Once upon a time, way back in the mid-1990s, specialty fiction bookshops, particularly mystery ones, were all the rage across the globe. After its founding in Winnipeg in 1994, Whodunit? regularly shipped internationally to customers found through magazine ads and conventions. Often, these orders did not even come by phone, but were sent as lists on the backs of postcards.
Dr. Michael C. Bumsted
The first decade of the new millennium was hard for genre stores. The twin scourge of the big-box store – with space to house coffee shops, giftware, and blankets – and the rise of the Internet, both for commerce and as a publishing vehicle, meant that only a few stores like Whodunit? survived – mostly through a combination of luck, local support, and stubbornness.
Throughout the continent, and across the Prairies especially, the independent bookstore disappeared.
Gradually, however, independents came back. By the end of 2019, more bookshops were opening than closing, small towns that had been without started to see alternatives to shopping with enormous corporations, and . . .
. . . and then, pande-mania.
The impact of COVID-19, both locally and in the rest of Canada and the world, has obviously affected the book industry. Events cancelled, books delayed, shipments stopped, suppliers shuttered – all these factors hit bookshops equally, even before the additional and varied impact of the virus itself.
However, unremarkable to readers of Prairie books NOW, but notable nonetheless, people kept buying books. And since books are all we sell, that continued to work for us. COVID-19 has led to an array of customers returning to Whodunit?, or finding us for the first time, all of whom need, or needed, things to read while there was little else to do.
“The surge of local support for independent retail has brought with it a renewed interest in regional authors.”
It meant a lot of spring evenings in the car delivering books, and a change in how people could visit us, both in person and online, but the sudden increase in demand for books also included ones that would have certainly fallen outside of our traditional genre purview.
Cherie Dimaline, Joan Thomas, Jesse Thistle, and Michelle Good have joined Agatha Christie, Louise Penny, C. C. Benison, and Iona Whishaw as authors who are in high demand. Children’s books increased in popularity, and books on Indigenous issues, racial and gender inequality, and anti-racism have found a place in our store next to Scandinavian noir, Victorian sleuths, and cat cozies.
Even more surprising has been the rediscovery of some Prairie writers in our stacks, some used, and some that have been waiting decades to be purchased for the first time. The surge of local support for independent retail has brought with it a renewed interest in regional authors such as Susan Bowden, Alison Gordon, Anthony Bidulka, and Michael Van Rooy.
Bookselling in pande-mania in many ways reflects bookselling before Internet vending changed all forms of commerce. We hope that this support for local independent business continues past our current crisis and brings back to the Prairies the brick-and-mortar bookstore. We still won’t be selling coffee, though.
