I pulled books we have two copies of--there aren't usually too many--to put on display:
"This Winter... Start a 2-Person Book Group".
I think it's a great idea and I did this last year too, but the books don't really sell that well.
Many, you can see, are old "of-the-moment" bestsellers.
For a lot of these, it's really a Last Chance Before I Recycle You.
(Some are keepers, and I've added more, as I come across them--including E. M. Forster's Passage to India, and Love Medicine, by local author, bookstore owner, and National Book Award winner Louise Erdrich [her Birchbark Books blog].)
Currently, we have four (4) copies of Eat, Pray, Love and of Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life.
Will these still be read in fifty years, or even twenty?
Some will, maybe.
Purpose reminds me of Oswald Chambers's daily Christian devotional My Utmost for His Highest (1924). We occasionally get copies of it, and I guess it's still popular? George W. Bush liked it, according to Wikipedia.
But Utmost is an old chestnut and it never sells.
Classics that people choose to read on their own, not for school, usually sell fast.
We get plenty of Jane Austens donated, for instance, and Charles Dickenses, but rarely have two copies of any title.
There are some crossovers too––popular and read in schools––such as Lord of the Flies, which always sells. And tons of Bibles & Shakespeare come and go all the time.
Mark Twain is sort of neither/both.
We keep no inventory, and since I don't work the cash register anymore, I don't get to see who buys which books.
But judging from what I see on the shelves, here's a rough guide to what sells and what doesn't.
Best Sellers
Fiction--all sorts, but especially pop–crime/thrillers (James Patterson, Lisa Scottoline, MN author John Sanford's "Prey" series), and old standbys such as Agatha Christie (but not, surprisingly, Sherlock Holmes books) @ only 49¢ each
(. . . Also surprisingly, romance books––also 49¢--are slow sellers)
--and literary fiction (Camus, Elena Ferrante, Toni Morrison) and most classics (Tolstoy, Hemingway, Woolf), except for authors out of favor, such as Rudyard Kipling (and, for some reason, Henry James never sells, except his Turn of the Screw, but James Joyce does, so readability's not the issue),
some pop-classics beloved by men especially, it seems-- not sure what to call these--such as On the Road, Fight Club, and anything by David Foster Wallace;
and sci-fi, if we have it, which we usually don't;
cookbooks;
kids picture books (49¢ each);
current magazines (25¢ each)--old copies of National Geographic and The New Yorker sell, but other back issues, forget it;
arts & DIY (Van Gogh & knitting, yes--home repairs, not so much);
books about trains (this surprised me);
books about witchcraft, astrology, dragons;
Buddhism (emotional regulation?) for Westerners (Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, and even older writers such as Alan Watts);
very-current affairs & pre–Vietnam War United States history, but not mid-range history: books about the era of the Bushes, Bill Clinton, and Reagan don't sell, and neither does feminism; history of other countries doesn't sell particularly well either;
extra-cool "cool old books";
How-to-Write books of the encouraging kind, not the technical kind (some standards remain good sellers, such as Bird by Bird by Annie LaMott, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, and So You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland);
current books about race (White Fragility), and classics (Frederick Douglass and Autobiography of Malcolm X, but not Roots).*
Books about Indigenous peoples.
Middling Sellers
Books about science and nature (even classics, like Thoreau or Annie Dillard, or like-new ones with neat pictures--I'd thought these would sell better);
YA (young adult--I think these need to be super new: I overheard a teenager saying that if books are old enough to be in this store, they already know about and have read them);
Self-care & psychology, including 12-Step books;
Christianity and other religions (Bibles are steady, theology is slow);
travel and places; world languages; poetry;
pet books; gardening (sells well in early spring);
biographies (these date fast--forget books about old TV stars);
Music---it depends. Some sheet music sells, biographies of some musicians (Bob Dylan) too; others (Jennifer Lopez, Aaron Copland), not.
Worst Sellers
Books about sports do not move--especially books about golf & fishing, but even soccer and yoga;
business & management--blah;
health, childbirth and child rearing (do people only want the most current info?);
"cool old books" that aren't great but I wish would sell just for how cool their covers are;
drama--plays & books about theater almost never sell;
inspirational books about angels or family, a la "The Love of a Sister" or "There's Nothing Like a Grandparent" (again, I was surprised--I'd thought these would be popular, but nope--even if they're like-new);
Old bestsellers made into pop movies such as Bridget Jones's Diary or The Devil Wears Prada, or anything with a title such as The Gardener's Daughter's Secret Recipe for Giraffes,
and mid-century authors such as John Irving, John Updike, Mary McCarthy, et al.
Mid-centuryish politics and social sciences (no Margaret Mead or Gloria Steinem, no Eisenhower or even Watergate; Kennedy's assassination is old hat--I'm going to try a display of the many books we have about him next week--the anniversary of his murder--and see if they go, but they don't usually move off the shelf)
Authors who fell from grace, such as once-favored son of MN Garrison Keillor, Bill Cosby, and Woody Allen;
and right-wingers such as Bill O'Reilly & Ann Colter (someone took a book with her face on the spine and hid it behind the others--this happens sometimes).
The public has spoken.
These never sell and can go right to recycling.
Oh, I feel so dated! The books i like are the ones that don't seem to sell especially the mid-centuryish politics and social sciences.
ReplyDeleteI'm now wanting to read more about the Russian Revolution (know so little about it other than watching Reds and visiting John Reed's grave when I was in Moscow during the 90's) and World War I (or as my dad called it "the forgotten war").
Kirsten
It's interesting to see what sells and what doesn't. My list of types of books I buy is as follows. Old books-often for pictures they contain (not to cut out, but to look at.), their covers or sometimes content, old books that can be converted into journals, novels, art or craft books, children's books,photo books about places, and occasionally a book I think may be worth something. I sometimes wait a few months after a book I want to read has come out, for when it will start to appear in charity shops. A lot of shops here seem to reduce their books as bric a brac in favour of clothes which is a shame.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a big fan of classics, most of them are too literary for me, the books I read are classed as pop fiction, certainly nothing that would be acceptable as school reading. You won't find a single sports or exercise book on any of my shelves. I do have one "History" book, it's historical fiction, a novel by Philippa Gregory, titled "The Taming of The Queen", about Henry the eighth and his last wife. There are other books in the series and I really must track them down as I found this particular one quite interesting.
ReplyDeleteBill O’Reilly and company: yes, they’re the people who show up on the shelves in the Habitat ReStore near me (along with Billy Graham and company).
ReplyDeleteDoes Reading Lolita in Tehran sell? I’ve seen so many copies of it in used-book stores and library sales.
KIRSTEN: I'm with Michael of OCA---you would be a great blogger! Have you considered it?
ReplyDeleteYou are not dated--you are a thinker!
SARAH: I wish I could pass along some of our cool old books to you! A lot of thrift stores here don't bother with them, but I can't say they always sell that well, so I see why.
RIVER: We have several of Philippa Gregory's books. Historical fiction is pretty popular.
MICHAEL: One shopper told me I should throw Bill O'Reilly out--"he's a horrible man." In fact, I did start to automatically recylce his books because they never sell.
Ditto Michael Moore--though I think it's because have a short sell-by date.
Reading Lolita is in a nonfiction category like Three Cups of Tea or The Greatest Generation
--a nonfiction phenomenon like Bridget Jones--best sellers that we gets loads of copies of, which do not sell.
Exception to that rule: Henrietta Lacks--I think because it's about a black woman, who was?
There's so little good stuff published on race, and so much on everything else--in this store, at least, it gets bought right up.
My coworkers don't trust the medical establishment, and it's things like this they point to.
in his article "Henrietta Lacks And Race" (2010), Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote:
"One thing I've tried to do is get us away from seeing racism/white supremacy as the work of evil immoral hobgoblins, conspiring to do their worst to black people.
If it were ever that easy, there would be no racism, and there never would have been any white supremacy.
"I did not so much mean to leave people with the impression that "clearly they targeted her because she was black" so much as to point out that it's virtually impossible to seriously consider any black person in 1951
--a time when white supremacy was practiced in almost every sphere--
without thinking about race,
without thinking about black people as the country's great unwashed."
www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/02/henrietta-lacks-and-race/35286/
It's interesting to see this list. I'm not at all surprised business and management doesn't sell. It gets dated so quickly and there's always the next new idea on the horizon. Maybe people think the yoga books are sweaty!
ReplyDeleteI would buy some of those mid-century authors, I think, but I know they've fallen out of favor.
As for James Joyce, people may buy him, but I bet they don't read him.