CULTURE. The 3rd edition of the Shawinigan Book Fair will be even bigger than the previous two, promises its instigator, Yannick Canse, founder of the second-hand bookstore Librissime.
Spread over two days, Saturday December 7 and Sunday December 8 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., the book fair will take place on the ground floor of La Promenade shopping center (444, 5e rue de la Pointe) in downtown Shawinigan. After 50,000 titles the first year and 150,000 last year, more than 200,000 used books, CDs, DVDs and vinyls will be on the market this weekend.
“And for the first time, we will have a space reserved for authors,” underlines Yannick Canse. It is the Shawinigan novelist Louise Lacoursière who will be the guest of honor at this Authors’ Salon which will welcome several others such as Francine Brunet, François St-Martin and Marc Bruneau, Nino Mancuso, Amélie Hébert, Marie-Claude Cournoyer, Manon Samson, Lou Benedict and Ben Morris, Janine Bissonnette and Laurence Blanchard, Estelle Trudel Borgia, etc.
In 2023, more than 5,000 people took part in the book fair and its instigator expects even more this year. “With the Authors’ Fair, I expect to welcome a slightly larger audience than the other two editions. I want to make this event bigger and I already have ideas for 2025, but as we are supporting it financially without any help, we have to take it one step at a time. » Again this year, all books will be on sale for $2 each and $1 for CDs, DVDs, vinyls and children’s books.
“These are used books, but they are in excellent condition. Often, they come from unsold surpluses from bookstores or they are old editions,” explains Yannick Canse who opened Librissime in downtown Shawinigan in 2021 before selling it to Sébastien Gariépy at the beginning of 2024.
A Librissime in Trois-Rivières in 2025
The bookseller plans to open another Librissime in Trois-Rivières in 2025 and even extend the network elsewhere in Quebec in the medium term. “There is a market for second-hand books. New books are becoming more and more expensive because of the price of paper. It’s a shame to buy a new Patrick Sénécal when there are already 500,000 of them on the market. We must find a way to reintroduce second-hand books into the book market cycle to avoid producing at this level. That’s a bit of the idea behind The Book Fair,” continues Yannick Canse.
Thanks to his contacts in the used book network in Quebec, the entrepreneur says he is able to have access to approximately 50,000 new titles per month. “In our business plan, our objective is to be around 30 to 40% of the price of a new book. » As a general rule, Librissime retails its large format books at $7.95 and small formats at $4.95.
