Last month’s news that downtown bookstore Aqua Books and attached restaurant EAT! Bistro will be closing this fall hit a nerve with many in Winnipeg.

News media and concerned members of the community flocked to the Garry Street business to show support.

“Honestly, for the last week I’ve been doing nothing but talking to media and talking to people who come in and answering phone calls and emails. I’ve had probably over 400 emails,” said Kelly Hughes, owner of Aqua Books and self-declared mayor of “Winnipeg’s Cultural City Hall.”

The impending closure may have come as a shock to the public, but Hughes said he’s been thinking about it since January or February.

“There’s always hard times when you’re running your own business,” he said. “About a year ago I noticed that sales in the bookstore were softening up and about six months ago my wife and I started talking about it.”

Aqua Books moved to its current 8,400 square-foot building in 2008 after nine years on Notre Dame Avenue.

While poor sales were the ultimate factor for Hughes and his wife, Candace, he suggests a cultural shift away from traditional forms of reading may be partly to blame.

Karen Sigurdson, co-owner of Burton Lysecki Books, says she hasn’t seen the same shift.

“We don’t have 100 per cent literacy or 100 per cent of people interested in reading and we never have. People who like to read have always been a small but steady group of people, and they don’t change. I don’t see that as the problem,” she said.

As recently as 2007, a report commissioned by the Department of Canadian Heritage found no conclusive evidence that new and varied electronic distractions had eaten into more traditional forms of reading.

While e-book sales are on the rise, they still make up only a small fraction of actual book sales.

Sigurdson and co-owner Burton Lysecki believe the trend affecting Aqua Books is based on economic factors rather than cultural ones.

“These are hard times for bookstores,” said Lysecki, who opened his own bookstore 40 years ago. “(But) we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Lysecki’s store might be the exception to the rule in that regard. While stats for the used book industry are few, Publishers Weekly reported in July that sales of new books were down more than 10 per cent in the first quarter of 2011 over the same period in 2010.

Hughes’s numbers are even more dismal, with sales at Aqua Books falling 30 per cent this year.

Eton Harris, a collective member at the Mondragon, notes that while their bookstore is also experiencing a downward trend in sales this year, a direct comparison with Aqua Books is difficult due to a different customer base.

“We have a niche in our left-wing, radical political literature. I think there’s still a demand for that,” he said.

Regardless of the underlying causes of Aqua Book’s closure, reaction to the news was one of unanimous disbelief and support.

“We would do anything to help them keep going,” Harris said. “Small, independent places have to stick together, and especially places that are supporting local artists and local writers. We’ve got to have more venues than just a handful in the city.”

The same sentiment was echoed by Radhika Desai, co-founder of the Winnipeg Marx Reading Group and professor of politics at the University of Manitoba.

The Marx Reading Group has met weekly at Aqua Books since the early spring and depends on the convenient location to accommodate the large variety of people who attend.

“I don’t know if we’ll be able to find such a central and such a convenient place where we can meet,” Desai said.

The reading group also uses the space for free, which Desai said is a crucial element.

“We have students, we have people on low incomes and I think (paying) would be a burden on them,” she said. “It’s been wonderful for us, because it’s a very central location and it’s just the sort of ambiance we need, and being central it attracts a lot of people.”

Aqua Books hosts more than 350 events each year, from poetry readings to film screenings to concerts. Hughes understands that many groups that use his space are now jeopardized.

“Without being immodest, some of the things that happen here will just move somewhere else and it’ll be fine, but a lot of the things that we’re doing here would not happen anywhere else,” he said.

Like any small business venture, it’s not always about the money, but rather providing a unique alternative to a big box store. At the end of the day, reality and financial burdens are known to burst a few bubbles.

“The positions I’ve made haven’t been financially motivated,” Hughes said. “Certainly I need a way to get out of the glue financially, and right now, realistically the easiest way to do that is to sell everything, sell my building and walk away.”

Aqua Books and EAT! Bistro will remain open until at least the end of September. Visit www.aquabooks.ca.

Published in Volume 66, Number 2 of The Uniter (September 8, 2011)