News today that Indigo has sold off its rising star and dark horse, Kobo, to the Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten, came as a bit of a surprise to the publishing industry. During the past year-long restructuring at Indigo we’ve seen:

• the reduction of floor space for books;
• the decision to carry a title only for 45 days before returning to the publisher (meaning the customer only gets to see best-sellers and new releases);
• the increase of giftware;
• the complete revamping of its corporate image from the red, white and blue Chapters/Indigo to the blue Indigo;
• the shutting out of small publishers.

One has to wonder if Heather Reisman’s vision isn’t more about an upscale dollar store than about books.

And given the consistent reports of losses from Indigo (allegedly because of development expenses related to Kobo), one has to wonder why Indigo would sell off what appears to be a division poised for the greatest potential gain and growth, and why they would do so for only US$315 million.
To my mind there is only one likely answer: Indigo’s cash-strapped.

I very much suspect in the coming two years we’re going to see Indigo closing the doors of their smaller stores, particularly those under the Smith Books and Coles divisions, which are primarily mall outlets. And I also suspect we’re going to see stores under the Indigo banner, with lower sales volume, such as those in smaller urban centres and more northerly regions, quietly close.

What that’s going to do to the Canadian book buyer’s world is create a vacuum, because back in the day Heather Reisman went on her store buying spree, scores, perhaps even hundreds, of independent booksellers locked and permanently left their doors.

So, now with communities not serviced by a bookstore, more and more Canadian book lovers will turn either to online purchasing (and you can bet more Canadians will turn to the evil Amazon out of pique), or turn to eBooks.

For the indie bookseller this is an enormous opportunity. But, as usually happens, the indie bookseller, for the most part, is going to ignore that opportunity. Instead they’ll continue to grasp that long tail of publishing, waving the flag that reads ‘We’ve always done it this way!’ On their way down to where the light don’t shine they’ll continue to ignore the rise of small, indie publishers.
And with Indigo declining, and indie bookstores declining, statistics about Canadian readers are going to skew. We are, in fact, a very literate country. Just look at the writers we produce.

Unfortunately, no one’s going to realize there is a healthy environment of book lovers in Canada.
But we will, quietly and with determination, purchase those books in whatever form we can find them.

And small indie publishers like Five Rivers will continue to find creative ways to bring our books to market.