Last week, Edmonton bookselling scion Laurie Greenwood announced that her much-loved local bookstore, Laurie Greenwood’s Volume II, will be closing at the end of April. 

Though she said the closure is due to the day-to-day stress of running a small business, you’d be forgiven for assuming it might have had at least a little something to do with money. The drawn-out death throes of the mom-and-pop bookstore is old news, and book lovers tend to greet each new door-closing with a certain weary resignation. Greenwood’s announcement comes just a few weeks after The Book Room in Halifax (the oldest bookstore in Canada, founded in 1839) shut its doors.

In fact, according to Susan Dayus, executive director of the Canadian Booksellers Association, about 350 of the Association’s member stores have closed since 2001. (It’s important to note that that number doesn’t include new stores opened, which Dayus says offsets the losses, though only slightly.) The trend isn’t just Canadian; if anything, we’re not doing too badly. A 2006 story in New York alt-weekly The Village Voice cited figures that should strike fear in the hearts of any bookworm: in 1991, the American Booksellers Association had 5,200 member stores. In 2005, there were 1,702.

So it seems pertinent to ask: does the bookstore as we know it have a future? Big-box retailers like Chapters have been cutting into the indies’ business for years—and with the increasing popularity of online retail and its promise of unrivaled selection and a limitless well of opinions and recommendations, does the little shop on the corner even matter anymore?

Why It Matters

Talking with publishers, booksellers, and industry types, the answer is the same across the board: of course it does, what are you talking about? The same reasons are cited by all—indies stock more stuff from small and regional publishers, they stock cult authors whose work can’t be found elsewhere, and they host readings and other events, making a local literary culture possible.

“Not only are they important for carrying our books, but they’re huge for author events,” says Tiffany Regaudie at Edmonton-based NeWest Press. “It’s just a matter of calling up Sharon from Audrey’s and asking, ‘Would you like to have an event?’ There’s no sort of corporate screening process.”

That corporate screening process, Regaudie says, extends to the books on offer as well.

“At Chapters, publishers pretty much pay for their book display,” Regaudie says. “You can pay for your book to be displayed a certain way, and for publishers like us who don’t have that money, our books are shelved in the back.”

“A lot of the time, books are completely overlooked by the chains, especially if you’re a very small publisher,” concurs Laura Repas at Toronto’s House of Anansi Press, a medium-sized publisher of literary fiction and poetry whose roster includes such heavyweights as Margaret Atwood and Noam Chomsky. “Across the country there are local bookstores I have contacts at that I feel I can count on for events... You can call up Laurie Greenwood and just talk with her and know what’s going on.”

(One thing I can’t help but notice when calling up publishers, even in faraway Toronto, is that they all seem to be on a first-name basis with the personalities at our local indie stores—it’s a charmingly cozy world.)

It isn’t just traditionalists who are taking a position in defence of the bookstore, either. Even those on the vanguard of DIY and web publishing don’t believe that the web can effectively replace bricks and mortar—at least not without losing something vital in the process.

Jim Munroe is a Toronto based science fiction author whose debut novel, Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gas Mask, was published by HarperCollins in 1999. The book was a cult success and sold pretty well, but the experience of working with a major publisher was so antithetical to his DIY ethos that he opted to found his own imprint, No Media Kings, and release all his subsequent books that way. He’s experimented with online sales as well, selling his novel Angry Young Spaceman directly via his website. He’s also released two e-books—yet he too thinks the web is no replacement for the bookstore. That is, a good bookstore.

“I think the niche indie bookstores have is in catering to a select sensibility,” he says. “I think if they spotlight what they consider to be the best, most interesting stuff and see themselves as curators rather than cashiers, they will be providing a service people will be loyal to. If they’re just a smaller version of the big-box stores, it’s harder to imagine they’ll stay in business, and harder to care.... As far as Internet retailers, while they’ll get the people who know exactly what they want, most people love to browse, the physicality and immediacy of it.”

On The Other Hand

Munroe’s words—“curators rather than cashiers”—ring in my ears when I pay a visit to some of Edmonton’s indie bookstores. If the argument for indie bookstores is that their stock is eclectic and exciting, and that they serve as the kind of community gathering places that foster a literary culture, I’m not sure our local indies are up to par.

Though they have more small press and regional writing on the shelves, and they’re unquestionably staffed by people who love to read, they can hardly be described as unusual or quirky. As recently as last week, the new release displays were stocked full of Stephen King, John Grisham, and Globe and Mail bestsellers. There are few things here that can’t be found elsewhere, and though some people make a special effort to buy from the indies, few readers have to do so in order to find what they want.

“There’s little obvious difference, it seems to me, between these stores and Chapters,” says Keitrina Pettican, manager of Wee Book Inn (a secondhand bookstore) on Whyte Avenue. When asked if the local first-run indie bookshops are doing enough to stay relevant, she offers, “I don’t really think so. I haven’t seen anything really specific.” (If anything, secondhand retailers, with their highly eclectic selection and book-loving staff, seem to have the obvious advantage when competing with the corporate behemoths—most of them feel comfortably lived-in, unique, with a selection of books and curiosities unlikely to be found anywhere else.)

“It’s hard to reach people who aren’t diehard book lovers,” admits Steve Budnarchuk, co-owner of Audrey’s on Jasper Avenue. “It’s hard to do so without doing lots of advertising, though the Internet is making that easier. We have a chance to expose new people to the bookstore experience, but it’s a slow, one-at-a-time acquisition of new readers.”

Gail Greenwood of Greenwoods is more blunt when asked if the indies are competitive. “Absolutely,” she says. “And notwithstanding that Laurie is closing... It’s a fact of life that web shopping is huge, and of course it’s had an impact. But for the, I don’t want to say ‘real’ book lovers, but for book people who like to spend money on books, they can be more discerning about picking up a book [in person], perusing, and making that choice.”

Pettican doesn’t much like that line of argument, hinting that she finds certain stores in town a little too up-market and off-putting. “I find book snobs offensive,” she says. “If I go in some place and they’re like, ‘Oh well, we only carry such and such,’ I’m like, ‘Good for you.’”

“God forbid that should ever be our image,” counters Budnarchuk at Audrey’s. “We’re different and we try to be different... but that’s certainly not our attitude.”

Mission Impossible?

So indie bookstores beat the big-box stores because they carry local and up-and-coming writers, not to mention niche genres like poetry, in larger quantities than the chains. They also let books hang around the store for longer, and end up shipping fewer unsold books back to publishers.

And they beat online selling because they’re real places, staffed by real people, where authors, artists, and book lovers can meet and form a real community, rather than a nebulous collection of online readers who will never meet in real life.

But if indie bookstores are banking on readings and small-press books with limited readership to differentiate themselves from the rest of the bookselling world, it doesn’t bode well for the profit margins necessary to keep these stores, and the literary culture they foster, alive. 

Working at a major independent bookstore in Calgary a few years ago, I got a first-hand glimpse of the size of the lit community—they were a devoted group maybe a few hundred strong who came out in force to support their own, but the store’s readings and events didn’t often appeal to a broader audience. Not that they need to, necessarily—art can’t be judged on popularity—but there’s an obvious problem here. To survive, the logic goes, indies have to position themselves as offering something that other booksellers can’t. But they can’t be so different that they’ll alienate mainstream shoppers. The balance seems hard, if not impossible, to strike, and maybe it isn’t fair to fault booksellers for not getting it quite right yet.

And there may be good news afoot. Dayus says that bookstore closings have slowed down in the past few years, as the market has adjusted after the first wave of big-box book retail.

“A lot were lost at that time”, she says. “Bookstores have such a small profit margin that when they were faced with that competition they closed.... Now the new stores that open have real plans, and they’ve done a business plan and a marketing plan and maybe decide they’re going to be a niche sort of bookstore, they’re not trying to be everything to everybody all the time. The stores that have been around a long time, they said, ‘Okay, what can I do that’s better than what I’m doing, how can I be more customer-focused, how can I reach out to the schools and the community centres?’”

If anything will save the indie bookstore, it’ll likely be that kind of attention on community, something that the web, for all its unique advantages, can’t replicate.

“Bookstores reflect our culture,” says Erin Kobayashi, books editor at Broken Pencil, a literary magazine aimed at the 18-35 demographic. (If Canada has a McSweeney’s, Broken Pencil is probably it.) “Not just what books they sell, but by simply existing.... I think any opportunity to step away from electronics is beneficial and healthy. What we all love about online bookstores is the convenience of not having to get up and go anywhere, but I find the practice of reading already so private that purchasing online is making reading an even more isolating experience.”

Kobayashi has a simple prescription for bookstore success too.

“Indie bookstores need to continue to be wonderful treasures,” she says, “carrying unusual titles, promoting quirky authors, having local readings and signings, using their walls to support art, to stay significant. I think we’re not just buying books at these stores, but supporting and celebrating culture, beauty, and difference.”

Will that be enough?