Strand Hit Record Sales in the Forest of Words

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The Strand Bookstore in New York announces record sales over the Christmas period with the Monday before Christmas registering the biggest sales in its 86 year history.

The Strand is The New York Bookstore and is run by the legendary and good friend Fred Bass and his daughter Nancy. They sell books; used, new, remaindered, high ticket and antiquarian and low priced bargains. It is an emporium of bookselling which has often featured in films, TV and been cited by many.

Today with the well reported troubles of its neighbours at Barnes and Nobles and the often desperate noises from High Street bookstores around the world you would be forgiven to thinking that the physical book is dead and the bookshop is past its sell by date. However booksellers like Fred Bass will continue to make the book appealing to buyers and the experience rewarding.

The news got the octogenarian bookseller on Channels 5 Fox and CBS are rumoured to be starting a Fred-a-Thon (watch this space).

The picture is of Fred Bass and my wife and owner of Bibliophile

. Fred and Annie go back some 30 years and he used to own a share in Bibliophile.

related coverage: New York Daily

Books on Film

When my wife’s Bibliophile book business started its YouTube video reviews some two years ago, we all questioned whether the effort would be worth the reward. Some 500 videos later, we know the answer and like its library of over 100K unique and individual book reviews, the effort was worth the reward.

Imagine being show an expensive art book by the person who bought the stock, not on ‘sale or return’, but firm and hearing them enthuse about what turned their head. The bonus is that you don’t get a head shot of a person, but get to see inside the book at the pages and the look and feel of the book itself. The real bonus comes with the price!

Many of the 3,500 books Bibliophile stocks are out of print, remaindered, or are on offer at a great price, but the information about them elsewhere is often poor, hard to find and that is probably why Bibliophile can offer them. Bibliophile unlock these gems and ensure their customers can see both inside the covers and understands their value.

So why do we still have the dry jacket and blurb from publishers? Why is the poor source of information, duly copied and offered on to consumers by many online retailers today? In some genres it may work but in many it’s just not good enough today and we have to find new ways to show off the book, describe it and sell it. It is about engagement with customers not throwing scraps over the wall and crossing one’s fingers.

Today music is being increasingly discovered, sampled and enjoyed via YouTube and in due course is becoming two dimensional. So why do we still have the same dour book promotion?

Some publishers are spending more to create promotional videos and glossy advertising of their ‘best sellers’, but surely in the age of the YouTube and the DIY video, it makes more sense to do it for all titles and create ‘more for less’ than merely pamper and spend on the few that would be hits anyway.

Bibliophile Granted Royal Warrant

Booksellers are often the unsung heroes of the book trade. They are the ones that engage with the consumer, entice them to buy and effectively provide the shop window to sell the books. Today all booksellers face challenging times and therefore it’s good when they get their recognition.

We are very proud that a Royal Warrant of Appointment has been granted to Annie Quigley of Bibliophile Limited into the place and quality of Booksellers to H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh, for whom they have been supplying books for over 20 years. A royal warrant is often referred to as a peerage for the trade and they are not given away freely but have to be earned by years of providing service and quality to the royal household and the purse of the Queen, Duke of Edinburgh or Prince Charles.

Bibliophile now joins the elite group of some 800 other warrant owners and only two other booksellers Hatchards of Piccadilly and G Heywood Hill. It is somewhat fitting that we now have a High Street book retailer, a specialist book dealer and a mail order book club and internet bargain book retailer. This clearly shows that the royal household like many other is eclectic in its taste and needs when it comes to books.

In 1992 on the death of her mentor and Bibliophile owner Bill Smith, Annie was given the unique opportunity to buy the highly acclaimed mail order book club. Some 19 years later she has developed the business into the largest independent book club in the UK with over 80,000 active members who buy from the mail-order catalogue and Internet www.bibliophilebooks.com.

The Bibliophile mail order catalogue is a newspaper, full of personalised book reviews and published 10 times a year. Each month, her team selects, review and introduce over 350 new titles to add to the 3500 stocked inventory. Bibliophile despatch over 3.5 million books a year from their 5 miles of books.

Annie is not only the owner of Bibliophile, but also the buyer, editor and bookseller. Her passion for books came from her parents, Aileen Armitage and Deric Longden, who are both writers. Due to her mother Aileen’s blindness, at a young age Annie out of necessity learnt to proof read and edit. Aileen was voted Woman of the Year in 1988 for having written 34 novels although blind. Annie says: “I was born in a book!”

Annie has also brought public domain out of print titles back into print under the Bibliophile imprint for Print on Demand and has just published Deric Longdens’ Lost for Words and Diana’s Story as Bibliophile’s first ebook publications with many more being planned in the near future.

Read her book review blog at anniesbookreviewsforbibliophiles or on facebook

This Saturday, The Times will have a feature supplement ‘Raconteur’ on Royal Warrant holders and Bibliophile’s great achievement for booksellers.