Within 48 hours of Boreal Books^® obtaining its ISBN suffix for Shooting the Messenger, Amazon was in touch offering to establish a “vendor account” so that they could sell our latest offering on their website.

Having heard nothing from Chapters we sent them an email, as instructed on their website, asking for a vendor code.

They refused our request.

Chapters was created in 1994 with the merger of Coles and SmithBooks, Canada's two largest book chains at the time. SmithBooks has been gradually rebranded as Coles stores in recent years.

In 2001, Chapters was acquired by Indigo Books and Music thereby consolidating its position as the Goliath of the book retailing trade in Canada. It is a fact of life in Canada that if Chapters-Indigo/Coles won’t stock it, writing it may be a waste of time.

Today Chapters/Indigo is the unofficial arbiter of what Canadians can read.

Chapters’ refusal to give us a vendor code is an abuse of its near-monopoly position granted by Parliament, which, to our knowledge, was granted under the understanding that Chapters/Indigo would promote Canadian authors, both local and national, and not let religion or politics influence its choice.

Boreal, February 20, 2009