While traveling around Canada on assignment, I usually make it a point to visit museums, art galleries, and local bookshops whenever they are available.
Despite facing challenges from big box stores, online retailers like Indigo-Chapters and Amazon, as well as the rise of e-books, I am pleasantly surprised to find that many independent bookstores in Canada are not only still in business but also thriving.
Some notable examples include Bookmark in Halifax, McNally Robinson Booksellers in Saskatoon and Winnipeg, and Audreys Books in Edmonton.
During my recent trip to Kelowna, British Columbia, where I was reporting on mitigating wildfires, I had the opportunity to add Mosaic Books to my list of visited bookstores. Despite Kelowna’s relatively small population of just 157,000, Mosaic Books is an impressive 8,000 square feet store filled with approximately 17,000 current titles and numerous remaindered books. It feels like a bookstore you would expect to find in a much larger city.
I had a meeting with Michael Neill, the owner of Mosaic Books, his wife Michele, and Alicia Neill, the store manager and Mr. Neill’s daughter, to discuss the state of booksellers in Canada.
Mr. Neill has a unique perspective on the industry. Above the bookshop, he operates another business called Bookmanager, which provides software systems used by approximately 530 independent bookshops in Canada and the United States. His involvement with Bookmanager eventually led to his acquisition of Mosaic Books and his family’s relocation to Kelowna.
Let’s take a look at some numbers. According to the latest analysis from Statistics Canada, which reflects the pandemic year of 2020 when physical stores were closed, physical bookstores remained the largest source of book sales in Canada, with a market worth 1.5 billion Canadian dollars at that time.
Mr. Neill mentioned that there is no single formula for success or survival when it comes to independent bookstores.
“The fascinating thing about independent bookstores is that each one is unique,” he said during our conversation in Alicia’s office, which is already stocked with Christmas merchandise. ”Everyone is doing their own thing, and I appreciate that. It brings diversity to the industry.”
Mr. Neill’s entry into the book business was through his mother, Madeline Neill, who started Black Bond Books in Brandon, Manitoba. Together with his sisters, they expanded the business to about a dozen stores in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland region. In the 1980s, he began developing software for ordering books and managing inventory as an in-house project.
Other bookstores started purchasing the software, and in 1994, Mr. Neill left Black Bond to establish Bookmanager as a separate business. However, within a year, he realized the need to have a physical store as a testing ground and laboratory. That’s when he acquired Mosaic Books, which was founded in 1968.
At the time of purchase, Mosaic Books was struggling under absentee ownership and lacked direction, according to Mr. Neill.
2023-07-22 05:00:02
Link from www.nytimes.com
rnrn