N.S. bookshops keep pages turning on Indie Bookstore Day despite budget cuts

The inside of Block Shop Books in Lunenburg, N.S., is pictured. (Source: Jo Treggiari)

Many Nova Scotia bookshops expect to be busy on Canadian Independent Bookstore Day, a celebration of local purveyors of packed paper and papyrus. Avid and lapsed readers are encouraged to head out to their nearby sellers and buy a book or two to keep the industry humming along.

For Trasie Sands and her store, the day will be a bittersweet end of a chapter.

Sands is the owner of Shorebound Books, the only independent bookstore in Shelburne, N.S. On April 25, she is hosting an Independent Bookstore Day event that will also be the final day her business opens its doors in the community.

“My sales numbers were down 50 per cent in 2025 over 2024,” Sands said. “It’s very surprising. For a short period, I’m going to operate online after I close the store.”

Sands plans to transition to online sales after the physical store closes while she considers her next move, which could involve relocating the business to the Pictou region.

Despite closing the book on the Shelburne location, Sands believes there’s been a fair bit of growth in the Nova Scotia bookstore scene; growth she worries could be stunted by the province’s recent budget cuts.

“I feel we may have just taken a big blow because of this budget,” she said. “The Maritimes are very proud of their writers. There are a lot of really good ones and it’s like someone’s hobbling them.

“It’s going to be hard to be a writer.”

As part of the 2026-2027 budget, the Progressive Conservative government cut the Publishers Assistance Fund, which Terrilee Bulger, co-owner of Nimbus Publishing, said offered $700,000 to local publishers.

“It allowed us to take a chance on books that are really regionally or culturally impactful, but not financially impactful,” Bulger said. “Some books are less commercial than others. When you have support from the province, you can look at books that are very important to Nova Scotians.”

Meredith Hand, communications advisor with the province, said publishers can still access more than $1.1 million through the Creative Industries Fund, which generally provides funding up to $30,000 for successful applicants.

“It’s nothing near the investment of the other fund,” Bulger said.

Bulger said Nimbus, which claims to be the largest English-language publisher east of Toronto, was caught off guard by the funding cuts and had to pivot for its fall schedule.

“The only thing we can do is spend money on fewer reprints and fewer books for the fall,” Bulger said. “We’ve put off reprinting older books. We’ve already been cutting everywhere we can.

“There’s not a lot left except for cutting back on everything.”

Busy bookshops

Jo Treggiari knows the value of a Nova Scotia-centric book. The author and co-owner of Block Shop Books in Lunenburg says every year tourists flock to their store to find a special memento of their trip to the Maritimes.

“In general, you go to an indie to get local authors,” Treggiari said. “That’s what visitors in the summer are looking for, real flavour of Nova Scotia.”

Treggiari, who ran a bookstore in upstate New York, moved to Nova Scotia 15 years ago. Her town of Lunenburg is a hub of well-loved literature, boasting three bookshops, all situated close to each other in what Treggiari calls the “book district.”

“Lunenburg is a booklover’s dream,” she said. “We’re very grateful for visitors but our locals are the people who are here all year. It’s a lot of work.

“It’s not a sleepy store.”

Tyler LeBlanc is a former member of the book district, having worked at Lunenburg Bound Books before expanding to Bridgewater with Good Dog Books in 2024.

“We had a large picture book of puppies and it was a joke that when you’re having a stressful day, you’d grab the puppy book to ground yourself,” said LeBlanc, co-owner of the store. “The title of it was ‘Good Dog.’ We put that as our working name.”

LeBlanc noted Nova Scotia bookstores, like most businesses, struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they’ve managed to rebound and even thrive in the ensuing years.

“During COVID lockdowns, people spent time thinking about where they were spending their money,” LeBlanc said. “More and more people are becoming disillusioned with mega corporations. They’re making choices on that and it seems to be benefitting us.

“The emergence of AI has also pushed people to analog technologies more. You can walk into a bookstore and be pretty confident everything in there is real. There’s a tangibility there.”

LeBlanc, who is also an author, is concerned with the government cuts to the publishing program as it could result in fewer Nova Scotia books on his store’s shelves.

“There’s a general degradation of the cultural industry here,” he said. “The Maritimes are known as a quirky hub of artists. We are fighting so many other fights, we don’t need our own local government to be against us.

“It’s very disappointing.”

Bulger also noted there will be fewer books for independent bookstores to sell in the coming years.

“The bookstores are amazing, they’ve really been supportive,” Bulger said. “I am hopeful the government will realize this is an important industry that needs investment.”

As she prepares to enter a new phase of her bookstore’s life, Sands is hoping to focus on stories told by Nova Scotians.

“Regardless of the budget cuts, I’d like to put more focus on local interest,” she said.

Canadian Independent Bookstore Day will be held on April 25.

For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page