Read Local BC first interviewed bookseller Hilary Atleo of Iron Dog Books two years ago about the mobile “booktruck” that travels the province bringing books to readers. This past December, the brick-and-mortar location of Iron Dog Books opened for business. We caught up with Hilary to visit the space and hear about this new chapter.
How are you settling into the neighbourhood?
This neighbourhood is a totally surprising find. I keep telling people it’s the Sesame Street of Vancouver, and the bookshop is Mr. Hooper’s hardware store, where everybody can collect, and meet each other, and you can get the things you need—which is part of the reason we’ve expanded the things we carry. Now we carry more puzzles, board games, and stationary; we’re going to carry calendars, the kind of stuff you need at a more general store.
You were initially looking at a different space, is that right?
We’ve been through a few iterations of trying to launch the brick-and-mortar [store]. We started the truck in 2017. The truck was our solution to a series of bad situations in Vancouver. We had known we wanted to start our own shop for a long time, we got to Vancouver and it’s very expensive here, and we felt for a long time like a bug on the windshield of property prices. You keep throwing yourself at it and not succeeding. It became apparent relatively quickly that we needed a storefront to go with the truck. We started a year ago, looking in earnest. We did a pop up shop at SFU [Burnaby] for a few months: that was the thing that showed us that we can do it, and that the truck can work with a storefront. It was one of those, “if this is going to happen, then this needs to happen, then this needs to happen—we need a storefront.” We were trying to find an area that didn’t have a bookshop, that needed to be served by a bookshop, and we were also trying to feed the same communities that we’d been serving with the truck.
So, we tried a few different times, a few different places—we looked at this place when it first came on the market, this specific location, and they wanted too much for it and were very clear that they had loads of interest . . . we came back around after it had been on the market for a long time and they were willing to look at a bookshop more favourably.
So this fit the criteria of an area that needed a bookshop?
The story I’ve heard from people is that there’s never been a bookshop here. There was one customer who came in and said 25 years ago there was a bookshop here for a year; I do not have any other sources that have confirmed that. Either way, there definitely has not been a bookshop that had any sort of a reputation here— it has meant that we are not stepping into something that somebody else was. No one is coming and saying “I remember when so-and-so had a bookshop and they didn’t make it and you won’t either!” Everyone is super excited.
Are there any major differences or similarities between operating a brick and mortar as opposed to a mobile bookstore that have surprised you?
I think I’m relatively well-prepared because I came from a big shop in Victoria—I worked at Russell Books for four years—so I think there were a lot of things about the industry that I already knew or knew to anticipate. The biggest surprise has more to do with this specific location. I thought it was going to be all fans of the truck driving to see us, which is part of the reason we wanted to be here: we go to New West a lot, we go to Squamish a lot, and we’re at SFU [Burnaby] a lot, so it’s easy to get here. We thought, we can serve this neighbourhood and all those other places.
So the biggest surprise was that more than half of our customers have never even heard of the truck. They’re just really excited that there’s a new bookstore. The truck was such a massive learning curve: when you have 80 square feet to be the best bookstore you can, there’s a lot of tough lessons that you learn early on.
A truck and Russell Books—you’ve really experienced both ends of the size spectrum!
Yes! There are things that I bought large quantities of when we first started the truck, that never moved from the truck, and I just held on to them—because you don’t become a bookseller if you’re not kind of a hoarder—I put that stuff here, in a proper shop that doesn’t drive around, and we sold it. It was really gratifying to learn that I was not totally out to lunch, but that the truck is different than the store.
That’s so interesting! Are those books that you’d consider your ‘classics,’ those backlist titles that you’ve held onto for a while?
In a lot of cases it was really great picture books, things that I’d ordered ten of or accumulated somehow, and for whatever reason in the truck I could sell Tupac [Shakur] but I couldn’t sell that.
There’s something about the truck—almost a rarity, like the books you find there will be harder to find somewhere else.
I also found that with the truck that I either needed it to be, yeah, cool and unusual, or be a classic. They had to evoke a lot of feeling.
The curation effort involved in the truck is pretty incredible.
I had a weird moment when we moved in here and looked at it as I was driving back and forth and I was like—I have no idea how this works. And I’d never thought that before! It was an honest and surreal moment . . . I just had this moment where I was like, how do I decide what goes in here!
Can you recommended some of your favourite BC books?
Kai Cheng Thom’s I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World (Arsenal Pulp Press). I think she’s amazing and I got to go to her book launch at Massy Books, which was incredible. I just think Kai Cheng Thom’s book is such a thoughtful response to the way we are on the internet. She’s not specifically talking about the internet, but she’s saying ‘let’s all be better to each other.’ That, to me, was just a really meaningful thing.
I want to reach back into the vaults of Indigenous fiction and recommend Slash by Jeannette Armstrong (Theytus Books). I think right now . . . especially in terms of being Indigenous folk, I think there’s a particular thing that we’re reaching for—we’re seeking something new and focusing on this reconciliation piece. I think that means sometimes we forget how amazing Jeannette Armstrong’s book Slash is!
A Potato on a Bike by Elise Gravel (Orca Book Publishers): Elise Gravel is one of my favourite Canadian authors for kids. She’s so funny and unapologetically weird, and glorifies things that are really unusual like mushrooms or rats. Her drawings are so evocative. This new board book, A Potato on a Bike is really amazing to laugh at with your two-year-old if you have one (or if you have the sensibilities of a two-year-old).
You can find the Iron Dog Books storefront at 2671 E Hastings St, near the intersection of Hastings and Slocan streets. The truck will be hitting the road again this spring.
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