Tough times in the bookstore industry, especially for independents, is far from a new headline or story in Canada. Indeed, the description quite accurately dates back to at least the mid-1990s. The only difference is that 20 years ago it was the twin threats of the birth of bricks-and-mortar book chain retailing superstores such as Chapters in 1995, followed by Indigo Books & Music in 1996 (they merged in 2001) and online book virtual retailers such as Seattle-based Amazon.com, which started selling books over the Internet in 1995.
I well remember being at the Amherst Centre in northern Nova Scotia in July 2000 when Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth book in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter book series, was published. My sister, who is the co-owner of an independent bookstore in Bathurst, New Brunswick, and me made a quick stop at Zellers in the mall (another defunct Canadian retailer, but another story) so she could take a trunk load of the new Harry Potter books back to Bathurst to sell from her bookstore. Given that she could buy them for her own inventory both cheaper and more quickly from Zellers at their retail price than she could obtain them from her book wholesaler suggested to me something was fundamentally askew in the book business.
Almost 15 years later, the threat to independent bookstores isn’t just coming from book chain retailing superstores or Amazon.com. Digital technology and “document-on-demand” are changing the book publishing industry as much or more at the production end. There are almost a million digital books published annually in North America, with roughly 800,000 being self-published efforts that sell fewer than 250 actual hard copies.
Argosy Books operated on Dalhousie Street in Ottawa for about 30 years until it closed Jan. 1. Brittons, which carried more newspapers and magazines than any other store in Ottawa, was on Bank Street in the Glebe neighborhood, just south of downtown, for almost 50 years until it closed its doors last weekend.
The closing of any independent new bookstore is sad news. Here in Western Canada, the announcement last February that Hull’s Family Bookstores, which had been in business since 1919, would soon close two of its three stores, including its downtown Winnipeg store on Graham Avenue, seemed like a very sad sign of the times ahead, as it also closed its Thunder Bay bookstore on Brodie Street in northwestern Ontario. The only consolation at the time was that its Reimer Avenue store in Steinbach, Manitoba, southeast of Winnipeg, would be remaining open.
“Bricks and mortar stores contend with showrooming,” said Hull’s last Jan. 29, describing the consumer practice of customers examining merchandise in a traditional retail store without purchasing it, but then shopping online to find a lower price for the same item, as online stores often offer lower prices than their brick and mortar counterparts, because they do not have the same overhead costs
“We simply cannot sell enough books to continue our operation as is. Sir Stanley Unwin, famous for publishing The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien nearly 80 years ago, could not have predicted the changes to come, and was perhaps ahead of his time, when he said with a twinkle in his eye ‘… the most difficult task of all that a mortal can embark upon is to sell a book.’ Please continue to shop at locally owned independent shops if you can. Support the few remaining bookstores. It is our hope that a newly ‘right-sized’ Hull’s Winnipeg location will open at some point in the future.”
Managing director Margo Smith, and her sister-in-law, Kathie Smith, who purchased the bookstore from the Hull family in 1996, also suggested on their Hull’s website last year: “Ripley’s Believe It or Not! should include the fact that all two billion members of the 30,000-plus Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic denominations of the Christian church today, can agree on one statement of faith: The Apostles’ Creed. If it’s been a sufficient statement for the church for nearly 19 centuries, then it’s a sufficient statement to describe what we believe at Hull’s Family Bookstores.”
Well, indeed, it seems the prayers of many, especially Hull’s loyal customers, have been answered.
Sheila Careless, former office manager of the Graham Avenue store in downtown Winnipeg, and her husband, Bruce, purchased the business, including its Steinbach location and the rights to re-open Hull’s in Winnipeg, and did just that on Dec. 13, unveiling their new Winnipeg location at 1317A Portage Ave.
A re-opened bricks-and-mortar bookstore in Winnipeg. Now that’s counterintuitive.
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