Children’s booksellers optimistic as the year closed…

Graham Marks reports in PN online:

…A DETAILED PICTURE has yet to emerge but speaking just before Christmas, booksellers sounded optimistic about their Christmas performance.

Borders' Senior Children's Buyer Becky Stradwick said that sales had been led by the usual suspects - annuals and the obvious A-list authors (Higson, Horowitz, Wilson et al) - and, while there were no real surprises, the runaway successes had been with the In the Night Garden titles from Puffin and The Golden Compass film tie-in and slip-case edition, “which just goes to show that you can sell a £75 book.”

Also in a buoyant mood was Tales on Moon Lane's Tamara Linke. “Sales at our Herne Hill shop are up 20% on last year so far and I'm really pleased with the new shop in Primrose Hill.” Winners for Linke were the Walker Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker 'ballet boxes' and the Robert Sabuda pop-ups, especially The Night Before Christmas (Simon & Schuster), while in fiction terms it was Marcus Sedgwick's Blood Red, Snow White (Orion), Sally Gardner's The Red Necklace (Orion) and Sonya Hartnett's Silver Donkey (Walker). “We've also sold a lot of Jan Pienkowski's 1001 Nights and Fairy Tales [Puffin].” At the Well Wisher Bookshop in Devizes, its surprise bestseller was Antoinette Portis' Not a Box (HarperCollins). She had also “sold loads” of the Anthony Horowitz's SnakeheadHurricane Gold (Puffin), and was enjoying strong sales of Geraldine McCaughrean's Nativity (Lion).

One note of caution was sounded by Joanna de Guia at Victoria Park Books in Hackney who thought takings were going to be slightly down. However, balancing that out she said that schools with budgets to spend by the end of the year had been ordering more. “We've had fewer walk-in customers, but those we've had have been buying more books.” She reported strong sales of Shaun Tan's The Arrival (Hodder), Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic) and OUP's Lauren Child-illustrated Pippi Longstocking.

“In terms of fiction, it's Charlie Higson's Hurricane Gold, Ann Cassidy's Looking For JJ [Scholastic], which is on right now at the Unicorn Theatre, and Sam Enthoven's Black Tattoo [Corgi]. We have a lot of signed stock and that really works.”