Booksellers feel shop-local literary love

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This article was published 22/04/2021 (1975 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canada’s independent booksellers have started writing a new chapter in Canada’s literary landscape.

The newly formed Canadian Independent Booksellers Association (CIBA) is a collection of 80-plus shops that have come together to leverage their collective muscle and brain power to work together to engage book buyers and publishers to shop local. On Saturday, April 24, Canadian Independent Bookstore Day will give readers reason to celebrate their successes amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Among local indie bookstores that are CIBA members are Whodunit? Mystery Bookstore and McNally Robinson Booksellers. Chris Hall, co-owner of McNally Robinson, is the chair of CIBA, and helped bring the organization online in late 2020 after the Canadian Booksellers Association fizzled out about a decade ago.

“Everyone knew it would be useful, but nobody had the time or energy or impulse to get it going. Lo and behold, COVID hit, and it became obvious we could be working together for so much more benefit… that’s when we pulled it together,” Hall explains.

CIBA has worked closely with publishers, who can join the association as associate members, to figure out what’s most helpful for indie bookstores. “Publishers were asking us what they could do to help. Each of us had things they could have done that were different,” Hall says. “But by getting together and saying ‘these are the sorts of things that would help’ and speaking as one, we’ve been able to help them deliver.”

Among initiatives spearheaded by CIBA is the addition of “Buy Local” buttons on participating publisher websites, allowing readers to click through and search for local, independent bookstores rather than turning to online behemoths such as Amazon or national chain bookstores. “It’s a way to play a big national game, but still maintain our individual independence. As I like to say, we’re fiercely independent, including from each other,” Hall says, laughing. “We have lots of common ground, but we’re also unique.”

When retail stores shut down to in-person shopping in Manitoba heading into the holidays, local booksellers had to ramp up their online presence and web stores in a hurry to meet rapidly increasing demands. “From our experience, this has accelerated a lot of independent bookstores moving to a more modern way of selling books,” says Michael Bumsted, bookseller at Whodunit? Mystery Bookstore on Lilac Street. “A lot of them weren’t using online stores… we’ve had one for a long time, but we didn’t have a lot of use for it. We did the math the other day, and we’ve gone from having 15 orders online over the course of a year to sometimes having 15 orders a day.”

Bumsted has found the shift to online orders has seen people change the types of books they’re buying from Whodunit? — expanding beyond the thriller/suspense-heavy inventory found in their physical store. “People use our web store and realize they can have anything, whereas people who come into our bookstore buy the books that we’ve got,” he explains, while adding that the in-person experience at Whodunit? is popular, offering a unique shopping experience. “We have a lot of people who, until recently, had never been in our bookstore before. And they’re finding they’re really liking browsing. They’ve never had a chance to come and see that I have 45 years’ worth of John le Carré all in one place.”

Like Whodunit?, McNally Robinson experienced a surge in online orders heading into the holidays as in-person shopping became an impossibility, and Hall says they’re working on improving their online store to accommodate any such spike in online sales again. And with a concerning number of COVID-19 cases being reported daily, including the rise of variant cases, the store is again seeing a shift in how locals are shopping. “Online orders are going up — people are getting more nervous now, they want more curbside pickup again,” he notes. “We’re in a position to gauge the community nervousness, if you will. We feel it. We’re busy, but people don’t want to come into the store to the extent they would otherwise.”

CIBA members are promoting Canadian Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday as a way to say thank you to their community as much as celebrate that indie bookstores in Canada have, for the most part, managed to survive the pandemic. “People are shopping local, so we’re benefiting from our community, as we always have. We came dangerously close to going out of business back in 2010 — our community rallied to us then, and they’re rallying to us now,” says Hall. “That’s what I would like to celebrate, more than celebrating us.”

And while there won’t be any cake to cut in person this year on Canadian Independent Bookstore Day, Hall is no less thankful for book lovers in the province and the commitment many have made to buying local. “Our goal with this is just to mark the occasion, get it into people’s mind that it’s happening, that it’s good news, that independent bookstores are doing okay — they’re doing about as well as their communities,” he says.

Relative to the situation independent bookstores were in last year, as well as over the holidays, Bumsted is grateful Whodunit? is able to be open to the public for both in-person shopping (with a maximum six customers at a time) and online sales. “We’re thankful we’re allowed to be open… we’re just happy to be able to be here.”

Hall is equally grateful. “Independent bookstores are doing okay — they’re doing about as well as our communities,” he says. “I came out of Christmas saying ‘we survived’ — and survival’s no small thing.”

books@freepress.mb.ca