Canada's magazine of book news and reviews | Thursday, May 15, 2008
Archive for the 'Indigo' Category
Borders, the second-largest bookselling chain in the U.S., may be forced to sell itself off after hitting a financial crunch. Here are some takes on the chain’s troubles:
Eye Weekly has a brief history of the World’s Biggest Bookstore in downtown Toronto. Apparently, it used to be a bowling alley. (Bring your own tenpins and a bowling ball and it still could be.)
The writer, Marc Weisblott, traces the evolution of the WBB from its awe-inspiring early days when it dwarfed all the other book stores (which were all 5’x11’ or smaller and sold flour and sugar too) to its Indigo-owned present day, when barnlike stores are the norm and one of the WBB’s biggest-selling titles is Mood Your Change – How to Mind Your Think by Feeling Your Toes (or something like that), which Weisblott takes as a marker of the store’s current identity.
Weisblott lumps the WBB in with such much-loved icons as Sam the Record Man and Honest Ed’s, but its history, while varied and quirky, has brought it to its present state of fluorescent lighting, grubby lino flooring, and Conrad Black via LongPen. Meanwhile, as Weisblott points out, the Yonge and Dundas intersection on which it squats is rapidly cleaning itself up. How long before the condo developers come calling?
So do you want to save the WBB? Do you want to save things just because they’re old and rich with history, or do you have to actually like them too?
Many of you faithful industry watchers have probably already heard tell of the short documentary that Indigo CEO Heather Reisman commissioned earlier this year about the “crisis” in school libraries. It’s called Writing on the Wall, and while it spends a fair amount of time showing us how truly, appallingly neglected most Canadian school libraries are these days, it spends an equal amount of time trumpeting Reisman’s attempts to address the problem with her “Love of Reading” campaign. Over the past year or so, Reisman has been screening the film for publishers and politicians and anyone else who might want to support her cause, but as far as we’re aware it’s never been screened to the broad public.
Now, however, you can see it for yourself here, on Indigo’s website.
It’s fairly lengthy – more than 10 minutes long, by our estimate – but it’s worth a look, if only to see the maudlin denouement. After a straightforward – if predictably cheesy – first half, which simply documents the poor condition of most library collections and the lack of funding for teacher-librarians, the second half is like a reality TV game show. Reisman and her board pore over hundreds of school applications – they get most excited for the submissions with macaroni art and sparkles – and then we cut back and forth between two different schools that both desperately want and need one of the 10 $150,000 Indigo grants. The filmmakers actually put cameras in the two respective principals’ offices when the notifying phone calls come in, so not only do we watch and listen as Reisman informs one school of its win (accompanied by the expected tears of joy and laughter), but we also watch as one of Reisman’s monotone employees informs the other school that they have not been selected. In this latter case, the principal is alone in a gray, claustrophobic-looking office, and she nods sadly as she is told to try again next year. Ugh.
Readers of this space will know that a favourite hobby of book reviewers is publicly agonizing over the apparent decline of their craft. One of the most keen proponents of this view is former Los Angeles Times editor Steve Wasserman, who presided over a panel this weekend in New York that shared his dour perspective, reports The New York Observer. The event was reportedly as dreary as it sounds – that is, until a surprise appearance by a bona fide literary star.
Then, just as the post-discussion wine and cheese party was getting underway, a heavy-set, distinguished-looking man walked in the front door of the bookstore and strode towards the stage. “Is that Salman Rushdie?” someone said, eyeing the back of the man’s bald head. “Yes,” came the answer. And it was!
Here’s what Rushdie had to say about the newspaper review, more or less echoing Wasserman’s opinion that shorter reviews are proportional to their declining quality:
“It’s difficult if you just look at the newspapers now,” he said, “and remember how much more attention, how much more space was given to books in the very recent past. Many newspapers used to give three, four times the amount of space to books than they now do.”
But unlike Wasserman, Rushdie sees salvation in “the new media” – i.e., blogs:
“I think it’s rather unfortunate that some of the coverage tries to pitch print reviewing against the new media. I think they complement each other very well.”
The negative coverage Rushdie is referring to might be the media blitz surrounding the new book by Andrew Keen, a failed Internet entrepreneur and author of The Cult of the Amateur, a vituperative screed best summed up by its subtitle: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture. In it, Keen describes the blogosphere – and more generally, all facets of the digital age – as a forum where “ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.”
What’s peculiar is how the book came across this Quillblogger’s desk: It was handed out to journalists last week at a press conference hosted by Indigo, which launched a social networking community on its website on Sunday.
Apparently, Indigo isn’t afraid of acknowledging its critics.
Toronto illustrator Patricia Storms, who maintains the blog BookLust, has posted a lengthy account of her experience last night at the Bay & Bloor Indigo in Toronto, where she went to hear Ralph Nader speak. Nader was being interviewed by Indigo CEO Heather Reisman, but when Reisman opened the floor to questions from the audience, a bunch of people from the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid launched a noisy protest, accusing her of supporting Israel’s military effort.
As the protesters bellowed their accusations against Heather, she stood up, gripping her microphone in her hand, her face clenched into this bizarre tight smile, her eyes shiny and seething. She said that she would not engage with these people, and that their accusations were not true, and that unfortunately the question/answer period had to come to an end. Then the protestors starting ranting at Nader, trying to shame him for associating with Heather and Indigo.
Storms goes on to recount how Reisman and Nader each dealt with the situation, and it’s an interesting study in contrasts. You can read the rest here.
Larry Stevenson is back in Toronto, and Globe and Mail business reporter Gordon Pitts has a Q&A with the Chapters founder. After losing Chapters to Indigo in a hostile takeover, Stevenson reportedly studied at the Sorbonne, and in 2003 he took over as CEO of Pep Boys, a Philadelphia-based auto parts firm. He left that post last summer, and now he’s joined Callisto Capital, a private equity firm.
The Globe piece touches on Stevenson’s reading habits: he’s been enjoying Wayne Johnston’s latest novel but has also been essaying some Roman history, since “Fiction is fun, but I feel it has to be combined with learning.”
Also explored is the difference between the U.S. and Canadian business climates. Stevenson notes that massive layoffs and store closures at Pep Boys were reported in cheerleading tones by the business press, while “when we closed individual stores up here in my former life, it was a big deal.” And asked about the difference between books and auto parts, he says, “the toughest decisions in business are determing what is the business, who do you compete with, what are the shared costs.”
Quillblog can sympathize – we’re still trying to figure out whom exactly Chapters was competing with.
And if you’re wondering how long it takes Pitts to remind readers that his interview subject is a former paratrooper – a statutory requirement for any story about Stevenson – the job is done in record time, a mere four words in.
Prominent indie bookseller Richard Bachmann has spoken out about the More Canada initiative, in which several Canadian publishers are seeking funding to subsidize display placement for their titles in Indigo and indie bookstores.
In a statement issued today, Bachmann, the owner of A Different Drummer Books in Burlington, calls the scheme “outrageous,” arguing that “public money should not be used to underwrite marketing expenditures.” He also takes a pragmatic position – saying “we do not quite believe that advertising and focused display tables will work any wonders; those methods are already being employed” – and goes on to wax philosophical about the Indigo-dominated book market (“publishers have co-authored some of their own problems”).
Download a PDF of the full Different Drummer release right here.
Jason Sullivan, who works at the Robson Street Chapters store in Vancouver, isn’t your typical chain employee: he helped organize a union at the store in 2005, bringing the employees into the service sector local of Canadian Auto Workers. Now Charles Demers has posted a fairly wide-ranging interview with Sullivan at The Tyee. Their Q&A touches on the vicious circle caused by low retail wages; the union’s main goals going into the first contract; big stores vs. small; and Indigo’s overall effect on Canadian writing and publishing. (Sullivan’s answer to that last one is a cautious “good.”)
Related links:
Click here for the Tyee interview
The Globe and Mail has picked up on Heather Reisman’s plans to add more toy offerings to Indigo’s product mix. This is old news to industry folk, but the piece does highlight one intriguing stat: “Last year, about 70 million people visited Indigo’s superstores, but only about 20 million of them actually made a purchase, [Reisman] said. If Indigo can convert one more browser into a buyer — out of every 100 visitors — it would add $20-million to sales, she said.”
Related links:
Click here for the Globe and Mail item
Click here for a September 2006 Q&Q story on Indigo’s “edutainment” program
Our long national nightmare is over: Indigo will stock the latest issue of Free Inquiry, a humanist magazine that no one has ever heard of, according to a story by James Adams in Saturday’s Globe and Mail. It turns out the whole thing was just one big misunderstanding. Mercifully, it was all ironed out when the mag’s editor was the lucky recipient of a phone call from Indigo executive Joel Silver. “According to Mr. Flynn,” Adams writes, “the Indigo executive ‘gave me a sort of a stammering apology, said that the June-July issue was blocked by accident, and that they have contacted [Ajax, Ont.-based Disticor Magazine Distribution Services] to send it through again.’”
All of this still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. For example, did the editor of that magazine just make of fun of Silver for having a speech impediment?
Related links:
Click here for the Globe and Mail article
Indigo is at it again. After making headlines for pulling the recent issue of Harper’s that featured Art Spiegelman’s cartoons and article in response to the Danish Muhammad Cartoons situation, the chain has dropped Free Inquiry, a humanist magazine, reports the Toronto Star’s Antonia Zerbisias on her blog.
It’s an intriguing decision, especially considering that Quillblog was able to buy a copy of the April/May Free Inquiry that featured the actual Danish Muhammad Cartoons at The World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto, just a couple days after Harper’s was pulled. In a letter that Zerbisias excerpts, the mag’s editors don’t seem to know why Indigo has done this. “Presumably the controversial item was not Edward O. Wilson and Arthur C. Clarke, among others, congratulating one of us on attaining his eightieth year. Was it scholar Eileen McDonagh’s presentation of a novel defense of abortion rights? Or perhaps the article by controversial ethicist Peter Singer defending the cartoons and condeming the jailing of David Irving for Holocaust denial?” Zerbisias thinks it’s the last one — she sets that line in bold on her blog.
Related links:
Click here for Zerbisias’s entry
Click here for Peter Singer’s piece from Free Inquiry
If you’re looking for the new issue of Harper’s, don’t head to Indigo or Chapters, ’cause it ain’t there. The Globe and Mail reported on Saturday that the mega-chain has pulled each and every copy from its 260 stores Canada-wide. The reason? Those pesky Mohammed cartoons again!
Indigo is crying foul over an Art Spiegelman article that contains all 12 of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s infamous cartoons, along with some new comix, including one penned by Spiegelman and, according to the Globe, “two by Israelis, ‘inspired’ by an Iranian newspaper’s call in February for an international Holocaust cartoon contest ‘to test the limits of Western tolerance of free speech’.”
The Globe also boasts a leaked e-mail that was sent to Indigo execs, instructing them on how to respond to customer complaints of censorship, which includes the ever-so-natural and spontaneous-sounding “the decision was made based on the fact that the content about to be published has been known to ignite demonstrations around the world. Indigo [and its subsidiaries] Chapters and Coles will not carry this particular issue of the magazine but will continue to carry other issues of this publication in the future.”
And the final dash of salt to this wound in free speech’s side? Harper’s publisher John MacArthur chided, “I’d expect an American company to do this, not a Canadian.” Ouch.
Related links:
Delve into the Globe story here
Stephen Henighan’s latest column in Geist magazine, this one on the importance of Canadian-owned publishers, begins with the alarming prediction of a literary agent: that there will be no Canadian-owned publishers in 20 years, only “Canadians who write for American publishers.”
This has Henighan examining the possible causes and effects of such a development. He theorizes that, to compete with Indigo, small chains and independents have had to “reproduce the ‘Wal-Mart level of excellence’” to which Indigo CEO Heather Reisman aspires. Henighan asserts that, in doing this, small chains and independents, once bastions of literary diversity that stocked the entire backlists of writers, will stock only one or two titles from most given authors, leading to the demise of literary presses that depend on sales from independents to exist. Without the challenge of literary presses to contend with, big publishers’ standards will drop.
Henighan adds that the shallow stock of the dominant bookstore chains “train[s] servile intermittent readers rather than self-directed addicts. Their dominance sets in motion a downward spiral in which every year fewer young people are inducted into the reading obsession, leading inexorably to lower and lower sales.”
Just how bigger “Canadian-owned” houses factor into all this isn’t made clear, but given various issues for the “Canadian-owned” industry — such as editorial cutbacks at Raincoast and the partial foreign ownership of M&S, to name a couple — one would surmise that the future is not bright. And what could the agent’s prediction portend for Canadian writers? Henighan looks back and abroad for possible answers: back to the 1940s when “Sinclair Ross suppressed Canadian references from As For Me and My House in order to find a publisher in the United States, and Morley Callaghan’s short stories drained Toronto of its street names and history to satisfy U.S. magazine editors with a faceless Anytown,” and abroad to Angola, whose publishing industry was celebrated throughout Africa, Brazil, and Portugal during years of state sponsorship. A withdrawal of funding in 1990 led to the collapse of the Angolan industry, in which a handful of extremely popular writers continued to be published in Portugal, but young writers stopped emerging. Now that funding has been restored, Angolan writers, young and old, can find audiences.
Ultimately, Henighan revives the old but weighty argument of the effects of indigenous publishing on a country’s artistic life and national identity: “A nation without publishers cannot foster its own literary talent, record its distinctive experience of literary language, host aesthetic debates, thrash out its personal and collective demons, express its regional identities, teach its children their history or project its myths into the global ether. A nation without publishers loses the ability to define itself, and is destined to be defined by strangers and, ultimately, ruled by them. That is the sort of nation Canada may become.”
Related links:
Click here for Stephen Henighan’s essay in Geist
Indigo’s CEO and chief booklover Heather Reisman was on the tube the other day announcing her favourite books of the year. (In Other Media had Canada AM on because we were waiting for Live! with Regis and Kelly to start — their banter is genuine and delightful!) A couple of the picks were standard, like Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, which now officially has to be included on all year-end best books lists or else the taste police will confiscate your library (or Indigo Rewards) card, and the latest Doris Kearns Goodwin book about Lincoln or Taft or somesuch. But you know what wasn’t on the list? That’s right, a Canadian book. Adam Gopnik’s kids book, The King in the Window, could, in some marginal way, qualify, since he lived in Montreal, but otherwise, there were none.
The full list is on the CTV site, where your official Giller Prize network has listed James Frey’s memoir, My Friend Leonard, under “good fiction.” They also have a link to the video of Reisman’s appearance. Take one drink every time Reisman says “delicious.” And two drinks every time you think you see a little part of host Seamus O’Regan’s soul leaving his body.
Related links:
Click here for the CTV story
In more news on Indigo’s annual general meeting, an article in the Toronto Star describes the company’s direction, and includes the following quote from Indigo CEO Heather Reisman: “‘Essentially,’ she said, ‘our goal has always been to get as close to the Wal-Mart level of excellence as we could.’” The chain has just launched its IndigoSpirit brand of small-format gift and book shops — the first situated in Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital — and plans to open three new superstores and three small-format stores in the coming year.
Related links:
Click here for the full story from the Toronto Star
As Indigo reportedly plans to open a Coles outlet in Whitehorse this November, local retailer Chris Sorg, owner of Mac’s Fireweed Books, isn’t flinching over his new competition. In an article in the Whitehorse Daily Star, he discusses the move: “‘We’ve been anticipating them coming to town for at least the last 10 years; it comes as no surprise whatsoever. Am I overly concerned about it? No. Let’s have at ‘er.’”
Related links:
Click here for the full story from the Whitehorse Star
The first three Canadian invitees to the exclusive launch of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince have been announced this week: Eun Ji An of West Vancouver was the winner of the Raincoast sweepstakes, Emmy Chahal of Burnaby took the contest sponsored by The Georgia Straight and CBC, and Michael Farr won in the Chapters/Indigo contest. Three winners will travel to Edinburgh Castle to be the first to hear J.K. Rowling read from portions of the new book. The kids – 70 in total, with four from Canada – will then report to media on the event. The one other Canadian winner, from a contest sponsored by The Globe and Mail, have yet to be announced.
Related links:
Click here for the press release from Raincoast
Click here for the article in the Georgia Straight
In a further attempt to increase profits Indigo has expanded its range of products for “booklovers” to include jewellery. The line of jewellery — which includes high-end items worth over $1-million — will only be available on the company’s website. The Globe and Mail reports that the move marks a new partnership between Indigo and Seattle-based Blue Nile, “the leading U.S. Internet jewellery seller,” who will be providing the actual baubles.
Related links:
Read the Globe and Mail article
The folks at Bookninja have posted a very funny faux-awards piece on the site. Called the Bookninja Golden Shuriken Awards for Ridiculous Behaviour, the awards honour particularly annoying outbursts and flubs by assorted literary types and organizations, including ex-International Festival of Authors impresario Greg Gatenby, who is awarded the Canadian Golden Shuriken Award for “(t)rying to make yourself look like a needy pauper in order to justify selling a vital library that ethically belongs to a non-profit organization that could really use the money anyway.” Heather Reisman is also given a special GSA for “(b)ringing us what we didn’t know we wanted from a bookstore: 40% fewer books.”
Related links:
Read the Bookninja article
City of Squirrels, the blog of web designer Rik Abel, has a rather vitriolic review of the launch of Bruce Mau’s new book, Massive Change, at a Toronto Indigo store. Abel is a big fan of Mau’s and was intrigued by the famous designer’s talk on his new book. But as Abel reports, the evening was rather overshadowed by the presence of Mau’s onstage interviewer, Heather Reisman: “I disliked her from the outset, when she introduced herself as ‘CEO of Indigo, but I prefer to call myself Chief Book Lover.’ Wow, that sounded spontaneous and unrehearsed, and that explains why all the stores in the ChIndigo juggernaut are increasingly filled with non-book items such as yoga mats, pilates kits and cookware.”
Abel was further mortified when he saw Reisman seated next to Mau at the book-signing table: “She didn’t actually intend to sign books, did she? This book that she had absolutely nothing to do with the conception, creation or production of? Surely not even she could have such off-the-scale egomania? I was very afraid. And then, yes, the customer before me - Bruce signs her book, passes it along, Reisman signs it! Wow!”
Related links:
Read Rik Abel’s review of the Bruce Mau reading and interview
Heather Reisman’s comments at that Indigo annual general meeting a few weeks back continue to reverberate in the books community; now the Dooney’s Café website has posted some belated reaction. Dooney’s writer Gordon Lockheed argues that with its plan to maximize profit by shrinking book offerings, the chain is shirking its responsibility as a cultural institution. And, as Lockheed hints but doesn’t quite come out and say, it’s as a cultural institution that Indigo enjoys some unique protections under Canadian law — such as protection from foreign competition.
Related links:
Dooney’s Cafe essay on Indigo
An editorial in Toronto’s Eye Weekly takes great exception to Heather Reisman’s continuing efforts to transform the Indigo chain into a cultural department store, a trend that many people fear will mean less space and attention for actual books. What makes this trend particularly dangerous, the editorial argues, is that Indigo/Chapters already controls 70% of Canada’s “bookstore business,” a percentage long claimed by many independent booksellers and publishers but disputed by the chain as an exaggeration.
Related links:
Read the Eye Weekly editorial
Two business articles report on a speech given by Indigo CEO Heather Reisman at the Retail Council of Canada’s annual conference. The speech centred on Reisman’s ongoing efforts to transform the chain into “the world’s first cultural department store,” a phrase that may send chills down many a publisher’s spine. To expedite this transformation into a less bibliocentric store, Reisman announced that Eric Berthold, outgoing vice-president of high-end lifestyle store Cabana, has been hired to help stock Indigo and Chapters stores with more gift and book-related items. For Q&Q’s follow-up interview with Reisman, see our posting on the news page of OMNI.
Related links:
Toronto Star story on Heather Reisman’s speech
Globe and Mail story
A heckling incident at a Chapters store has turned into an ugly war of words that may spill over into the courts. Howard Rotberg, author of The Second Catastrophe, a novel set in Israel, was reportedly heckled by two Muslim men during a discussion of the book at a Chapters location in Waterloo, Ontario. The men reportedly accused Rotberg of depicting all Muslims as terrorists. When one of the men uttered an anti-Semitic remark, they were escorted out of the store. Indigo Books & Music has since released a statement about the incident, claiming that Rotberg retorted to the taunting with a racist remark of his own. Rotberg denies the accusation is now considering suing the chain for libel.
Related links:
Canadian Jewish News article
It’s no secret that display space in the bookstore chains is available to the highest-bidding publisher, but a recent trend in the fine art of retail influence has smaller publishers crying foul. According to a story on the Guardian website, major U.K. publishers have been inviting sales reps from the retail book chains on “sweetener trips” to such destinations as Madrid, New York, and Mount Vesuvius for lavish meet-and-greets with their frontlist authors. The reason: “ensuring increased orders for their books.” The entertainment budgets for these junkets apparently runs as high as £40,000, a figure that already cash-strapped smaller publishers have no hope of matching. The small publishers are arguing that this gives their corporate cousins an even more unfair edge; the big companies say that it’s just the cost of doing business. Does this mean we can look forward to Indigo reps being jetted off to Newfoundland for cod-tongue dinners with the Burning Rock writers, or out to Vancouver to snowboard with the UBC-grad crowd?
Related links:
Guardian article on bookseller junkets
Daily updates from the blog division of Quill & Quire.
You are currently browsing the archives for the Indigo category.
To add your own photos to Q&Q's Flickr pool, simply e-mail them to us, and they will be automatically uploaded. Use your e-mail subject line to give the photo a title, and any text in the body of the message will be attached as a description.
THE LATEST:
