Indigo Books & Music Inc. has initiated a program to revive mass-market paperbacks, focusing on non-fiction titles by Canadian authors. The initiative, started last May, partners with publishers to offer compact, affordable editions under $20. Early sales show thousands of copies sold, giving select books a second chance at bestseller status.
Indigo's effort began last May, collaborating with Canadian publishers including Dundurn Press, Harbour Publishing, and HarperCollins Canada. The program produces non-fiction books in a smaller 4-by-8-inch format, priced below $20 and often available as two-for-$20 deals. Category manager Brandon Forsyth reports that the retailer has sold thousands of copies nationwide.
One early success is Brett Popplewell's Outsider, a 2023 non-fiction book about a marathon-running hermit that returned to Canadian bestseller lists after its mass-market reissue. Popplewell, a Carleton University professor and journalist, described the reprint as giving the book "a longer lifespan" and "almost a second life."
Other titles include Ken Dryden's hockey memoir The Game, which sold nearly 3,000 mass-market copies in six months following Dryden's death last year; Elliot Page's memoir Pageboy; and Let That Sh*t Go by Nina Purewal and Kate Petriw. From Dundurn, Linda McQuaig's The Sport and Prey of Capitalists saw a 3,000-copy print run exclusive to Indigo, coinciding with her new book Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us. Harbour reprinted Paul McKendrick's The Bushman’s Lair.
Publishers view the reprints as a way to expand backlist reach and boost author royalties, despite slim margins. Sales director Annie Boyar noted that successful prior editions minimize costs. Dundurn's Meghan Macdonald highlighted the marketing benefits for authors.
However, mass-market paperbacks have declined sharply, from 12 percent of Canada's book market in 2012 to 4 percent in 2025, per BookNet Canada data. The format, once popular for genre fiction, faces competition from e-books and larger trade paperbacks priced around $25. Booksellers like Paul MacKay of King's Co-op Bookstore in Halifax and Ben McNally in Toronto express skepticism, seeing it as a utilitarian relic overshadowed by smartphones and higher-margin formats.
Forsyth acknowledges the program as an experiment, accounting for less than 1 percent of Indigo's non-fiction sales, but one aimed at introducing titles to budget-conscious readers.