Book Notes – January 8, 2020
Cookbooks topped the list in 2019
By Glenn Dromgoole
Last year was a very good year for books at Texas Star Trading, especially cookbooks. Three of the five best-selling books in 2019 were cookbooks.
- The new Perini cookbook, Perini Ranch Steakhouse, set a store record for the most books sold in a single year, and it didn’t even come out until mid-November. We’ve never seen anything like it in the 15 years we’ve been in business. People were buying multiple copies – 6, 8, 10, even 20 – as Christmas presents. We had Tom and Lisa Perini for a book signing and it was the biggest turnout we’ve ever had. The new cookbook will no doubt be one of the best-selling titles at Texas Star in 2020 as well.
- The number two seller at Texas Star in 2019 was Ellen Webb’s cookbook, You’ll Be Going Back for Seconds. Ellen – Carol Dromgoole’s mom – passed away in August. Her popular cookbook had been out of print for a couple of years, but after the funeral we had a number of requests for us to reprint it. So we did, and family and friends scooped it up. We still have plenty of copies left, with Ellen on the cover in her red apron holding a mouth-watering platter of her signature fried chicken.
- John Erickson, author of the popular Hank the Cowdog books, included Texas Star Trading on his West Texas book-launch tour of Finding Hank, an attractive hardcover volume answering the most often asked questions about Hank. We had a great turnout, and Finding Hank finished the year as our number three book. Fans also bought so many copies of the first Hank book, The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog, that it came in sixth for the year.
- Our overall best-seller in the 15 years we’ve been in business is the first Perini cookbook, Texas Cowboy Cooking, which went out of print in 2019 but not before ranking as our number four book for the year. It nearly always placed among Texas Star’s top three to five books every year.
- Steve Butman’s color photographs and Loretta Fulton’s crisp text made for a beautiful coffee-table book about our fine city – Abilene: Heart of the Big Country. The book was launched at a book signing at Texas Star in August, and it came in number five for the year. It ought to be on every coffee table in town.
Well, that’s the top five, or really six, books for 2019, and we have plenty of copies of each (except Texas Cowboy Cooking) as we plunge ahead in 2020. By the way, yet another cookbook – Mack Eplen’s Best-Kept Secrets – was number seven for the year.
Thank you for your support. Please consider Texas Star throughout the year when you need a book, gift or gift basket for birthdays and other special occasions.
