Independent booksellers say proposed tariffs could empty shelves and drive up costs for readers, but one Ottawa publisher sees a chance to confront Canada’s U.S.-dominated book industry.
Canadian bookstores are staring down the start of a trade war chapter they didn’t ask to read. The federal government is threatening a 25 per cent tariff on books and certain paper and pulp products from the U.S. in retaliation for new Trump tariffs expected on April 2. But independent booksellers say the cost won’t stop at the border.
“The vast majority of books sold in Canada are printed in the United States,” said Cole Davidson, owner of The Spaniel’s Tale Bookstore. “We’d have to decrease the size of the orders that we can place.”
That means fewer books on shelves, much higher prices for bestsellers, and trouble sourcing titles by Canadian authors whose work is printed south of the border.
“If somebody’s ready to read the next Louise Penny and the only place we can get it is printed in the United States, there’s going to be an increased price for them,” said Davidson. “Books are not substitutable like many other products. You can’t just say, well, I’ll skip the Louise Penny and read something else.”
He’s also concerned for students required to buy U.S.-printed textbooks for assigned reading. “If there’s a textbook that their professor is requesting, then that’s the textbook they need regardless of where it’s printed.”
Most independent bookstores in Canada don’t set the prices; publishers do. Davidson said he’ll have little flexibility to adjust for tariff-related increases unless publishers and distributors absorb some of the added cost.
The Canadian Independent Booksellers Association (CIBA) has been lobbying hard for the federal government to exempt books entirely.
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“Books have historically not been included,” said Laura Carter, executive director of CIBA. “We were surprised to see them added to the list.”
Carter said the organization has been “all hands on deck” since the announcement on March 4. “We haven’t been able to quantify the exact damage, but we know it’s serious enough to put all our effort into fighting it.”
CIBA has responded with publisher consultations, open letters to every level of government, and a rare joint statement with Indigo, Canada’s largest book retailer, calling for books to be removed from the tariff list. “We don’t often agree with big box stores,” she said. “But this is one of those moments where the entire industry is aligned. These tariffs won’t hurt the United States. They’ll hurt Canadian readers and booksellers.”
In French-speaking regions like Quebec, the impact may be less acute due to closer ties with European publishers. But in bilingual cities like Ottawa, English-language titles dominate the shelves.
“We know that it would be devastating,” said Carter.
Independent booksellers, already operating on paper-thin margins, have few options. “Prices are printed on books,” Carter explained. “It’s not easy to quickly respond to a change to the supply chain. And life is expensive right now.”
Still, some see a rare window for Canadian publishers to regain lost ground.
“Maybe it’s going to change with tariffs,” said Peggy Blair, founder of Rebound Press. “The Canadian publishing industry has been taken over by foreign-owned and American companies. They want bestselling novels, and they don’t think the Canadian market can support bestselling novels that are set in Canada by Canadian writers.”
Blair, also a bestselling author, said her third novel, Hungry Ghosts featuring an Ojibwe detective in Northern Ontario was rejected by a major Canadian publisher (American-owned) that claimed it wouldn’t sell in the U.S. market.
“They said the only way they’d consider it is if I rewrote the book, made him Cherokee or Choctaw, and set the story in Florida,” she recalled. “I said no.”
She took it elsewhere. The book became a national bestseller without a rewrite.
Unlike traditional publishers, Blair built her business to bypass the U.S. supply chain entirely. Her books are printed in Burlington, typeset in Victoria, and designed in Edmonton. She doesn’t sell through Amazon or in traditional bookstores, only through her website.
She has doubled sales since tariff discussions began, helped by Canadian consumers seeking out local content.
“I do smaller print runs because I don’t have a warehouse, and I’ve been placing orders for reprints probably every 10 days,” she said. “People are finding us through made-in-Canada sites. Some are buying every title we sell.”
Blair has already rebranded her catalogue with “Proudly Canadian” maple leaf tags on covers.
“I feel like I’m in the right spot at a tough time. But I’m not minimizing the disruption. It’s going to be very hard on bookstores. It already is.”
The recent momentum of made-in-Canada content is promising, Davidson said, but not enough to meet demand.
“I don’t think that the Canadian market is big enough to fill that gap,” he said. Even if stores wanted to prioritize homegrown content, “about five per cent of what’s sold in indie bookstores comes from Canadian independent publishers.”
“There’s the hope that publishers move more of their printing domestically into Canada … but these changes can’t happen overnight,” said Davidson.
What’s left, then, is damage control. CIBA and The Spaniel’s Tale have been urging readers to contact their MPs, finance officials, and the Prime Minister’s Office.
“We all want to be part of a strong Team Canada response,” said Davidson. “But we don’t think that increasing the price of books is the way to do that.”
