An interesting, not to mention risky, business idea: Longhouse Books was launched in 1972 as a bookstore that only sold Canadian titles. These were the heady days of peak Canadian cultural nationalism though and it did well for a while. The original owners sold it in 1989, and after relocating to the Bloor Street address you see printed on this bookmark it closed six years later. I lived on Bloor West for a while in the early ’90s but don’t remember ever visiting, though I must have dropped in at some point.
Book: Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited by Philip Eade

Do you think it failed because of not enough output or people stopped caring about who wrote the books they wanted to read?
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I think it failed for the same reason most of the bookstores I mention here did, not coincidentally all around the same time: competition first from the big box stores and then from Amazon.
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Ahhh, yeah, that. That’ll do it every time, for sure!
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It was when I was working at Bookstop when it was sold to B. Dalton. That was when “books” became “product.”
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Yep. Had to make way for the crystal ware and yoga mats. Things that go with the bookish lifestyle.
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It’s definitely classy.
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I wish I could remember the store. I must have been in it, but I guess it’s so long ago now it’s all lost to me.
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