SUNDAY FOCUS New chapter in local b Layne Christensen News Reporter lchristensen@nsnews.com CANADA'S wo biggest book retailers are slug- ging it out in a bloody war for market share, and the North Shore may well be their next battlefield. Chapters, the country’s No. 1 bookseller, and Toronto- based_ Indigo Books, Music and Cafe both have plans to open on the North Shore in the next year. Indigo is set to open in Lynn Valley Centre some ume this summer as part of a $5.2 million renovation to the 30- year-old mall. Chapters is part of a development proposed for the Avalon Hotel site on Marine Drive in North Vancouver, If all goes accord- ing to plan, the superstore could open by next spring. Just a short drive away, at 16th and Marine in West Vancouver, a Chapters store is also in a developer's plans. Can the North Shore sup- port three “big box” beok- stores? Are there enough read- ers in this community that boasts the busiest library in B.C. and perhaps all of Canada? Greg Rogers thinks so. As senior vice-president of Toronto- based Truscan y Corp., the real-estate investment compa- ny owned by Canada Trust, Rogers is negotiating with Chapters to open in Ambleside as part of a planned redevelopment of Hollyburn Medical Centre, Rogers has a commitment from the bookseller to open a mega-store at the site, subject to the site’s readiness, hy 2002, But Mary Trentadue is not so sure. Trentadue runs 32 Books on East 14th Street near Lonsdale. She’s also president of the B.C. Booksellers Association. “Ie's almost like a pissing contest,” says Trentadue about the book titans’ battle for turf. They (Indigo and Chapters) go head . ¢% head in every market, znd we're not talking about little invest- ments here, What it can do is put all the litle stores out of busi- ness.” Rogers dismisses talk that Chapters’ aggressive growth strategy may just put itself out of business. “It won't happen. Larry won’t do it,” he says, referring to Chapters CEO Larry Stevenson, who has been accused by pub- i NEWS photo Mike Wakefield VALERIE Kless-Townsend hopes to attract more customers by adding @ tearoom to Roots Baoks, formerly Amber Books, in Dundarave. lishers, authors and independent booksellers of trying to monopo- lize the Canadian book industry. Chapters, a publicly traded company that is 7% owned by U.S. jant Barnes and Noble Inc., has seen its shares drop from a high - of $36 last May to a low of $10.25 in February before closing at $13.60 Thursday. Analysts have questioned whether the marker can support the 110 to.125 superstores in Canada that Chapters CEO Larry Stevenson believes possible. Chapters opened its 70th store in St. john’s, Newfoundland in March. (Chapters also owns 243 tradi- tional Coles and SmithBooks stores. } Indigo, a privately held com- yy owned by Heather Reisman of Toronto, has just 14 stores. Lynn Valley will be Indigo’s first B.C. location. ; ‘A Chapters in Ambleside would draw customers to the village ‘core, says Rogers. “It’s a very comfortable retail experience, for READERS’ choices will increase with the arrival on the North Shore later this year of Chapters and Indigo mega-bookstores. Independent booksellers worry the superstores will put them out of business. which a customer will qavel from a greater distance.” And that means other businesses will benefit. But can the North Shore really support two Chapters stores mere minutes from one another as well as Indigo in neighbouring Lynn Valley? Critics say Chapters’ “clustering” strategy — inundating a par- ticular market with superstores — is designed to kill its competi- tors. And that worries the pruprictor of Gold Bond Books, the North Shore’s newest independent bookseller. Located at 1545 Marine Dr. in West Vancouver, the bookstore opened last June and shares sp2ce with Music Gallery, a CD store and cafe. “I'm still trying to build up the business. [t's a small opera- tion,” says owner Christine Hintersteininger. “You cannot predict who's going to stay and who's not. Chapters lost a Jot of money last year. It seems they just want to fight tt out. [fit (the customer base) is spread too thin, one of them will lose too.” Celia Duthie knows that ail to well. After 42 years in business, her family-owned Duthies Books grew to be the dominant bookseller in Vancouver, Last May, with almost $4 million of debt, Duthies sought court protection from _ its creditors and closed nine of its 10 stores. “They (Chapters) did everything in their power to rake us out,” says Duthie, on the phone from her uome on Galiano Island, where she now runs weekend retreats for book lovers. (Visit for more information.) “There was nothing we did that they could not throw to their marketing team and adapt for their stores in a matter of months.” Duthie sees the rise of the superstore as just part of a greater, more disturbing trend. “What's happening in the book business is that the mass market is taking over,” she says. “We were a full-service bookstore. We knew what we had on the shelves, we could special order. Now that knowledge is not valued, because the com- puter databases can do that for you. Any idiot can do data mining.” Online booksellers are also taking away business from the independent bookseller, says Duthie, whose company was one of the first bookstores in North America to faunch a searchable data- base on the Internet, back in 1993. “All my advisers said: “There’s a company from Seattle that’s on your site 12 hours a day.’ It turned out to be Amazon.” Amazon is the biggest bookseller on the Internet in Canada. Deep discounting is another threat to the mom-and-pop book- store, adds Duthie. “What's happening is this whole American consumer mentality that you're a fool if you've paid full price. The small stores just can’t compete price-wise.” What can the independent bookseller do to compete? “Hunker down and ride this wave. Drum up specialities,” says Duthic, whose family name is kept alive with the Duthie Book Award, to be presented at the B.C. Book Awards April 29 in Vancouver. Duthie’s Fourth Avenue store has also remained open and is now run by sister Cathy Legate, a West Vancouver resident. Phyllis Simon and Kelly McKinnon have already taken that advice. The co-owners of Kidsbooks, with locations in Kitsilano and Edgemont Village, have found their niche as a specialty retail- er and claim to be the largest bookseller of children’s books in North Amenica. “It’s just a waste of energy to worry about what may or may not happen,” says Simon about what cflect, if any, a North Shore Chapters may have on their business. “We've already been through this song and dance with the Chapters open- ing on Broadway and we're doing fine and great.” Trentadue sees Chapters as less of a threat to her business than Indigo, which is more upscale than its larger competitor and possibly a better fit for the North Shore. Her cosy. 32 Books store on Central Lonsdale buses with customers cager to purchase the latest read. She's estab- lished a book club, organizes author readings in the store as well as at the local libraries. She’s also one of the key orga- nizers of Word on the Steet, a literary festival chat takes place at Library Square cach fall. Trentadue does it for her love of books. Asa business strategy, it seems to be working. “We've done very well. We are very well supported by our community,” says Trentaduc, whose store celebrated its sec- ond anniversary April 1. Sales have grown 56% over the first year of operation, she says. When looking fer a location for her store, Trentadue didn’t limit her search to the North Shore, but setded here for its neigh- bourhcod feel: “The North Shore is the only community-driven area that I have come across in the Lower Mainland. There’s a real strong sense of community here.” It’s that sense of community that Valerie Kless-Townsend is hoping will help make her Roots Books and Tearoom a success. A former nurse, Kiess-Townsend took over the Amber Bookshop from its long-time proprietor Kathleen Nairne in February. In addition to selling new and used books, she’s adding a tearoom, to open by the end of the month, and hopes to attract poets, authors and musicians to the space. “f really, wuly believe there’s a double movement — a techno movement and a movement back to community living. I think there's a place for both,” says Kless-Townsend, who is intent on creating what she calls “a human space.” Author Blanche Howard has lived on the North Shore for 25 years. She has mixed feelings about Chapters and other superstore Fooksellers, “They did authors a favour in making it sexy to read books and they created comfortable surroundings. All of chat was positive, but there are some severe negatives. Most people who run a bookstore are people who absolutely love literature, Unfortunately, when you get into the great big-bucks business they’re (superstores) not going to allow themselves the luxury of pushing literature more than they're pushing the latest best seller.” Howard also expresses her concern that Chapters” 82% stake in Pegasus, the country’s biggest book distributor, means the super- store may have power of what gets published. “It’s forced many of the big publishers to be much less likely to take a chance on a lesser known author, ” says Howard, whose lat- est novel, Penelope’s Way, was seriously considered by three major publishers, she says. In the end it was Coteau Books, a small pub- lisher in Regina, that picked it up. Coteau also published A Celibate Season, which Howard co-authored with friend and Pulitzer prize winner Carol Shieids. That novel was reissued last year by Random House. “They (superstores) try to pretend that they care about books and reading. I think the bottom line is they don’: care. It’s just about money,” says Trentadue. And it’s that kind of thinking that’s helping form a kind of backlash movement among book lovers. Book lovers like Nancy Cameron. A social studies teacher ac a Vancouver high school, the West Vancouver resident always has six or seven books on the go. So do her daughters, ages seven and 15. If Chapters comes to West Vancouver, you won't find Cameron there, sipping a Starbucks latte, sitting in one of the comfy chairs and cracking open the latest Danielle Steel novel. : “I find that store very irritating,” says Cameron. “It’s all very glamorcus but that’s not what makes people read. It’s so bright and so shiny and so unbooklike. There’s no one around to help you. If you do find somebody, they’ve never heard of the subject matter. [ went in once and came away thinking; It’s like being in a shopping centre. You come out with your head aching.” Next week in Sunday Focus NEXT week in Sunday Focus reporter Anna Marie D’Angelo chronicles the armed pursuit of a home invader in North Vancouver last year. To suggest a feature story that deserves to be “in Focus” write to Martin Millerchip, North Shore News, 1139 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver, V7M 2H4, fax 985-2104 or e-mail . ; NEWS photo Terry Potersa