Estonians know their priorities. In a country of under 1.4 million people, there were 5.5 million library visits in 2016. By comparison, there were only 3.29 million cinema visits.

Did you know indie bookstores sell a much higher proportion of Canadian authors than Indigo or American-owned Amazon? In fact, most Canadian indies have an option to filter by Canadian authors on their website. We currently have over 730 titles by Canadian authors in-store at The Spaniel's Tale.

This week we hosted a midnight release party for @rebeccayarros.bsky.social Onyx Storm, possibly the largest celebration hosted by an independent bookstore in Canada. 170 fans celebrated with bingo, trivia, a photo booth, food, and drinks. It was a beautiful expression of community.

We took a measured approach to event growth, turning down events with past low sales and sharing risk with authors, while carefully growing our school book fair business.

Our points program continues to be an important (and beloved) loyalty tool - we redeemed over $16,800 in points in 2024.

Online sales were surprisingly strong despite stiff competition, with most sales happening while we're closed.

Backlist titles continue to be just as important as front list (but much harder to curate).

Like 2023, we continue to beat industry avg with Canadian titles - very proud of this number.

Despite some staffing challenges and growing pains, 2024 was a great year for the shop, resulting in double digit sales growth year-over-year in 11/12 months.

Strongest performing fiction genres haven't changed, but I'm surprised to see bio perform so well when we gave it less shelf space in2024.