With the bookstore closed for lockdown, it is a good time to look for happier stories. What could be better than a fond appraisal of Christmas, that joyful time for retailers?

Bookstore blog fans will recall from a previous post that December is the best month at The Open Book, because there are more customers. This was definitely true in December 2019, with total revenue of a touch over $15,000 (!). It is starting to seem like an actual business!

Here is how our four Decembers compare with each other. You can see that total revenue has been better every year, and was $2,100 higher in December 2019 than the year before. Revenue per customer is about the same, so people aren't buying each other more books or more expensive books. There are just a lot more customers, more than twice as many in 2019 as we had in our first December.

Year	2016	2017	2018	2019
Total revenue	6,700	11,000	12,900	15,000
Total customers	310	494	614	712
Revenue per customer	22	22	21	21

Better each day

This graph shows revenue per day averaged over seven days across each of the four years. You can see that 2019 (the green line) started slightly better than 2018, got a boost in the days right before Christmas Day, and then did much better than any previous year in the week after Christmas. Huzzah.

One and a half times the charm

December revenue accounts for between 12 and 14 per cent of total revenue for the year, which means that December is worth about fifty per cent more than any other month. And this is even though there are two fewer trading days, since we don't open on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. Such a shame it only comes once a year.