Wednesday, April 09, 2014

Are bookstores dead, or turning a new page?


MARCUS GEE




Are bookstores doomed, headed the way of the video store and the Great Auk? Scan the headlines and it can seem that way. World’s Biggest Bookstore. Gone. Book City in the Annex. Gone. The Cookbook Store. Gone. Steven Temple Books. Gone.

Other much-loved independents from This Ain’t the Rosedale Library to Nicholas Hoare to The Book Mark all have disappeared from the city bookscape in recent years. Now comes the news that even the big Chapters Indigo store at John and Richmond streets will close at the end of May.


But all is not lost. If you are feeling low about the fate of the bookstore, just step through the door of Type Books on Queen Street West. Despite competition from ebooks and the giant bookselling chains, this brilliant little chocolate box for bibliophiles is thriving. Its sales are good. Its customers are loyal. The smart, friendly, learned people who work there are far from giving up the ghost.

From behind the cashier’s desk, Serah-Marie McMahon scoffs at the notion that bookstores will vanish from the face of the city. She lists all the independent booksellers that are still in business, from Swipe (specializing in architecture and design) to Bakka Phoenix (science fiction and fantasy) to Theatre Books (theatre, film, opera and dance).
“I can think of three specialized kids-only bookstores in Toronto – three, in one city,” she says. “Like, come on, let’s calm down.”

Type co-owner Joanne Saul is just as upbeat. When she founded the store in 2006 with Samara Walbohm, people told the University of Toronto English teacher that she was crazy. Three or four Toronto bookstores had just gone out of business. Amazon was threatening to flatten everything in its path. Just as now, “there was this sense that the future was bleak.”
She went ahead anyway, damn the torpedoes, and the narrow store opposite Trinity Bellwoods Park soon became an essential part of the city’s book scene. At Christmas the line-up for the cashier runs to the rear of the store. Type opened a second location in Forest Hill Village six years ago.
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