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Politics & Prose Enjoys Robust Sales in Third Year at National Book Festival
- By Liz Button
Printer-friendly versionPolitics & Prose Bookstore pulled in impressive sales numbers at Saturday’s 16th annual Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., the third consecutive year the Washington indie served as the event’s official bookseller.
The daylong event featured the first major public appearance by Carla Hayden, the country’s new Librarian of Congress, and the debut of the Main Stage author pavilion.
“Crowds were huge again this year, filling the Walter E. Washington Convention Center,” said Bradley Graham, who co-owns Politics & Prose with his wife, Lissa Muscatine. While organizers don’t keep an exact count, he said, estimates put attendance at the September 24 event well over 100,000 people.
This year, the store brought along 400 titles by 120 featured authors, poets, and illustrators, and total sales exceeded 15,000 books. In 2015, Politics & Prose brought more than 450 titles by 175 authors to accommodate the event’s special 15th anniversary celebration, which drew an estimated 200,000 people.
“Total sales were only a bit less than last year when, because of the anniversary, there were more authors and more featured books,” said Graham. “Compared to 2014, when the number of authors and books were about the same as this year, sales were up about 20 percent.”
The 65 Politics & Prose staff members working in the festival’s book sales area were joined by American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher, Director of Technology Greg Galloway, and Membership Relationship Manager Nathan Halter, as well as volunteers from Ingram Content Group, which helped the store handle logistics at the convention center, and volunteers from several publishing companies.
“To help keep the checkout line moving, Politics & Prose operated 20 registers,” said Graham, who praised both store staff and the volunteers who helped run the sales area so efficiently on Saturday. “At times, the line swelled to six rows deep, but at no point was the wait more than about 10 minutes or so.”
As in 2014 and 2015, ABA provided and installed custom-designed wallpaper in the festival’s book sales area, which listed the association’s more than 2,300 member store names and locations on seven panels.
This year, the new 2,500-seat Main Stage pavilion served as a venue for festival goers to see individual presentations by some of the event’s most popular authors, including Stephen King, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Salman Rushdie, Raina Telgemeier, Shonda Rhimes, and Bob Woodward. Librarian of Congress Hayden introduced King, whose presentation was viewed by more than 150,000 people streaming live on Facebook.
Some of the other authors and public figures signing books, giving talks, and participating on panels included Colson Whitehead, Yaa Gyasi, Joel Grey, Carl Hiaasen, Eileen Myles, Katherine Paterson, U.S. Representative John Lewis, Kristin Hannah, Ken Burns, and Jeffrey Toobin.
In addition to the new Main Stage pavilion, this year’s themed pavilions included Children; Teens; Books to Movies; Contemporary Life; Graphic Novels; Fiction; Food & Home; History & Biography; International; Poetry & Prose; and Science. The festival also featured a poetry slam, a books-to-movies panel, and graphic novel presentations from author/illustrators Darrin Bell, Ed Piskor, and Gene Luen Yang.
The National Book Festival was streamed live online in a broadcast on PBS Book View Now and C-SPAN Book TV.
The date for the 2017 Library of Congress National Book Festival will be September 2.