Indie bookstores redefine reader’s retail shopping experience — and become part of the community

If there are any positive effects arising out of the lockdowns and other patchwork social restrictions of the COVID-19 years, one of the primary benefits might involve a renewed interest in supporting local businesses and communities. The experience of isolation, combined with difficulty travelling, made people recognize the importance of smaller retailers capable of providing more personalized service than huge, anonymous, big-box chains could possibly deliver. In this sense, at least, the pandemic was a boon to one cultural sector in particular: the local independent bookstore.

As the country celebrates the 10th anniversary of Canadian Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday, April 29 — where people are encouraged to visit their local indie store — the sense of community support for smaller and independent retailers coming out of the COVID experience is profound. “During the pandemic, communities developed a lot of love for their local businesses,” says Jan Scott, proprietor of Betty’s Bookshelf in St. Mary’s, Ontario. “I think they probably realized that if we don’t support our local businesses, we aren’t going to have any.”

This is particularly important for Scott, a cookbook author who left Toronto for Stratford, Ontario, in 2020. Her decision to open a small-town bookstore during the COVID-19 pandemic was perhaps risky on its face, but Scott saw an opportunity in a community she felt to be underserviced. “I could see that St. Mary’s had a very active poetry circle, I could see they had a gallery, I could see that art and culture were really important pillars of the community,” she says.

Her gamble paid off: since opening her store in November 2021, she has developed a cadre of customers who patronize her shop and use it as a kind of neighbourhood hub. “We have the most incredible community of readers,” she says. “We have repeat customers, we have people who have become friends.”

Scott is not alone in her experience. Chris Krawczyk opened Little Ghosts Bookstore & Café on Dundas Street West in Toronto one year ago; over the past twelve months, the store has become a destination stop for horror lovers in the city and from elsewhere. In the year it has been open, it has expanded to include regular pop-up events with local romance bookseller Happily Ever After Books as well as hosting launches, setting up a mail-order subscription service, and even inaugurating a publishing line. (Their first book, “It Looks Like Dad” by J. Krawczyk, came out in March.)

Martha Sharpe’s Flying Books, another independent bookseller-turned-publisher, also became more established recently; after almost eight years operating a series of pop-ups throughout Toronto’s hipsterish west end, she signed a lease in December 2021 for a permanent location on College Street at Shaw. She now employs six people and has a clientele that is constantly expanding. “Some people are getting our newsletter and hopping on the streetcar,” Sharpe says. “There are also people to this day who come in and say, ‘How long have you been here? I live [around the corner] and I didn’t even know you were here.’”

It’s a sentiment Rupert McNally might be familiar with. Three years after being forced out of their Bay Street location when their landlord sold the property to a developer, Toronto independent stalwart Ben McNally Books has signed a long-term lease in a location on Queen Street between Church and Jarvis. After moving three times during the pandemic, landing in a permanent spot must come as a relief, despite the fact that work on the interior is still ongoing. As is the challenge of redefining a customer base. “Week on week you have more people coming through the store,” McNally says. “On the one hand, we’re not a new store by any stretch. But on the other hand, we’re very much a new store and people will have to realize where we are and get in the habit of coming by.”

That recognition factor is one of the things smaller booksellers count on to compete with big-box Indigo stores or the online behemoth Amazon. And it’s one of the things that Canadian Independent Bookstore Day was set up to promote. Featuring in-store appearances from local writers, illustrators, and publishers, along with contests and other specialty events, CIBD is an attempt to highlight the significance of indie booksellers as community hubs and promoters of local talent.

Or, in some cases, leaders in progressive change. Another Story Bookshop on Roncesvalles in Toronto’s west end, has long been a central repository for books on social justice issues, including LGBTQ+ and Indigenous focused books. Glad Day Bookshop on Church Street is the oldest LGBTQ+ bookshop in the world. And A Different Booklist, on Bathurst Street, became a significant resource for people looking for books about anti-Black racism in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter resurgence.

For those concerned about CanLit, indie booksellers are also an important locus. Smaller booksellers are adept at hand-selling titles that may hover outside the bestseller lists or are published by independent or regional houses. Sharpe says that, according to BookNet Canada, a data-tracking service for the book industry, since 2015, 42 per cent of all books sold through Flying Books were published by Canadian-owned publishers. Indie bookstores are important to Canadian publishers and authors in particular, where Canadian-authored books accounted for almost a fifth of all book sales in 2020, according to the 2021 More Canada report.

“My goal has always been to foster a community of readers,” says Scott, of Betty’s Bookshelf. It’s a goal that CIBD shares and it’s something that is specifically tailored to the kind of bookseller that is small enough and local enough and focused enough to be able to provide the kind of bespoke service a more cookie-cutter chain could not replicate.

Not that there is no onus on the bookseller in the other direction; it’s as important for a retailer to know their neighbourhood, something that may involve a reconfiguration for an established bookseller who moves into a new area. “In some ways, we’re a neighbourhood bookstore,” says McNally. “But in some ways, we still don’t have that neighbourhood here [in the new location]. I think the books [we carry] have changed and will change going forward as we try to realize what people around us are interested in.”

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