I’m not sure how things work where you are; hopefully its better, but I am really getting fed up with the book situation in Canada.

A number of years ago, we have many places to go to get books. Can’t find a book in one store and chances were you could find it in another. But then there was a huge takeover by one book chain giant of all the other chains around here and we were left with ONE. The same company owns all the book chains in the country now. And at least the ones in the city I live in aren’t particularly romance friendly. I live a block away from a large mall. Up to four or five years ago there were two book stores, each owned by different companies. When the takeover happened one of them closed, the better one of course. The one left doesn’t have that big a romance section and there were many books they didn’t stock. Then they opened a Chapters close by. I thought things would get better as Chapters is quite a large store, comparable I think to Barns & Noble. But there are quite a large number of books the Chapters doesn’t stock either, particularly by.

But things still weren’t all that bad because the Walmart located in the mall had a pretty good selection and unlike Chapters, they stocked quite a few books that Chapters didn’t. But Walmart did recent renovations and cut the book department down to a quarter of what it used to be. It took me weeks to get over that upset. Harlequins are about the only books they stock now in the way of romance.

Now there was another department store that had a book department that while not up to par with Walmarts, still on occasion had books I couldn’t find at Chapters. I happened to go in there the other day and thought I would check out their book department. I followed all the signs and didn’t see any books. I went back and forth, all over looking. And this was on my way home from work when all I really wanted to do was go home. Finally I asked a sales clerk where their books were. She informed me they had got rid of their book department.

Arrrggghhhh. So now we are down to pretty much ONE main source for books here in the city. I’ve been to a few independent book stores but their romance sections are almost non-existent. I do not like this situation at all and I don’t know how it was allowed to get this way. It’s not so bad for me. I do a lot of research on upcoming books and now that I’ve discovered the ease and fun of ordering books on-line, I can get the books I want. But how many readers do this? I’d say not your average reader.

And I don’t like the fact that there is little to no competition. I don’t really understand all the implications, but I have a hunch this could be a bad thing for readers and publishers and authors alike. How many books will the average reader miss because they aren’t on the shelves? How many books that authors write will never be read?

I don’t know what the answer is and I don’t think there is anything I can do. I guess that’s the frustrating thing about a monopoly – and I’m not talking the game.