Transcript: Thriving together: How independent publishers and booksellers are a perfect match
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Kalpna Patel: Thanks for joining us. I’m Kalpna Patel, product coordinator here at BookNet. Welcome to Thriving Together: How Independent Publishers and Booksellers are a Perfect Match. This session is presented by BookNet Canada and the Canadian Independent Booksellers Association, and in partnership with the Literary Press Group.
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Moreover, BookNet endorses the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and supports an ongoing shift from gatekeeping to space making in the book industry.
In today’s session, once I get my screen shared with you… There we go. So, in today’s session, I’m going to share a brief presentation on what the data tells us about the independent book selling market in Canada. Next, Colleen Cade will introduce us to two LPG independent publishers who will be sharing back to back mini presentations on how they collaborate with indie retailers. Then, Laura Carter from CIBA will moderate a conversation with two of their members where we’ll learn about their experiences championing books by Canadian indie publishers. And finally, we’ll use the time we have left to address questions from you, our audience. So, please submit your questions using the Q&A panel in the bottom menu.
Right. So, let’s get started. How was business for indie books authors across Canada last year? To find out, we’re going to use SalesData, our national sales tracking service for the Canadian English language trade book market. SalesData collects weekly point of sale information from bookstores large and small across the country. And of course, today, we’ll be focusing on the data provided by the independent aggregate, which is essentially a combined data view of all the indie retailers that are currently reporting their sales to us.
Let’s take a look at 2025. The graph here shows the monthly change in unit sales in the market from January to December over the last two years with that dark blue line representing 2025. So, in running the numbers for last year, we saw that unit sales were up 7.2% over 2024 according to that independent aggregate. And in looking at 2025, we have to, of course, consider the Buy Canadian movement that was so enthusiastically promoted by bookstores and publishers. This graph shows the monthly sales of books by Canadian contributors over the last two years, again, with the dark blue line representing 2025.
And just to clarify, when I say Canadian contributor, we mean any author, illustrator, translator, or editor who is identified as Canadian in the publisher-supplied metadata. So, for example, the wildly popular board book series by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen would be considered a Canadian title in sales data as the illustrator Jon Klassen is Canadian.
And looking closely at this graph, we can see that the sales of Canadian titles really started to increase as of March in 2025, which is of course when the Buy Canadian movement kicked off. By the end of the year, sales of books with a Canadian contributor were up 11% over 2024 in the independent market. So, it would appear that the movement did have a positive impact on indie bookstore sales.
In fact, in our recently published Canadian Leisure and Reading Study, which you can of course access for free from the research section of the BookNet Canada website, we found that Canadians have been choosing to read more books by or about Canadians in 2025 than in the past five years. And this has been trending up over that time period from 28% in 2021 to 30% in 2024, and finally to 35% in 2025. So, in total last year, Canadian titles made up 19.7% of the total number of books sold in indie bookstores across Canada.
Now, let’s look at the year so far. As of the end of this past April, sales in the indies were up 10.2% over the same period last year. And as shown by the green line, we can see a big sales spike in April, where sales actually increased by 26% over the previous month, so just between March and April. And not only were sales in general higher in the first four months of 2026 than the same time last year, sales of Canadian titles also increased by 17% over the same period in 2025, again, peaking in April. So, overall, it looks like April is a great month for indie bookstores. And let’s take a closer look at what was happening then.
Here, we’re looking at unit sales between weeks 14 and weeks 20. So, that’s about the beginning of April to mid-May over the last four years going back to 2023. And year after year, we continue to see a large spike in week 17, which just happens to coincide with Canadian Independent Bookstore Day. Year over year, we are seeing an uptick in sales during the week of CIBD, and sales in that week this year were up 6.75% over sales during the week of CIBD in 2025. So, constantly going up.
So, it’s clear that CIBD is great for sales, but what else is driving people to find and buy more books? Referring once again to our Canadian Leisure and Reading Study, we saw that word of mouth continues to be the number one driver of book discovery according to 36% of survey respondents. And in second place, at 27% of respondents, they chose the bookstore itself. So, browsing, staff recommendations, newsletters as the main way that they discovered books. So, all of your promotional efforts and in-store displays are a huge part of generating sales.
And we’re going to dive into more of that today, as well as exploring how indie publishers and booksellers work together to support and uplift Canadian storytelling, its authors, and the industry as a whole. So, let’s get to it and hear from Engagement Manager at the Literary Press Group, Colleen Cade. Over to you, Colleen.
Colleen Cade: All right. Thank you, Kalpna. Hi, everyone. I’m Colleen Cade. I’m here representing the Literary Press Group of Canada. For those who may not be familiar with our work, we’re a not-for-profit association that represents Canadian-owned and operated literary publishers from coast to coast. This includes ECW Press and Biblioasis, the two publishers you’ll be hearing from today.
Without further ado, let me introduce our first speaker, Elham Ali. Elham graduated from the University of Toronto in 2014, and since completing the Humber College Publishing Program, she has worked in marketing and publicity roles at Canada’s Ballet Jörgen, Penguin Random House Canada, and Dundurn Press. She joined ECW Press as senior publicist in 2020, and has been working in bookstore and library marketing since 2021. Over to you, Elham.
Elham Ali: Thank you so much, Colleen. So, I’m going to start by sharing my screen. Okay. So, I hope everyone can see that. Thank you all so much for giving me this opportunity to talk to you all today.
Today, I’m going to be giving a bit of a case study about “The Witch of Willow Sound.” This is a novel that we published in September of 2025. And I think it’ll make a really good case study for this presentation, talking about how indie bookstores and publishers can work together because I think this is a very uniquely indie book.
So, yeah. As I was saying, this book came out September 30th, 2025. And it’s a book that actually came out of the slush pile for us. This was a submission from an unknown author. It was a debut. And I think because it defies a lot of very clear genre labels, it’s a book that’s not quite literary, but it still sort of deals with a lot of important topics. It’s spooky, but not horror. It’s supernatural, but there’s no magic. I think it’s the kind of very niche, unique book that a lot of indie presses do. And so, I’m sure that there are a lot of presses in the audience who have or will have a book like this on your list. So, I’m hoping that you can take some really good information, clear points from it to help you in promoting more books with indies.
So, eight months post publication, this book has already sold over 2,600 copies in print in Canada, and 45% of those were through the Canadian indie market. And while it’s always hard to say exactly what made a book take off, I do hope that I can share with you how we kind of helped set the stage for the book’s success. And particularly, I’ll be focusing on two things, how we pitched the book and how we partnered with indie bookstores.
So, to start with the pitch, the question that I kind of want to answer is, how did we convince bookstores to take a chance on this book? So, we started working on marketing for this book with indies in May of 2025. That was when the booksellers list was first announced. And we decided that we wanted to really promote “The Witch of Willow Sound” for the booksellers list. So, we put together a little package and mailed it to 10 indie bookstores across Canada, the 10 that you see on your screen. And included in that package was an ARC, a letter of introduction from myself, a sell sheet, and I think the most important part of the package was an author letter from Vanessa.
And the author letter became really vital for how I pitched the book, as well as our marketing efforts more broadly, because we were able to use it in mailings, we added it to Edelweiss as a graphic, we put it in our newsletters. But the letter was so strong, Vanessa’s voice really came through, that at that point, when it was so early that we didn’t have any blurbs for the book, I decided that Vanessa’s letter would become a really important part of my pitch.
So, in June, when we did CIBA’s summer publishers picks, I used her letter and quotes from her letter, which you can see here, in my pitch. So, I think it’s really important to me when I’m pitching a book to have a really concise hook, but not all books lend themselves to having those kind of really snazzy one-liners.
For example, 2024, we did a book called “Grey Dog.” And anytime I pitched the book, all I have to say is it’s a spooky sapphic “Anne of Green Gables,” and people immediately know what they’re going to get. But with something like “The Witch of Willow Sound” which, again, is more unique, much more niche, it was kind of hard to find that snazzy one-liner. So, when I did pitch it, I tried to include all of the right key words. So, a spooky gothic with a steep feminist slant, witchy vibes, a focus on found family, I think those are all key terms. But the quote that you see on screen was the anchor to my pitch. That was where I ended it. And I think it was a really strong memorable place because it stuck in people’s minds. And I think it really invited readers to the book.
And so, once people have been convinced, how did we partner with them? So, a big part of my job is building connections and finding partnership opportunities with indie bookstores. And a lot of that requires outreach, but sometimes you get really lucky, and they come to you, which was the case for this book.
And so, three of our big bookstore partners were Good Dog Books in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, McNally Robinson in Winnipeg, and Bookmark on the East Coast. Madeline at Good Dog was the one who actually reached out to me. They were interested in doing an event with Vanessa, and ended up hosting her book launch. We also worked with McNally Robinson on co-op for the book and “The Witch of Willow Sound” ended up being on their bestsellers list. And then later in October, we featured it in Bookmark’s Holiday Gift Guide.
But we didn’t just limit our support to indie bookstores with those three bigger opportunities. In September, around the release of the book and in honour of the booksellers list, our team designed a special bookmark for “The Witch of Willow Sound.” And I reached out to 75 bookstores across Canada, asking if they would like bookmarks, along with some other swag that we had created, including these really adorable Cats of ECW stickers that people absolutely love. I love them, too.
So, I think the really important part about this was that these…receiving bookmarks was not attached to any sort of purchase of the book. We just wanted to celebrate this win and provide swag to our bookstore partners. So, we ended up sending 480 bookmarks to 45 stores across Canada. And that was out of over 2,000 materials that we mailed out. It was a really big project, but I think, ultimately, it was really worth it, not just for that book, but for our relationships with bookstores long term. Doing this kind of special outreach and special marketing item is something that we do a lot around special events. And so, I think that the positive effect that it has on our relationships and our branding with indie bookstores means that we’ll very likely do it again.
So, in conclusion, the question is, how do we gauge success for this book, but also with indie bookstores? I think that we’re really lucky that we have a really good number. To see that kind of sales in the indie market after just less than a year is really huge for us, and it’s really, really special. But at the same time, we really want to be able to set this book up for success long term. We ask ourselves all the time, how can we keep putting it in people’s hands, not just readers, but also booksellers? And we’re really seeing that impact now. Vanessa is still doing events, and we’re always looking for new opportunities, and finding new opportunities to promote the book.
Thank you so much. I hope that was helpful. And we’ll pass it back.
Colleen: That was perfect. Thank you so much, Elham. That was informative and enlightening. Next up, we’ll hear from Hilary Ilkay. Hilary works in sales for independent publisher, Biblioasis. She is also a blog editor for the digital translation hub, Asymptote, and a managing editor for the Simone de Beauvoir Studies Journal. She continues to dabble in academia whenever she can. And with that, over to you, Hilary.
Hilary Ilkay: Amazing. Thank you so much. It’s really a pleasure to be here. Yeah. My PowerPoint is decidedly less nice. So, I apologise. But I am sort of coming to this as a bit of a newbie. So, full disclosure, I’m still new to publishing. I’m less than a year with Biblioasis. So, I opted to sort of offer some more general impressions of what I’ve experienced in my time at the press so far. So, I do have a case study in there, but I was interested in sort of really reflecting on how I’ve been able to build relationships with bookstores in my time with the press as a sales rep. And two of our amazing bookstore contacts are on this call. I have really fun personal connections with both of them. So, very happy to be here. If you could go to the next slide, please. Amazing.
So, Biblioasis is a tiny, tiny team. We have five full-time employees. And I’m the sales rep for all of Canada. So, it is quite daunting, but it’s a huge privilege. And I really enjoy getting to see the full sweep of the independent literary scene in the country. And I have learned a lot already in nearly a year’s time.
So, when we used to outsource our sales, we were told that one time that our books were too dark for the literary market and they actually were not sellable. And this prompted the press to bring sales in-house. And this shift really allowed us to connect quite directly with booksellers, and learn their sort of preferences and habits, and represent our books ourselves. So, it’s a real advantage to be able to connect with people and be able to have someone like me read all of the books, have a perspective, and then share that with a real personal touch with booksellers and bookstores.
But from a numbers perspective, which is always important in publishing and elsewhere, it really directly resulted in higher buys and much better communication with stores. And I think that having in-house sales has really helped us build a stronger and more intimate indie literary community. So, I feel very lucky to have joined as the sales rep. And I do think that it’s really nice to have access to the books directly and then be able to sort of share the enthusiasm directly with people who want to buy them. And actually, I cut my own self off, which says something about me.
I used to work as a bookseller. So, I’ve sort of seen both sides of the process. And I was really struck when I was working as a bookseller that I never met with a single sales rep or they didn’t come into the store as far as I knew. And our owner and buyer did, but the reps had no contact with the other booksellers. So, there was kind of a disconnect between what we were reading and thinking about in the industry.
So, when I meet with bookstores, I actually try to know as much as I can, especially if the store is local, who’s working there and what they like. And that’s such a cool thing to get to know as many people in the community as I can. Okay. Next slide now.
So, we do a lot of bookseller care at Biblioasis. We really try to make our indie accounts feel valued and loved because we do love them and are so grateful to them. So, we are quite famous for the handwritten notes. We have someone in the office, multiple people, not me, because if you get something with my handwriting on it, you will not think it is beautiful. I have the scroll, but they write these beautiful notes and gorgeous penmanship on stationery to accompany our ARCs or just sort of comp copies. And if you’re really lucky, our designer, Jeff, will doodle something on the note.
And if we want to sort of establish a new relationship with a store, we send them a care package with lots of books and catalogs and fun merch. We love a fun merch item. We do the Biblioasis bookseller trading cards also as a way to make booksellers feel loved. When we visit stores, we always bring something so we’re not empty handed. And when I give printed catalogs, I annotate them by hand, which is when you have to read my writing, and I’m so sorry about that. But if I send you a digital one, I also sort of put tailored commentary on it and notes. Next slide, please.
We do a lot of mailing and a lot of communications. So, we send ARCs out early to help generate enthusiasm for the titles. And that was really crucial for the booksellers list, which was also super important for us. We had two books on the inaugural edition of the booksellers list. And that really helped generate enthusiasm for those two titles, the Elaine Feeney “Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way” and Marcello Di Cintio’s “Precarious.”
I send a weekly newsletter that I’ve been told people read, which is really wonderful, with updates about what’s going on at the press and media. We love co-ops whenever we can do them with stores and they suggest them. I really do try to get to know as many booksellers as possible through video or phone calls so that I can suggest things in a more direct way from our list, not just for the store, but for staff picks or book clubs or subscriptions. And I really do think we try to showcase the human side of publishing. Next slide please.
So, I use this as a case study. We published a book called “Self Care” last year by Russell Smith. This was the first book I was actually given to read in my interview. And if you’re familiar with the book, it has quite a racy first page. So, I thought, wow, okay, this is bold. And it was not performing quite as well as we thought it could. So, I organised a tour in Toronto with the independent bookstores. And we designed stickers with this quote from the Globe and Mail called “bleak horny comedy,” which was my sort of lighthearted idea, then it became real. And we brought them to stores and asked them to sort of buy in to a minimum quantity.
Russell and I walked around. Russell signed copies. We took a bunch of pictures. The stickers were very popular, and this brought a lot of attention to the titles in store, especially having them displayed. And then I did social media posts where I collaborated with the stores. And those were our most successful social media posts. So, I was really grateful to the stores who were game to put a sticker with “bleak horny comedy” on the book, but it really worked. And that was a really incredible example of collaboration between the press and the stores. Next slide, please.
So, just a few takeaways and conclusions. I think, the earlier we can inform stores about our books, the better. And we really do try to sort of keep communication. I always like to check in and just make sure that I’m always on the same page with the booksellers and learning their ordering habits. Knowing the individual profiles of stores is super important. We really do tailor our pitches directly to stores. And sometimes that involves me sending 200 emails in one day. But I really do make sure I know who I’m contacting.
We do try to create assets and merchandise that will help our books succeed in stores. And we’re always really open to suggestions about how that might happen in more effective ways. And though we are super small and always really busy, we really do, I think, invest and sustain our personal relationships with our accounts. And that’s something that I love about the press. And I feel so honoured to be part of it. So, thank you so much for letting me participate. And it’s a real pleasure to be here with all of you.
Kalpna: That was awesome. Thank you so much, Elham and Hilary, for sharing such interesting insights into how ECW and Biblioasis work with indie booksellers. We’re going to shift gears a little and look at the bookselling side of this win-win relationship.
As I mentioned earlier, we’ve learned that the second main driver of book discovery after word of mouth is bookstores which, again, includes staff recommendations and browsing and displays. And so, booksellers are no doubt a driving force behind the success of many titles. So, here to help us now uncover how some indie bookstores champion the work of Canadian independent publishers is Laura Carter.
Laura completed the Humber College Publishing Program, and has worked in a number of different areas of the book industry, including publishing with literary festivals and awards. She is now based in Halifax, and is the executive director of the Canadian Independent Booksellers Association. Over to you, Laura.
Laura Carter: Thank you, Kalpna. Hello, everyone. As Kalpna said, I’m Laura Carter, executive director at CIBA. With over 200 members across the country, our association works to provide programmes and services to Canadian independent booksellers and advocates to support the strengthening of the independent bookselling sector. You can learn more about what we do and how to join us at cibabooks.ca.
Today, I have the pleasure of introducing you to two of our members. First, we have Laura Ash. Laura has been a bookseller for almost 25 years, and has worked at Another Story Bookshop since 2012. Joining us from Halifax is Mike Hamm. Mike has been working as a bookseller since 1981, beginning with Read More, a family of Nova Scotian bookstores. Since then, he’s been managing at various bookshop locations across Metro Halifax until landing at Bookmark in 1998, and finding a long-lasting home. Thanks for joining us, Laura and Mike.
Mike Hamm: Thank you, Laura. Hi, Laura.
Laura C.: Okay. Let’s get to some questions. First up, what does a successful partnership between a bookstore and an indie publisher look like in concrete terms? And Mike, maybe we can start with you.
Mike: Sure. The bookseller in me says, immediately, sales, but that’s not always the case. As Hilary was saying, because a lot of independent publishers are on a smaller scale, and so are we, the relationship, I believe, is of utmost importance. Once we get to know a publisher personally, especially through rep visits or Zoom calls like this, we have a personal connection. And what is good for indie publishers is it’s a direct line to what is good for indie bookstores, because we both operate on the same basis. We want to become important in our communities.
And so, what independent book publishers produce is integral into how we weave our threads here in the store because, quite often, without expecting any added sales, we will throw together an end cap display with an independent publisher just to let everybody know, like with Brick Books when they celebrated 50th anniversary. And we were approached to focus, and we wanted to do it anyway, because it’s important to state that a lot of the success in Canadian publishing and Canadian writing is through independent publishers. So, that is the relationship that we love. And yes, benefits flow for each of us that way.
Laura C.: I love that. How about you, Laura? How about you and your team at Another Story?
Laura Ash: Yeah. So, this was actually a hard one for me because as soon as you threw in sales, I was like, well, I don’t pay attention to sales at all. And I shouldn’t say that, but I actually don’t. It’s not my driving factor at all. I really work with the titles themselves. And we are obviously a little bit more of a…not a niche bookshop, but we curate very specifically.
So, there are a lot of titles that we just don’t pick up just because we have a small space and we really focus on a specific kind of like…specific genres, that type of thing. But I really…I have to give Hilary credit. She said exactly everything that I would have said, because our most important relationship… People in the publishing industry probably don’t even know who I am. But I can go out and have a beer with my sales reps, and they will be able to…you know, we’ll talk shit for an hour and a half about tons of different things. And they know who my staff are, they know who’s working, they know what books to put in their hands. And that is really…that’s the partnership is you need… The books don’t just appear. We have to go through a ton of data. There’s so much stuff out there. And to have someone say, look, we want this book on your shelves. I know that you’ve thought about this. And so, it’s going to be there and it’s going to sell a ton.
Mike: And I would also like to say that, as an independent bookseller myself, we tend to take risks because what you haven’t tried before may be a success, you just don’t know it. That’s what a lot of independent publishers stand for me. They like to take risks. They like to have a personal stamp. It could come from artwork. Like “The Witch,” the ECW book, “Grey Dog,” they took a chance just with the cover. When I’m buying books, I respond to that. And a lot of times, I respond to that great design and that edginess because they’re from an independent publisher. It’s kind of a symbiotic relationship because we like to be…we like to create our own personality. And to me, that’s what independent publishers do as well.
Laura C.: I remember when Elham pitched “The Witch of Willow Sound” at the pitch night last fall, and everyone was sort of a collective, like, ooh, when the cover was revealed, because it…yeah, it made such an impact. Okay. How can indie publishers make it easier for bookstores to confidently curate their titles? Laura, maybe do you want to start this time?
Laura A.: Yeah. Well, again, it’s like a good sales rep, but also getting that sales sheet, making sure that… Well, I will say, we don’t love just the ton of bookmarks that come in all the time, because there’s just no place to put them. But marketing, if you’re putting money behind marketing, we notice that. That means that you think that this book is going to do well, you’re excited about it. And so, if you have a list of 15 books, pick 3 that you think are going to be absolutely amazing and focus on those, because that highlights the entire list, that gets people excited.
We don’t ever read. I don’t think any one of us reads a digital ARC. I keep trying. I can’t do it. So, we’re always kind of a little bit behind. So, if you’re selling us…if you’re sending us, you know, good data, and those good one-liners, that’s going to stick with us. And we’re going to…when that book comes in, we’re going to want to read it, we’re going to be excited about it with you. And, yeah, that’s the best way to get books on our shelves is to really have those standout highlights so that we know where we can put our energy behind, too. Because we can’t do it with everything. It just isn’t realistic.
Laura C.: Yeah.
Mike: That’s a really good point, Laura, because, I mean, my preferred method of buying books is to meet face to face with a rep, and they’re invaluable. As several of us have said already, long-term reps get to know your store, they get to know the personality, the people who work there, and they know what we can sell. But when I am, probably mostly through the time pressure, doing a digital order myself, to have all that data, especially to have that maple leaf there, because I will be particularly drawn to a book with a maple leaf designation. So, if it’s there… I’ve noticed some local books that didn’t have the maple leaf. And so, that data is really important.
Also, if I am not familiar with the author, and the cover hasn’t made me fall off the fence one way or the other, I will look at reviews. So, reviews are really important. And also, if the author…if you leave off where the author lives in the digital presentation, that is a huge determining factor. Because once I saw the cover of “Witch” and I realised…and then I found out that Vanessa was a Newfoundlander who lives in Nova Scotia now, it’s like, we’re in, we’re really in. So, that information is so important in the digital presentation of books as well.
Laura C.: How about the types of… Can you talk about the marketing strategies that have been successful for your bookstore when promoting and selling indie published titles?
Mike: I love the ones that are geared specifically to our store, because… I guess the last one that I’d use as an example, Anne Carson had a new book coming out. And our rep for Publishers Group Canada called me and said, “Would you like to do a window for Anne Carson?” And I thought she kind of is representative of who we are. So, I said, “Sure. Why not?” I didn’t even care about the co-op at that point. I knew it was right for our store.
So, he sent me a list of backlists that was on…available through a lot of independent publishers, and just got the window together. And people actually stopped in front of the store as they were walking by. And a lot of them said, ‘Why do you have Anne Carson in the window?” And we explained why, and that worked so, so well.
So, it’s that really nuanced approach to serve each individual independent bookstore’s market that really makes a lot of sense. And the fact that so much poetry, like in our store…I’m not sure whose listing does really well with poetry. Our store was the first store in which I worked that poetry became a bestseller, and so many great poets are represented by indie publishers. It’s so easy to me if I have a full listing. And also for data, if the poet…if there’s a poet in Winnipeg or Saskatoon who has been in any major poetry collection, once it’s there, I’m going to take a chance with it, because our poetry section is full of ones and twos of books, but all these wonderful indie published poetry collections are so easy to take a chance on. Once I see that really robust list of poetry, it’s going in our section.
And one thing that has happened, and I hope I’m not taking up too much time, a poetry professor here in the city, she will come to our poetry section and pull out about 80 Canadian published poetry books…we stack them behind the counter and she sends her kids in to pick out a poetry book by a Canadian poet, and 90% of them are from indie publishers. So, it is just something that marks us as an individual bookstore. We just absolutely love it.
Laura C.: Oh, I love that. How about for you, Laura?
Laura A.: Okay. So, in full honesty here, there’s not a lot of marketing that happens at the store. Where we put almost all of our resources is into our events. I mean, that is a form of marketing, but it’s slightly different. And it’s not…I think, us being a Toronto bookshop is where it works. I mean, that can’t be…the same system doesn’t work across the board. But, yeah, just even looking through my sales… The other day when we were looking at our event schedule already for the fall… If you do event with us, the book is gonna sell with us. I mean, that…who knows?
I think that any type of we’re promoting a book, I think that helps that book in every bookshop. Same with if any other bookshop is like, we’re heavily promoting a book that we are going to see an uptick in sales, too, or if the publisher puts a lot of effort, I think that, while a lot of that marketing, sure, it falls on us, we know when a publisher is really putting the time and effort into something because that’s the book that people come in off the street and just ask for it. Right? We don’t have to hand sell that book. They already know about it, and they’re walking and looking for it. So, I find that really interesting. But, yeah, for marketing, it really is our event list.
Laura C.: Yeah. You guys do amazing events. We only have a couple of minutes left. So, I’ll just end on perhaps the most fun question. And you spoke a little bit to this, Mike. But can you think of an example of an indie title that has sold exceptionally well in your store? And maybe share what you and your staff did to champion this book to your customers.
Mike: Shall I go first?
Laura C.: Sure.
Mike: I changed my mind after I reviewed the question. I was thinking of a particular book, but I’ve changed my mind. It’s an ECW book, “Grey Dog.” Once we knew it was from Elliott, of course, we were invested. We were going to keep it in big quantities, and put it in as many places in the store as we could.
One thing that is really important to us is to make sure that we keep stock of something and we try not to let it sell down and sell out. There were a couple weeks when we didn’t have “Grey Dog” in the store and we were quite upset. But for a small bookstore, we’ve almost sold 200 copies of that book. And that was just with one event with her. So, everything else is hand selling.
Once again, the cover, the subject matter of this indie published book, we made sure we got it in our newsletter. We made sure we had it in our window displays. We talked about it because it was one of those leading titles in this new wave of horror writing. So, that lent itself to us having a big success with this book. And we were just absolutely so very happy with Elliott’s success. And once you get personally invested in a book like that, it is so easy to sell and so easy to recommend it. So, I think most of our success was through word of mouth in the store. And, yeah, it’s just a wonderful time championing a book like that.
Laura C.: I do love, as a Bookmark customer, going in and seeing which books have little stacks behind them. It helps me know what you guys are excited about. How about for you, Laura?
Laura A.: Okay. Well, this is a totally different approach. So, I could say, Invisible’s “Beirut,” I could say Coach House’s “Messy Cities.” “Fire and Silence,” we championed with the school market. So, we sold a bunch to educators. And that’s a Dundurn. But the one book that shocked me…and it shouldn’t have. But we do a lot with High Park. And so, a book that is just very successful is Formac’s “Toronto Birds.” And we have a lot of people enjoy birding at the shop. And it’s an easy rec. And again, just to say that our bookshop is selling tons of “Toronto Birds.”
And I guess, what I’m trying to get at is that we have a reputation of being and selling a certain type. But as to what was mentioned, we take chances just as much as publishers take chances. And I would be very sad if I was never sold “Toronto Birds” because I made a shit ton of money off of it already. So, yeah, it’s sad. It really is just staff and all of my colleagues, all the workers are just knowing exactly what people want, and where we are, and who our neighbours are, and what our community is. And if we know that, and we can share that with publishers and share that with sales reps, and if publishers know who we are, that’s…again, to bring it back, that’s the relationship. That’s the success.
Laura C.: Perfect note to end on. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Laura. And now, our time is up. So, I will pass the microphone back to Kalpna for the Q&A.
Kalpna: Thanks, Laura. Great discussion. Of course, we have plenty of questions from the audience. So, I will also ask Elham and Hilary, if you guys would like to join us again. So, one of the first questions, this one will be for the booksellers. How do you find out about upcoming releases? What’s your process like? And I’m going to amend that a little bit and say you both spoke about the importance of your relationship with sales reps and those sales meetings. So, maybe beyond that, kind of how do you find out about what’s coming up?
Mike: I have my favourite presses. As I said, I love poetry. So, I will be following a lot of these presses online, Instagram, anything that will alert me to something that’s new. A lot of our staff members, too, they love the boutique fiction, international fiction. Biblioasis is great with that. Elaine Feeney was so easily a favourite of ours. So, we learned about the new book through being on the Biblioasis website. And our customers, ever since COVID and lockdown, they are trolling, they are digging deep online, and they will quite often special order a book. We’re getting special orders for books for late 2027. So, we’re getting our information a lot from people who are so engaged with books online.
Laura C.: That’s great. Laura, do you have any…?
Laura A.: Yeah. So, that was actually in my notes is that I’m often shocked by what our customers know well before I even sit down in sales meetings. Sorry. Yeah. So, that’s right there. That’s pretty fantastic. But, yeah, I sit down with sales reps, I go through catalogs. Actually, Dan at Biblioasis gave me a great tip on how to use the Bookmanager website to highlight all of my favourite publishers. So, I’m always checking and seeing what the fall list is going to be before that even happens. So, I have obviously my favourites as well. We try to be on top of that as much as possible. And then just the newsletters. I think I’m subscribed to so many newsletters, but I hate social media. So, I will happily…send me those newsletters. Hilary, I’m always reading yours. So, there you go.
Kalpna: All right. A question maybe for Elham and Hilary. In what ways are your sales reps kind of involved in your marketing campaigns? Hilary, you spoke about that shift of having the in-house sales from being outsourced. And Elham, you shared some of your marketing ideas and campaigns. What role are sales reps…how do they play into these?
Elham: So, for us, I think the sales reps are great because they are our first point of contact, kind of like both of our booksellers said. And in my job in particular, I think I’m meant to kind of follow that and build on that with that more personal touch. But what they also do really well is they bring us opportunities. So, some of the…in the case of Bookmark with their Holiday Gift Guide, and also the McNally Robinson co-op, those came from our sales reps. So, because they are usually more in contact with the bookstores, they’ll bring us those opportunities. And then we will kind of just…our job is to be game for everything and say yes as much as we possibly can.
But just a quick shout out. I saw in the chat that Cole from Spaniel’s Tale mentioned that “The Witch of Willow Sound” was also in their holiday gift guide. And that was…I’m so sorry. I remember that…I forgot to mention it, but that one came to us directly, too. So, I think it’s…the importance is communication, either communicating with sales reps so they can bring us opportunities, but also, don’t ever be afraid to reach out directly to me. I’m happy to say yes, too.
Hilary: Yeah. On our end, because we are such a small team, we all do everything. So, I dabble in the publicity and marketing, and our publicity and marketing people are also involved in sales. So, speaking of collaboration, the office is itself a site of collaboration, and I’m the only person not in the office. So, I often feel sad or a little bit of FOMO because I’m just this hovering face on a screen in meetings. But I’m really grateful to have such a supportive team. And they’ve been so…actually, everyone has been so welcoming and patient as I learned my way around the industry.
And I will say, so, I do…I go to all the publicity and marketing meetings or most of them. And we all generate ideas together because I also have read the book and I’m pitching it. And maybe the way that I’m pitching it is not the way that the publicists have been pitching it. And then, oh, wow, actually the way that you’ve been pitching it to media is giving me a really good idea of how I could pitch it to a bookstore. So, those conversations are ongoing. And I would say that a pitch for a book is never dead or it’s never done. You’re always sort of developing new ways to think about it and make it exciting and appealing. And the evolution of the pitch of a book has been something I’ve been really interested in seeing. So, the short answer is we are involved. Yes.
Kalpna: Thank you. I’m going to jump around the questions a bit because people are very excited to hear from Laura that she likes newsletters. So, they want some practical info from you. A few questions here. What volume frequency is useful and what would you like to see? Do you like to see things more like backlist or front list, display ideas, reviews? So, what’s your ideal kind of volume frequency and what’s your ideal content?
Laura A.: This is just for newsletters, right?
Kalpna: Yes.
Laura A.: Okay. Well, I get them as frequently as once a week to once a month. That is part of my job. I am the buyer. So, not every bookshop might go through them as much as I do. But I skim through everything and I’m always picking out stuff. So, I won’t read a five-page essay on a book, but a short paragraph. I mean, I can…again, I wish Hilary could just show hers because everyone should just copy that. No. Like, what’s going on? Publishers know where their books are. Publishers know where authors are. Publishers know where…what media is going on with their book. And I find that to be much…that, to me, having all that information into a newsletter, is way better than me having to follow all these accounts and spend…I’m not doing that. I’m not on my phone. I’m not doing anything like that. So, if I can have everything condensed into one, you know, hey, here’s a cheat sheet of what’s going on with the publisher right now. I would rather that.
Now, I don’t know if actually a lot of…I get a lot of the consumer sides of things because I actually don’t know if there’s publisher to bookstore newsletters. So, I’ll sometimes see that you all are selling your books for 30% off and I can’t compete with that. But other than that, if…yeah, direct to bookseller information is great because that all gets shared with everyone, not just me.
Kalpna: That’s a great point because there was a follow-up question about content. Again, did you want a bookseller specific newsletter or more industry specific? So, yeah, I guess something that speaks directly to booksellers would be super useful.
Laura A.: I’m not industry. I’m a bookseller. Everything I do is through the lens of a bookseller, how I run the business, how…everything. So, yeah, tailor it to booksellers. We’re the ones who are reading it. We’re the ones who are taking that information and being like, oh, shit, we need to make a display for that, or, oh, you know, this person is doing media in Toronto right now, or this backlist, they’ve discovered that this backlist is selling tons because someone did a TikTok on it. You have to know.
Mike: Yeah. And if there are some general information, if there’s a new title, a drop-in title that I may not have seen already, highlight it, segregate it, highlight it, put the spotlight on it. Because quite often, the success of books that have already been published and bought, you tend to want to read everything because you’re thinking there’s something really important here, but it’s just a success story of a book that we’re already selling. And I look at my sales records as often as I can, twice a week, if I can, three times a week, I will be looking at how my books are selling, but something that’s brand new, segregated and highlighted.
Kalpna: Great tip. And while I have you both, here’s a question. How can indie publishers get noticed by booksellers? Is there anything they can do to help booksellers select and sell their books? So, maybe someone that you’re not already ordering from or have a relationship with, what can they do to kind of get your attention?
Mike: I’m thinking of the best thing. If I get an email from somebody I’m not aware of, a good presentation on a website, that’s what I would really go to first. A lot of people would say, I’ll drop off some books, but if you have a very attractive, very presentable website with a lot of information, especially about the authors that you represent, that is probably my best first line of attack is I want to go there and see how your presentation is. And if I can put my full faith behind you as a good publisher, a wise publisher, that type of thing.
Laura A.: Yeah. Again, if you have a sales rep, use your sales rep, say, “Hey. I want this book in Another Story Bookshop. I think it fits.” Because that’s the other thing. I get emails all the time asking me to put books on the shelves. And they’ll be like, “I don’t know what it is. There’s no information regarding what the book is, or what the press is. And now, you want me to go and click on 100 links so that I can find what the press is while I’m trying to also just do a bunch of things,” because we are also a small team.
And it’s like, actually, the best…I wish I could share it. But the best thing that I think I’ve ever read was a consignment. Someone had a consignment zine that they sent to us just the other day. And their spreadsheet of what it was, was perfect. And both me and Eric [SP] were just like, this is what we want to see every time. And it was just…it had a great cover. There was a tiny blurb. It had the buzzwords that all the young people want these days. And they had comps, which was great because we can be like, oh, we know exactly what…who that would be for. It was small, it was concise, and they knew I want it in your shop. So, that speaks to me more than anything. It’s like, why us? And I want it to be us. I want you to think about that.
Kalpna: Yeah. A question for Hilary and Elham. What are some strategies for publishers to increase visibility and sell through? I guess that has to do with a lot for increasing visibility. That’s a lot of your marketing plan and kind of promotional efforts.
Elham: I’ll try it. It’s a really big question. I think, of course, this is something that I’m always thinking about, our whole team is always thinking about. And I’m always amazed at how we’ve been doing this for 51 years as a press, and we’re still always adapting and learning and trying new things. But in my job in particular, I think, like our bookseller friend said, that personal touch is such a big part of it. I’m always trying to find new ways to meet with booksellers in person and just talk to them, and to tell them more about our books, and to recommend our books personally. Because like Hilary said, the way that I might pitch a book is so different from the way that our sales reps would pitch a book, our sales director would pitch a book. And so, maybe my method is a little bit different, but I think the in-person aspect is a big part of it.
But I also think that in those relationships, it’s so important to not…to really tailor those pitches. I think Laura said that, too, like, why us? So, understanding your list, understanding the identity of the publisher, but also understanding the identity of the bookstore is so important. Every time a book comes, I’m not…I’m trying not to pitch “The Witch of Willow Sound.” Even though it is a key title for that season, it’s not going to every single bookstore, at least at the start. It’s going to places where I spend a lot, an absurd amount of time trolling bookstore websites. And I’m creeping all of your staff picks, I’m trying to find the best person to send it to. Because that also shows that we’re putting in the effort. And I think that, again, lays the groundwork, because once it takes off there, you can use that success to build more, not just for the book, but also for the press.
Hilary: Yeah. I completely agree with everything that you just said. And I think, building that relationship of trust is so important that the publisher trusts that you will recommend books to them that are right for them. And, yeah, I also am creeping on the websites all the time. But also, when I’m pitching books to stores, I’m in the history, the order history and seeing, okay, how many copies did they order? And did they sell through all of them previously? And if not, I wonder why. And could they maybe sell through this time with a new kind of book?
So, if I’m sending a reminder, a follow-up email to a store, I will pay attention to previous patterns of how another book, either by the same author in a series performed previously and make that an open conversation about what we can do to improve the visibility or the sell through. Because that’s something that we think about all the time is we often have really good buy-in. But then how can we get… There’s so many books in a bookstore. I remember this working in bookselling. It’s very overwhelming how many books there are.
But I think, staff picks are huge for us. Having especially shelf talkers, any kind of little thing that stores can do to make the book stand out. And if we can give more information about books, we’re experimenting with different techniques right now. But it’s really just about constantly trying to innovate your approaches and never sort of settling for one approach in general, but also for specific stores trying different things. Yeah, being open and flexible.
Kalpna: For sure. I think we could easily go for another hour. But unfortunately, we are out of time. So, thank you so much for joining us today, Elham, Hilary, Laura Ash, and Mike. Thank you also to Laura Carter and Colleen for your partnership and support.
And before we go, we’d love it if you could provide feedback on this session. We’ll drop a link to the survey in the chat. Please take a couple of minutes to fill it out. And we’ll also be emailing you all a link to a recording of this session as soon as it’s available. To our attendees, we invite you to explore the Tech Forum website, bnctechforum.ca, where you’ll find information about upcoming events and recordings of previous sessions. And lastly, we’d like to thank the Department of Canadian Heritage for their support through the Canada Book Fund. Thanks to you all for attending. Bye.