Amazon has come to Canada. I can't figure out if this is good news or bad news. After all, Canadian bookselling has been demolished by big-box retailers — the Chapters/Indigo monolith. Chapters/Indigo started strong, opening stores that were big, airy, kept amazing hours (7AM to 11PM!), stocked millions of SKUs, and hired great people who were really knowledgeable — not to mention offering deep-dish discounts on new releases. But it went sour. Chapters consolidated its national distribution, bought out competing distributors, and became a vertical, virtual monopoly.
Independent retailers were forced to buy books from their biggest competitor, who engaged in all manner of anti-competitive practices (Chapters' distribution arm had the exclusive on Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, and every store in the country — except for Chapters stores — was given an out-of-stock message when they tried to order it. Indie retailers ended up buying the book from Chapters retail outlets at the 30 percent new-book-discount to stock their shelves, putting money in their competitors' pockets). Indigo and Chapters merged, the number of SKUs plummeted, the prices went up, the hours were foreshortened.
The last time I was in Toronto, I stopped into the big Indigo and big Chapters at Bay at Bloor. They had empty shelves, minimal staffing, and the cluster of indie bookstores that had thrived in that neighborhood were starving.
Meanwhile, Chapters/Indigo has taken to paying its bills with returned merchandise (sometimes reordering the same books on the same day, a favorite dodge of the mega-bookstore), or not at all. Some American publishers now regard the Canadian market as a bad credit risk; fewer copies are shipped, the terms are tighter and nastier. A friend in the trade tells me that her credit-limit has been reduced to one dollar: she has to pay in advance for every book she orders — that means that she doesn't take flyers on new titles that she thinks might take off; she just can't afford the risk.
Say what you will about Amazon and its relationship to indie stores, but its presence in Canada can't be any worse than what Chapters/Indigo did to the market. Perhaps a little competition will kick soil over Chapters' coffin.
I hear that Amazon.ca is in business with Canada Post. With luck this means that Canada Post will revise its goony package-delivery policies (when I lived in Toronto, they wouldn't even attempt package delivery to my place; instead, you'd have to go to the distant post office and queue up to get your books). And of course, by keeping the sales that formerly went to Amazon.com inside of Canada, it will repatriate (some of) the book-buying dollars that used to head south of the border. At least the money will go to Canadian distributors for Canadian editions.
