Local booksellers ride genre-specific wave

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This article was published 23/02/2026 (227 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you walk into the provocatively-named Bound to Please bookstore on Valentine’s Day, you’ll get the chance to tell a romantic story of your own — or a not-so-romantic one.

“If you come in on a date, you get 10 per cent off, and if you come in with a break-up story, you get 15 per cent, because you need the romance books more,” owner Dylan Yeun told the Free Press with a laugh.

Yeun, 23, opened Bound to Please at 995 McPhillips St. last month with the dream of joining Winnipeg’s collection of genre-specific bookstores after studying romantic literature in university.

“I took a lot of classes in university where we talked about what is and isn’t valued as a genre. And a lot of the time, romance isn’t valued as a genre worth studying because it’s kind of viewed as less serious, less important than a lot of other genres — and that primarily has to do with the importance of it for women,” she said. “So that was something that I was really interested in.”

Yeun filled her shelves with largely local artists and authors — she doesn’t have the Heated Rivalry book series in stock, but does have series-related stickers made by a local artist — and business came quickly.

She attributes it to a post-COVID-19 pandemic growing interest in small, hyper-local businesses, the rise of “BookTok” — a community on social media platform TikTok focused on discussing literature — and the possibility that the genre bookstore is having a bit of a moment in Winnipeg.

“I think Winnipeg has a lot more readers than people think, and we have a lot of community-oriented stuff in Winnipeg.”

While the genre paperback is a part of the city’s history — Harlequin Enterprises, the world’s largest publisher of romance fiction, was founded in Winnipeg — the current crop of genre bookstores is small but growing.

Along with Bound to Please, Dotted Lines (680 Watt St.), which focuses on Japanese manga, had its grand opening in November, and horror hub Raven’s End Books (1859 Portage Ave.) celebrated its second birthday last week.

Self-described “eclectic” reader Kallie Stephen, who was out shopping for books for her 10-week-old daughter on Friday, easily rattles off her favourite literary subjects — witchcraft and paganism, leftist political analysis — but she lights up discussing the horror genre, and Raven’s End.

“I’m a big horror reader, so Raven’s End is absolutely perfect, I spend way too much money every time I’m there,” she said.

Stephen was one of its earlier customers and fondly remembers dropping hundreds of dollars during her first visit on authors she couldn’t find anywhere else. “There was a whole bunch of books that I had on my (to-read) list there … it was really exciting,” she said.

Raven’s End owner Chelsea McKee-Trenchard describes the space as the second horror-themed bookstore in Canada, following a shop in Toronto.

“At two years, it was just validating that other people were as excited about the horror genre as me and were supportive of what we wanted to do in the community,” McKee-Trenchard said.

McKee-Trenchard added she’s not necessarily surprised the shop has stayed afloat and found repeat customers since 2024, because after years of struggling to find horror options outside of the mainstream, she knew she couldn’t be alone.

“There was this whole market that was being stigmatized and kind of ignored in the mainstream market,” McKee-Trenchard said. “I knew that if I existed, there had to be other people that existed as well.”

The bookselling community in Manitoba is extremely tight-knit, she said, and its readers are close, too. McKee-Trenchard suggests it isn’t just the books that brings them to local niche sellers, but also the range of community events, often focused around the love of reading.

“It’s definitely filling a niche that wasn’t around before … I think it’s just that people are getting more open with the things that make them ‘weird,’” she said. “So I think that’s why genre bookstores are having a moment, it’s building that community.”

She hopes the growing trend leads to more independent bookstores, especially in underserved areas.

“We definitely need more options, especially in Transcona, Kildonan, we need just more bookstores. So if it’s a genre or not, it’s just a need that I hope gets addressed.”

The Canadian Independent Booksellers Association represents more than 200 stores across Canada, a 10 per cent increase from the year prior, according to its 2024-25 annual report.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, there was an “explosion” of crime fiction, science fiction and fantasy bookstores in Winnipeg, said Michael Bumsted with Whodunit Mystery Bookstore (163 Lilac St.).

Whodunit has been in business since 1994, and was purchased by Bumsted’s parents in 2007. In that time, the family business has watched readers’ tastes change. In the 2000s and 2010s, interest grew in the horror and romance genres.

“Rather than having the occasional breakthrough writer like Stephen King, you now have dozens, if not hundreds, of popular and well-known and established horror writers, and the same is true in the romance space,” he said.

At the same time, sci-fi and crime fiction stores grew more rare. Bumsted describes Whodunit as Canada’s last full-time crime fiction bookstore.

A boom in digital books sold by Amazon in the 2010s took a heavy toll on genre booksellers, but a “sort of book-selling revolution” has taken hold in the past few years as interest in buying locally, buying physical books and receiving a curated buying experience has grown, Bumsted said.

“We’ve been fortunate to be able to be to pick ourselves back up on the upswing of that, in terms of a demographic of our neighbourhood changing to become younger and more interested in buying books from us … who really want there to be an independent bookstore in their neighbourhood.”

Tariff pressures from the U.S. has added a new wrinkle to the selling process in the past year. There are some books Whodunit can’t buy for readers without having to pay huge duties or wait through long delays.

Bumsted will walk readers through the hurdles to get through certain books before placing orders.

“That’s not necessarily great for our book sales, but at the same time, it’s a service that we think is really important,” he said.

“Being specialists and knowing what’s going on, both in the industry and in the genre, allow us to be able to speak with some confidence about those other elements of things. I think that some people think that that’s really important.”

February is I Love to Read Month in Manitoba.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca