Melville House Books

Heather Reisman

Despite rumors that have been circulating to the contrary — see the earlier MobyLives report — Heather Reisman, owner of Indigo Books & Music, Canada’s biggest book retailer, says she has no intention of selling the business.

Reisman made the statement during an interview with the Financial Post, during an exchange about the impact of Amazon.com being allowed to open a distribution center in Canada despite having no Canadian ownership:

Now that Amazon will be allowed to have its own distribution centre here, do you believe Ottawa should ease foreign ownership legislation in a way that would allow you to enter into international partnerships?

A: Amazon had a full-on distribution centre here before, but it was run by Canada Post. The change is they are going to run it themselves. In my opinion, once the government [in 2002] allowed Amazon to operate 100% as a major bookseller in Canada with no Canadian ownership, they were de facto saying that they believe in this day and age that you do not have to be Canadian to own a book-retailing company [in Canada].

Q: Do you intend to take that issue up with Industry Canada? How is it that Kobo can have international partners with a substantial stake?

A: I don’t have any reason to take it up because I am not looking at selling the Indigo business. Our Kobo business is a global business. But I think the government realizes that you cannot put legislation on a digital business – what are you going to do? You just can’t.

There is a certain irony nonetheless to the Amazon deal for Reisman — as her interviewer, Hollie Shaw, observes, years ago Reisman was tapped to head up the Borders chain when it started a Canadian division … “but was thwarted in the mid-1990s by Industry Canada’s restrictions on foreign ownership of booksellers.”

There’s further irony in the fact that Reisman has now partnered with Borders on the Kobo, the company’s ereader device — which, by the way, is looking like big business indeed for Indigo, set to offer “a book catalogue in 180 languages, and offers more than two million e-books for sale and an additional 1.8 million titles available for free download.” As to how it will compete with huge players such as Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad, Reisman points to a very persuasive price point: $149.99, less than half the price of the nearest competitor, the Kindle.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.