Canada's second-hand book dealers learn to adapt, profit in cyberspace

But sellers say that doesn't mean the final chapter has been written for customers who like to troll nooks and crannies in search of lexical treasures.

"Most of our sales are just good old walk-in traffic - the old-fashioned way," says Pat Edgar-Brown.

Edgar-Brown is the manager of Old Strathcona Books in south Edmonton and is one of the sellers around the world who have had to re-learn their business over the last decade because of the explosion of second-hand book sales on the Internet.

Old Strathcona, with an eclectic mix of 40,000 titles, has been growing since it opened six years ago. That's mainly due to word of mouth and over-the-counter sales, says Edgar-Brown.

Up until two years ago, the store sold books through the AbeBooks.com website. Sales were reasonable, she says, but were easily matched or exceeded by in-person business.

Quantifying book sales in the ephemeral world of second-hand stores - where shops come and go and books are sold and re-sold, counted and double-counted - can be a mug's game, says author Susan Siegel, also a second-hand book industry researcher.

But Siegel - who has written a number of guides to North American bookstores including the "Used Book Lover's Guide to Canada" - says there is no denying the web has fundamentally changed the business model.

"The ones who have stayed in business have adapted and figured out what's best for them," she said in an interview from New York City.

The watershed, according to her industry survey, came in 2002 when the total number of used-book sales over the Internet crept over half to 52 per cent, while 31 per cent were sold in "bricks and mortar" stores. The balance went through mail orders and book fairs.

In the United States, she says, her surveys indicated 90 per cent of actual shops-as opposed to stores that bought and sold only through the Internet or by appointment - were into online selling and were accounting for the majority of sales.

"I think dealers have a wide range of options that they didn't have before." Some go all Internet; some mix the web with counter sales; others go heavier online in slow seasons.

"Each one has to find their right niche."

In Winnipeg, Kelly Hughes of Aqua Books has found his niche by going big on the web - but not to sell books.

His 40,000-book store, just off Portage and Main, has a strong online presence aimed at making Aqua the hub of the written word in the Manitoba capital.

The site aquabooks.ca advertises idea exchange podcasts, upcoming events, blogs and online columns and updates of newly arrived books. The store itself has a restaurant and sponsors writers studios as well as a writer in residence.

"We're doing something that almost nobody else in the country is doing," says Hughes.

"We're big enough that people know we'll have what they want, but we're giving them these other things, which are intangible."

In Toronto, Paul Panayiotidis has been a bookseller for 31 years, has 60,000 titles over three floors at his Eliot's Bookshop on Yonge Street, and is a year from paying off his mortgage. But he isn't interesting in being taught online salesmanship.

"I'm too lazy. I'm too old for that," he laughs.

Nevertheless, he says, the bytes have taken a bite out of his bottom line.

He attributes four years of declining profits to the vagaries of the economy and the fact that people seem to do more of their reading online.

"I don't know if that reflects the whole industry, but that's my reality in here. It doesn't matter how bad it turns, I'll still sell a few books over the counter and it will keep me busy."

Siegel agrees that the main advantage of bookstores is that they retain a reader's ability to browse - something not easily done online. Internet book descriptions are notoriously inadequate or even misleading, she says.

In cyberspace you can't wander the stacks, eyeball the titles, pull out a rare gem, glance over the index and chapter headings and check to make sure the spine is in good shape and the glue hasn't stiffened and cracked.

"For really true book lovers," says Siegel, "there's nothing that can replace the experience of just wandering through a used bookstore."