Winnipeg bookstore closing its doors, giving out 130,000 books for free

A staple for lovers of the written word in Winnipeg is closing its doors for good – and giving away all its books for free.

Nerman’s Books and Collectibles on Osborne Street is closing and clearing out inventory.

“Everybody has to retire sometime,” said owner Gary Nerman.

Nerman says giving away books for free is the best way to get them to be read.

“I didn’t really want to keep them,” he told CityNews. “Other booksellers I know have made that mistake and they just fester in some garage somewhere and never get used.”

The 130,000 books will be offered up to the public for free on Thursday and Friday.

Nerman says thousands have already been sold for a dollar each and thousands more have been given to charity. On Tuesday, he was selling boxes of books for $5.

The long-time book seller says it’s important to make sure the books – and stories they contain – keep being read.

“The 130,000 books we have is a lot and it took half a lifetime to accumulate them,” he said. “And I’ve talked to a couple of booksellers who have retired, and to a person, every one of them put their books in a garage or storage. They either got moldy and one guy I know, he had 30,000 books and he sold them for $1,000. To me, I just think it’s better if they get out there.”

Nerman decided to retire in December, with the pandemic offering a boost in book sales, which have now slowly started to fall off again.

And although the bookstore’s story is over, it was a long one in the city.

Nerman’s Books and Collectibles started as a mail-order business selling children’s books out of basement, before changing shops a few times. It eventually landed at its current location in 2005, where it’s held steady ever since.

Nerman says hundreds of people have come in to offer goodbyes, saying with rents rising “tremendously” over the last two decades, it is getting tougher for the brick and mortar used bookstore.

“There will always be used books available, but unfortunately, browsing for used books may be a thing of the past,” he said.

Among the empty shelves and boxes Tuesday was avid reader Rachel Rempel. She worries about what might be missed when these types of stores disappear.

“I do love reading and with Kindles and all of these different electronic modes of reading becoming more popular, I feel there’s a lot of classic reading, classic literature, just stuff that won’t be updated into those modern libraries and then you just lose so much culture and so much past and history,” said Rempel.

“It does sort of feel like the end of an era.”

She says the fact the books will be made available free is “wonderful.”

“It just shows the spirit of what Mr. Nerman was trying to do here and it shows that there are just so many good people in the city who care about these kinds of things,” said Rempel.

Nerman says the used-book community in Winnipeg is still a strong one, added the city probably still has more bookstores per capita than other Canadian cities, stressing there are still places for bookworms to find their next favourite book.