Happy holidays from Ithaca, where we’ve woken up two mornings in a row to a new dusting of snow. I’m sitting by a roaring fire and a sleeping dog—it doesn’t get cozier than this. But if you work in retail this time of year, the name of the season is not cozy but—what?—hectic, full-throttle, heart-in-throat.
The indie bookselling calendar is like a basketball game—it all comes down to what happens just before the buzzer. November may look much like April, but December is the outlier, and sales in that month can help determine if a bookstore is up for the year or not. At Buffalo Street Books, December usually accounts for about 20% of annual taxable sales. Last year, overall sales were down 15% from 2021, and that number was dragged down by the fact that December sales were down 26% (constituting only 18% of annual taxable sales that year).
The forecast is good for this year.