Buying Indie at the Big Chains

Last week I had a sudden desire to get my hands on a copy of The Hole Show by Maya Merrick. I determined that I had to read this book ASAP because it’s one of the few works of fiction to come out in a while that is set in Montreal.

Although I rarely buy books, I knew I would feel good about supporting a local author and a local independent publisher, Conundrum Press. However, I had a little bit of guilt about buying from the mega Chapters store on Sainte-Catherine street. As a one-time Chapters employee, I know too well how soullessly corporate the store can be - every time I go in there I have flashback to the countless chirpy i-rewards pitches I made and to the somber days after the Indigo merger when we were asked to pull every book that hadn’t sold in a month, classics be damned. I still feel guilty about all the books I naively proclaimed were out of print, simply because the Chapters database tagged them “unavailable”.

I was pretty sure that if I waited long enough, I would have a chance to buy Ms Merrick’s book at some far more indie venue (in fact, I had the opportunity to at both Expozine and at Matrix Magazine’s Pilot reading series this weekend). But then it occurred to me that, by buying the book at Chapters, I was actually encouraging the chain to carry books from local independent publishers.

I know that stores like Chapters will sometimes order large quantities of a title and then return nearly all of the unsold books to the publisher for refund. It’s not easy for small publishers to support that dynamic, and this has led to friction in the past (this in turn has led to small-publishers’ books being stigmatized with the “unavailable” tag in the Chapters database.)

After all, if local authors and indie publishers want to reach new markets, isn’t it essential that they get visibility in the major bookstores?

To be honest, I’m still not sure if this argument holds up. And by this same logic, is it better to buy an album by a local group at a show or at HMV? Would the indie clothing designers out there prefer we purchase their pieces off the racks of chic Mount Royal boutiques of from their art-mart tables?

Can some of our indie artists please weigh in and help me figure this one this little conundrum? (pun oh so intended…)