If its fifth anniversary party Saturday was any indication, Type Books is doing the seemingly impossible. In the age of Amazon and the e-reader, it’s thriving.
For a solid seven hours the Queen West independent bookstore was packed from wall to tome-lined wall with customers, while local authors performed short readings every twenty minutes and shoppers browsed Type’s unique collection of books, magazines, and curios. Five years may not seem like a long time in the life of a store, but with independent booksellers across the country dropping like flies, staying open this long is a mini-triumph.
Owners Samara Walbohm and Joanne Saul, who met doing their doctoral theses at U of T, said that although starting an independent bookstore in Toronto was hardly a safe bet, they felt there were people out there that, like them, missed the community feel of a local bookshop.
“We felt there was a customer base and there were people that believed in it the same way that we did, and we trusted that,” said Saul.
Type is a rare bookshop where the line between author and customer is wonderfully blurred. Many of the staff are authors themselves, and Toronto writers make up a sizeable part of the clientele.
Andrew Pyper, who was on hand Saturday to read from his new book The Guardians, lived 300 meters from Type five years ago. “When Type opened up, I had an internal celebration,” he said. While he admits that the big box stores like Chapters help pay authors’ bills, he believes independent booksellers are a vital complement to the major chains.
“You want your book to be everywhere it can be,” he said. “But you want the [literary] ecosystem to be healthy, and that includes Type and places like it. If Chapters or Type closed, it would be catastrophic to the ecosystem.”
Saul and Walbohm don’t take the support of the community lightly. Since it first opened the store has hosted literacy programs for three local schools, helping kids in grades 3-7 learn about the joys of reading and writing. The Wordplay and Write Up programs are run by volunteers in conjunction with the Toronto District School Board and York University teacher candidates, and are Type’s way of giving back to the neighbourhood.
With five years of success under their belt and another store at Spadina and St. Clair approaching its first anniversary, Saul and Walbohm are optimistic they can keep things rolling despite the threat that digital readers like Kindle pose to the print industry.
“I think people will continue to do both [print and digital reading],” said Saul. “To ignore that Kindle and Kobo are out there is crazy, and I think it’s going to change the landscape. But I think we’re actually quite strategically placed already. Independent book sellers have always been up against some challenge it seems, and when we opened our doors people were like ‘How can you compete with the Big Box stores?’ and now they’re like ‘How can you compete with digital?’ But we’re not competing with them, it’s something different. What we do is offer the service, the community, the relationships, and the selection. People respond to that.”
That personal touch is evident throughout the store, from the friendly staff to sizeable section covering “Plotless Fiction” and the killer selection of art books. The idea behind the store was to start with the feel of a home library and throw in some exquisite, eccentric books that customers might not expect.
“So many of them are like pieces of art,” fawned Saul. “Kids books, art books, they’re so beautiful. These days it’s ‘slow food.’ Maybe there’s also ‘slow books.’ Hopefully it still has its appeal. Fingers crossed.”
