Submitted By Ryan Scott
This Saturday, April 25, is Canadian Independent Bookshop Day, the annual celebration of indie bookshops. More than 200 stores countrywide will be participating, seeking to connect with their communities and highlight their value in a world of chain bookstores and online mega-retailers.
For centuries, independent bookshops were a given in most communities. Many small towns had at least one, and cities often had several co-existing along the same block. It was not unusual to find bookshops that specialized in just one market, such as mystery/crime books, cookbooks, children’s books, etc. Bookshops that didn’t have what a reader was looking for could happily suggest the shop next door or the one around the block as a viable alternative to put the right book into a customer’s hands. This was pretty much a mainstay right up until the quick expansion of the digital age.
With e-books and overnight deliveries of impossibly-discounted books all the rage, even large chains like Chapters-Indigo and Barnes & Noble had to shift away from a book-centric focus. Many of their big box stores consolidated or closed. Those that survived began stocking more homeware and baubles than actual books.
The impact on indie bookshops was even more severe. Many had struggled under the one-stop bookshop model of big chains, but the widespread embrace of e-readers and Amazon saw such a large scale closer of indies that outright extinction seemed inevitable. But many held on, even through the Covid pandemic which was poised to finish them off altogether.
Remarkably, the reverse happened. Like other retail survivors, indie bookshops incorporated the use of online orders, curbside pick-ups, and local deliveries to readers who could not leave their homes. Some even signed on to services that allowed them to sell or loan audiobooks and e-books to customers. As the pandemic wore on, much of the confined populace grew weary of their unhealthy digital diet and returned to the tactile pleasures of holding and smelling and enjoying actual physical books, new and used. Recent years have seen a surge in physical book sales, with the numbers skewing wide from e-books in favour of real ones. Over the last five years indie bookshops have seen a growth of 15 to 20% since their steady decline over the two decades prior to that.
Indie bookshops do more than just sell books. They serve as a getaway to come in out of the real world and quietly browse imagined ones, allowing booklovers’ minds to wander freely and discuss their favourite books with booksellers. They also serve as supports for local authors, proudly selling their books and hosting signing events that allow these writers the chance to be read. Local artists, too, use the walls of indie bookshops as pseudo-galleries for their work, while musicians, theatre groups, and other community events rely on their relationships with bookshops to sponsor, promote, and sell their work.
Warmth and wisdom are to be found amongst the purveyors of the printed word, and while their prices can never match Amazon and readers may have to wait a few extra days for an order to come in, indie bookshops are there to care for and support their community. They only ask for the same care and support in return. So, this Independent Bookshop Day, please drop into one of the many other new and used bookshops who provide a pulse to the communities around southern Georgian Bay. For more info visit www.indiebookstores.ca.
The Book Hive is Meaford’s source for new and used books, and is located at 84 Sykes Street N.
