McNally Robinson owners deserve thanks not vilification
Re: “Bookstore’s loss still stings” by Jeremy Klaszus June 11-June 17 2009.
Much as I too lament the demise of McNally Robinson I think the thrust of the article is entirely misplaced. Klaszus blames the owners for telling it like it is — Calgary does indeed have a record of being unsupportive of bookstores downtown. To me that is the simple truth. Calgarians in the city centre tend to stick to the Plus-15 when it’s cold and to leave the downtown after work; that means that business at lunchtime when it’s sunny has to be almost unbelievably good to support a store the rest of the time. I’m not privy to McNally Robinson’s financials but I do know that the store was often very empty except during sunny lunchtimes. And yet they stuck it out for six years; by comparison Bollum’s Books was able to survive for less than two years after they opened a large (and also good) independent store downtown in the 1990s. Yes McNally Robinson’s owners may have made money on the real estate they owned when they sold (which was well over a year before they closed the store — they did continue to try to make it work for some time after the sale renting the property from its new owner) but that is only tangentially relevant to the bookstore issue itself.
Plenty of people have made money on Calgary real estate in recent years; if the suggestion is to be made that making money in this way entails an obligation to lose large amounts of money on some culturally valuable enterprise then that obligation should surely fall equally on all those who have profited on real estate in the city. And it’s hardly relevant either that wonderful-but-tiny Pages on Kensington is now thriving outside the downtown as the only significant independent bookshop in town. That confirms rather than refutes the suggestion that Calgarians are not supportive of a good bookstore downtown.
Klaszus attempts to suggest that the warm reception that literary publisher Freehand Books has received argues in the other direction. Here I have first-hand knowledge as the president of Freehand’s parent Broadview Press. It’s absolutely true that Freehand has been warmly received both in Calgary and across Canada. But translating that warmth into sales large enough to break even let alone turn a profit is incredibly difficult; that’s the plain reality in the Canadian book business and Freehand (which lost a significant amount of money last year) is no exception. Far from deserving vilification the McNallys should be thanked for remaining committed to downtown Calgary for as long as they did. Notably no local investor has since been brave enough to make any attempt to start a good bookstore downtown.
There’s a considerable irony about the way in which Klaszus brings his argument to a close. A main theme of the article is the suggestion that Calgarians have been unfairly characterized as "rednecks" when it comes to things such as the level of support for downtown bookshops. Not so suggests Klaszus — but look at the tone in which he does so: "So screw you McNally Robinson!" Enough said.
Don LePan
President Broadview Press/Freehand Books
