot-com sellers and, of course, at public libraries. Sales above expectations have caused sporadic timing challenges at our Eastern and Southern distribution centers, but primarily for secondary shipments. Ingram has prioritized indie store and retail shipments from December 15th and is now largely caught up at all distribution points. Over the holidays, as retail demand wanes, the public library business is expected to continue with strong shipments, keeping seasonal workers employed through January."
As for some of the large publishers' supply-chain problems, sources indicated that many suppliers were affected by large replenishment orders around Thanksgiving that were more than some warehouses could handle. Like Ingram, publishers said they began catching up on orders in the week or so before Christmas. --Alex Mutter and John Mutter