Once monthly on Meta-Talon, we celebrate Throwback Thursday by highlighting the classic and the kitsch in nostalgiac bursts of bibliophilia. Today, in an installment more classic than kitsch, we turn our attention to the archives of the Master of Publishing program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, in which students conduct on-the-ground research related to the publishing industry.

In 2006, Erin Williams wrote a project report entitled “The Chapters effect on British Columbia-based literary publishers,” in which she outlined the history of Chapters-Indigo and its rise to the top of corporate bookselling in Canada, beginning in 1995 and focussing on Chapters-Indigo as it became a mega-chain. Williams reported on this chain’s relationship to publishers and its place within the changing book industry, approaching these changes from the perspective of one independent literary press: Talonbooks (hey, that’s us!).

Here is the report’s abstract:

The restructuring of the Canadian bookselling industry – the effect on that industry of the creation of superstore bookstore chains Chapters and Indigo, their subsequent merger, and the parallel decline of the independent bookstores – is an area of heightened importance to the publishing industry in British Columbia (B.C.). This enquiry begins with the merging of three bookstore chains (Coles, SmithBooks, and The Book Company) to form the Chapters phenomenon in 1995. The period of enquiry ends with the newly merged Chapters/Indigo superstore mega-chain in 2001. The aim of this project is to document the events from 1995 to 2001 as they related to B.C.-based publishers; specifically, how Talonbooks, a Vancouver-based independent literary press founded in 1963, weathered the radical and sudden changes in the Canadian book marketplace.

Spoiler alert: Talonbooks is still around, so the company clearly weathered that particular storm. But new storms have since moved in; the current tumult in the same industry has to do with to digital publishing and its implications, and it may be of interest to those of us working in the book industry or supporting it to turn our gaze to the past on occasion, so that we can learn from our own history and prepare for coming challenges.

The full report is available in read-only PDF format from the SFU Library website.