rachelfershleiser asked: What about your top-sellers list was McNally-specific in a way we might not know about? Anything on there because of staff picks, special events, a certain staffer being nuts about it, an author living next door, etc?

In the top 20? No, not really. It’s a definite reflection of our neighborhood, which I think we know well—the pretty edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald on booze at number 3 feels exactly right. Simon Van Booy has a long history with the store. Blood, Bones and Butter was a staff pick, and the book has a local hook. I recommended The Art of Fielding hard, but I don’t think I was a lone voice there. I am proud of pushing Leaving the Atocha Station: we sold a lot of copies of that weird little book, which I loved, before it really took off, largely thanks to the James Wood review in the New Yorker.

We have really smart customers, and we can trust that when we put, say, Leve’s Suicide on the table, that it will sell itself—which it did. We also have very many customers, which means that not everything is right for everyone and that those books that do find their audience (with our help!) might not be able to beat Goon Squad, which all types of readers are reading. So the stuff we do well—the stuff that really matters, putting the right book into the right hands—might not be so visible in the numbers.

1. coffeestainedpages liked this
2. dadantutiin liked this
3. rachelfershleiser liked this
4. strandedstmarkscitylights liked this
5. myelegia liked this
6. mcnallyjackson posted this