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A bookseller’s cri de coeur

In the upcoming issue of Canadian Bookseller (not available online), Eleanor LeFave, owner of Mabel’s Fables and president of the Canadian Booksellers Association, weighs in on the pricing controversy with some painful memories from last fall:

I sat in the Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty’s office, explaining that our bookstores were full of inventory that we had suddenly paid too much for, hoping that he would tell Canadians that strong bookstores—not just cheap prices—were good for Canada too. He told us to find cheaper sources. We cajoled publishers and waited for help but most initiatives, when they came, were hard to administer and even harder to explain to our customers. We spoke patiently with the media, who were dangerously thick on the economics of retail. We asked for meetings with publishers but were told by lawyers that we could not meet to discuss pricing, lest we be accused of price-fixing.

LeFave also laments the recent closing of Halifax’s The Book Room, the lack of mention of “the powers of traditional booksellers” in the recent Canadian Heritage report on book retailing, and the general decline of the indie sector. “Will someone care to measure how long it takes before the loss of this literary meeting place affects reading and book-purchasing levels and even affects sales in loss-leader book retailers?”

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