We often rely on analogy to speak of things. It’s been common, for instance, to talk about literature as a conversation, and many have used the same term to talk about writing and reading in Canada. This approach views our country’s literature as an extended, sometimes more, sometimes less inclusive conversation about our common lives.
Discussions of literature also often use a different analogy — the marketplace, as in, a marketplace of ideas — which is suggested by the actual, tangible market in physical books and intellectual properties. This framing has dominated discussions of the book trade since the 1980s, as more social-democratic post-WW II visions of society have been replaced by the individualism of liberal-capitalist economic relations based on private property ownership and rights.
Both of these analogies serve to illuminate aspects of Canadian literature as it has evolved since the 1960s. But neither helps us understand the collapse of that market, the muffling of that conversation, over the past quarter century or so.
For that, we might borrow yet another analogy, this time from the natural sciences, and consider the world of writing, publishing, bookselling, and reading as belonging to a single ecosystem, one in which the viability of any part depends on the condition of the entire system.
Once upon a time, Canadian literature was a wetlands teeming with life — startling creatures breaking from the underbrush with thrilling cries and bright colours, laying down layers of writing which provided a nutrient base for future growth. Canadian writers and publishers were issuing books at an unprecedented rate — but people were reading them at an unprecedented rate, too. And not just Canadians: our writers were being read outside the country’s own borders like never before.
Today, that once pristine wetlands is showing distinct signs of “development”. Over here, the Digital Pivot has resulted in the clearing of vast acreages for the construction of the server farms and the factories stamping out the circuit boards, plastic casings, and batteries that are envisioned as powering the literature of the future. Over there, the destination Publishers Outlet Mall, with its pallets of below-cost celebrity biographies, cookbooks, &c., surrounded by plenty of free shipping parking for your EV. Compared to those amenities, the loss of the little grove that’s been flattened to make room for the new Party headquarters is hardly noticeable. Surrounding it all is a colourful exotic introduced to provide an eye-pleasing screen for the ordnance plant across the channel. This is our arts councils.
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Throughout most of history, bookstores and libraries have been the most visible parts of this ecosystem of reading and writing — the physical place where these activities come together, where reader meets writer — or author (it’s complicated). Libraries, schools and post-secondary institutions also play a critical role in this ecosystem.
But our wetland has many other parts, most of them less visible, though generally discernible by its denizens: beyond the toiling writers are the editors, indexers, designers, typesetters, proofreaders, printers and binders, freight forwarders and truckers, cataloguers and bibliodata wranglers, hawkers and warehouse workers who together are indispensible to the books; but also the clerks and administrators whose role is to see that the various parts articulate with one another: the many unseen hands that produce the work. Not least in importance is the vital activity of review, criticism, informal discussion.
Most of history, because in the last two or three decades of the twentieth century this understanding was challenged, as part of a general questioning — disruption — of received understanding about how commerce works best in a liberal-capitalist economy. More simply, bookstores, and extant practices of disseminating books (and knowledge) came to be seen not so much as a feature of the landscape, but as an obstacle to its proper development. The historical / “traditional” bookstore was a chokepoint that was holding us back. Inefficient, slow-moving, underprofitable: dinosaurs, really, whose existence was limiting the benefits of reading to a minority, and whose creative destruction, or, at a minimum, dis-intermediation, was a necessary precondition for society to achieve the full benefits of general literacy, which (not coincidentally) peaked globally somewhere around the same time.
We have seen, with the advent of the mall chain store, followed by the big-box retail model, a diminution of the so-called brick-and-mortar bookstore — even as a few of them got a lot bigger, their numbers and diversity have declined. And with that, the opportunities to place books before potential readers has been greatly diminished. To what extent is a good question. And one of the first questions any serious examination of the book business in Canada would have to look at is the change in the number, and type, of booksellers in the country and how that has changed since liberal economics have come to dominate. But even without knowing the numbers, every participant in publishing understands this has changed and resulted in a more concentrated bookselling marketplace, despite the advent of the internet and the Buy Now button.
Anyone concerned about the malaise that has infected our literature — both at the reading and the writing end — would do well to consider whether the more or less deliberate, ground-clearing destruction of a network of smaller, independently owned and run bookstores across the country has actually harmed our literary culture, and did not, as was believed, clear the way for a democratizing spread of book-reading. It is worth noting that none of the claims made by proponents of the new-model book trade — expanded readerships, new audiences, more efficient bookslinging, all leading to greater profitability and more incentive to produce more, more, more great literature — have been borne out, except for the part about more books.
The premise / promise of the post-Thatcher reforms of the chronically underprofitable book industry was that insertion of modern, more capital-friendly business practices which opened the way for greater access to financing, was that the new practices would burst the constraints that were holding us back, and turn the sector into a more dynamic, profitable, and growth-oriented industry. But none of this has happened. What has happened is that the sector is now paying more in rent, interest, and banking fees, without however there having been any concommitant gain for the industry, let alone more, better, and cheaper books for readers.
What do Barnes & Noble, Borders, Chapters/Indigo, and Waterstones all have in common besides being big-box retailers? They’ve all had near-death, if not actual-death, experiences within not too many years of their establishment. This is strange, and ought not to be even possible. Not only are they run by the smartest, boldest, disruptive-thinking minds on the planet; they have had the singular advantage of being able to more or less dictate terms to their suppliers, even the biggest of the Big Five. And with all that, they still can’t make a go of it? These retail models are not just crappy stores; they may be crappy businesses.
There is room in the book trade for some giant bookstores. Anyone remember The World’s Biggest Bookstore, operated by Coles in the latter decades of the 20th century? There has never been a Chapters or Indigo outlet that comes anywhere close to being the reader’s paradise that World’s Biggest was. It, too, was part of the book ecosystem. Every city should have one of those. Instead, we have the identical branded mid-size (in actual fact) box in every downtown & suburb. Biologists call this “monoculture.”
And Amazon. Well, Amazon. How many people know that Amazon never recorded so much as a single profitable quarter from its founding in 1994 until the Trump presidency? That it only became profitable since then by renting out web storage to governments and large corporations, and taking a cut of sales transactions where they play little or no role in making, storing, picking, packing, & shipping the doodad? It is almost certainly the case that Amazon has never made money by buying and re-selling anything itself — which is, after all, what “retail” used to mean.
You know who does make money buying and selling books? Those nostalgic relics of the 20th century, independent brick-and-mortar bookstores, that’s who. Sure, not ever enough to cause a hedge fund manager to become aroused. But enough to keep a few people gainfully employed while doing something that makes the world a better place.
And here’s another weird thing about those forgotten relics of publishing of yore. According to BookNet Canada’s 2023 Canadian Book Market report, that’s who is selling Canadian literature: 10 percent of independent bookstores’ turnover last year was in Canadian titles, according to BookNet. This is almost double the overall industry figure of 5.3 percent. What must that figure be for the big-box retailers, with their market dominance, to pull the average down to just 5.3 percent?
Why, then, for the past twenty years, have our publishers prioritized relations with Indigo-Chapters and Costco? It seems against their interests to be doing so.
From my perspective in my role at the People’s Co-op Bookstore, it’s been plain that the Big Five are not making the same mistake. To some degree, they have all responded to the changes in the environment by improving their terms to independent bookstores — Penguin Random House and Hachette Book Group most prominently. Their behaviour tells you that they don’t consider sales through independents as some sort of sideline to their actual business.
Independent booksellers continue to grow wherever there is no looming dark shadow of a big box retailer. In East Vancouver, for example – not exactly Indigo country – there’s a cluster of at least seven independent bookstores, representing a diverse range of interests, inventories, and business approaches, where, ten years ago, there were three. None of them carry even a fraction of the inventory that an average Big Box can accommodate. But between them, they offer selection and diversity unmatched by the chain stores.
From the publisher’s standpoint, this is also far more desirable. Instead of having to roll the dice on that one sales appointment in Toronto that will make or break your title, you have numerous chances to get your books onto a bookstore’s shelves. This provides feedback which in turn you might be able to use to go back and persuade that bookstore that initially declined to take your book to reconsider.
This is important enough for the publisher of Isn’t Capitalism Great!, and even more so if your book is Boy, Capitalism Sucks. A retail model that is mostly focussed on top-line growth is necessarily focussed on the possible tastes and interests of the chimerical “middle Canadian”, and — regardless of the personal feelings of the individual occupying that buyer’s position — that’s going to be reflected in the big-box’s curation habits (a good moment to reflect on the evangelical roots of that term). It’s a more hostile environment to anything that strays too far from the middle of Main Street; good luck if your book is coming from the margins. Monoculture.
And this matters because one of the main lessons of 20th century bookselling is that a book’s presence in a bookstore is not merely the most important element in its “discoverability”, it may be more important than all other factors of a book’s existence combined. Numerous studies of consumer habits throughout the 20th century, in fact into the 21st century, suggested that as many as three book purchases out of four — and never fewer than half — were impulse purchases that depended on the book’s physical presence to trigger the transaction.
Publishers and others willing to accept the disappearance of their books from bookstore shelves were either gambling on replacement sales coming from some other source, like the Internet (which hasn’t happened to any measurable degree); or they were expecting to be able to thrive on half or less of their previous sales.
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Of course, none of the dramatic changes to this ecosystem have been lost on its denizens. Indeed, a plethora of new imaginative behaviours have arisen in response to the new conditions. The range of responses includes a growth in writers’ festivals, multiple-city author tours and events, internet-centred campaigns centred on the author’s persona and employing the latest knowledge of social media, targeted advertising, &c.. Much of it as clever and creative as the books themselves, and there is much to say about this. It deserves its own post.