Welcome to Toronto, a book desert

Plus, the future of the book launch

Independent bookstores have reportedly bounced back (somewhat). “The latest analysis from Statistics Canada,” wrote the NYT from Canada last year, “which dates back to the distorted pandemic year of 2020 when shops were closed, found that physical bookstores remained the largest source of book sales in Canada, a 1.5 billion Canadian dollar market at that time.” Not sure what this means vs the ginormous Amazon market share, but if you live in downtown Toronto, you will pass extremely few bookshops in your daily life even as the downtown is densifying at a breakneck speed.

There is exactly 1 (one) bookstore in downtown Toronto that is not either a used books shop or an Indigo outpost. Ben McNally Books has found its new permanent home in the junkie-and-condo-pits section of Queen East, a couple of doors west of Jarvis. There’s a vast parking lot on the SW side of the intersection, and the Moss Park Armory on the NE. Further down Queen East, there is Moss Park, turned into an Ontario Line construction site for the time being. I expect and hope that Ben, who’s been in the business of selling books for yonks, has good reasons for placing the shop exactly here, where there’s not a lot of foot traffic at the moment. When the condo building sprouts out of the adjacent hole in the ground (in two years?) this part of Queen E should be a more pleasant experience. Here’s hoping.

The bookshop itself has unusually short hours. I can’t remember coming across another retail business that closes at 5 p.m. and takes a God’s day of rest every week.

Have you been to Corktown recently, Cherry Street, that whole area east of Distillery? It’s dense and densifying further with a bunch of new buildings nearing completion. No bookstore anywhere. Nor is there one in Regent Park, another dense section of downtown. Should you be struck by the desire to book shop on a weekday after 5 p.m. or on Sunday, you will have to cross the Don for Queen Books in Leslieville, or head to Eaton Centre for Indigo. The Indigo Spirit in The Path is commuter-tailored and closes at 6 p.m., and it too stays closed on Sunday.

Acadia, D&E, BMV that you see all sell used and rare books. (Can someone explain to my how a junk used bookstore business can pay downtown Toronto rents and proper bookstores can’t? Who’s buying scores and scores of dusty coffee table books and atlases from the 1920s to keep these businesses alive?) TMU and George Brown have pinned their textbook stores to the google maps too but they are of no use to the general readership. If you continue west, you will hit The Well Indigo on Spadina and Front. And then nothing until Type by Trinity-Bellwoods Park.

Surely, the situation is better on Bloor? The autonomous republic of the university-educated and -employed known as the Annex will demand a bookstore in its midst? No, it turns out.

Between the Manulife Centre Indigo and Bloor West Village (!) Book City outpost, there’s only one or two used bookstores, like the tucked underground Seekers in the Annex. Thunderstruck sells comics and manga. South on Harbord at Spadina, there are signs of life, but Caversham specializes in psychology and mental health and Bakka Phoenix in sci-fi and fantasy. Past Lansdowne, heading south from Bloor, you will hit the House of Anansi’s own bookstore. Fine if you’re looking for the A List edition of Basic Black with Pearls, not ideal if you’re looking for non-Anansi stuff.

There are no bookstores anywhere on Yonge between Eaton Centre and the St Clair outpost of the Book City. Then again nothing until an Indigo on Eglinton and then nothing again until you exit the city at Steeles. Apart from the Book City near Chester, there are no other bookstores the length of the Danforth that are not of the re-used and junk kind. (Even though the rare book store The Scribe in the Chester Village is a delight to visit.)

Nothing either over on the south west side, in Mimico, New Toronto and Long Branch. Densifying, with a GO line, but no bookstores. I guarantee you that Etobicans too read books. But on the vast expanse between Type Books in the Junction and the West Mall Indigo, Etobicoke is left entirely bookshop-free. (There are shops that sells comics, used/junk etc. Though I see there’s one tiny brave shop that appears to be the only establishment selling new books on the chunk of land between the Humber River and the city of Mississauga: A Novel Spot at Thorncrest Plaza. I must get in touch with the owners.)

So Toronto has five general interest bookstore businesses, apart from Indigo (Type, Book City, Ben McN, Queen Books, Another Story). Five book-selling companies and a chain is OK for a city with a population of under a million, but we are pushing three times that. Sure, there’s a specialized sci fi store, and an African and Caribbean-focused store, the used comic book stores, and a BMV superstore in the Annex, and a maybe two half-decent used bookstores in the whole of the city. (Keep in mind, authors and publishers see zero money from used bookstore sales and BMV. It’s its own separate market, akin to vintage clothing shops.) Is the future in the niche and in the ‘communities’? I wouldn’t rejoice it, if so. Is the dearth of bookstores a yellow belt, city zoning problem? Probably! How else to explain the paradox that some of the wealthiest areas of Toronto can’t sustain a bookstore? But as we’ve seen, even some of the densest new condo neighbourhoods of downtown are not even attempting.

How to launch a book

Do any of you remember This is not a reading series?