The Monkey’s Paw:
A Conversation

On Antiquarian Books and Canadian Literature

Every year, more and more people rely on digital technologies to stay interconnected, especially during the pandemic. Our society made an unprecedented shift toward online communication and dissemination of information. The Digital Age has caused changes in virtually every sector; everything from music to education to grocery shopping has become more accessible online. Technology has also made it easier, now more than ever, to access and read almost any book. Whether your cup of tea is the latest in fantasy fiction, a brand-new study in molecular science, or a gorgeous edition of a classical novel––all of it is just one monitor and a few clicks away. A digital library of as many books as you can read and they’re all at your fingertips.
Why would anyone continue to buy bulky, expensive, physical books when they can pay significantly less to access them virtually and with customizable formatting? Why do people still buy books? In this interview, I sit down with Stephen Fowler, owner of The Monkey’s Paw here in Toronto, as he discusses the history and philosophy of his business. The Monkey’s Paw specializes in antiquarian and unusual books. It is a testament to the draw people still feel toward the physical artifact of a book.*

Suha Tariq: Could you tell me a little bit about your background with books?

Stephen Fowler: So, I come from a family of journalists. Like most people in the book trade, I’m a college dropout and what we like to call an autodidact–––a self-educated person. People like that, they spend a lot of time with books because they are trying to educate themselves and it's a natural fit to be in a bookstore environment. I grew up in a house with a lot of books in it and always had a fondness for books. I was kind of living like a, you know, irresponsible bohemian in San Francisco in the late 1980s, and I got a job at a second-hand bookshop and from there I learned how to work at a second-hand antiquarian bookshop.

ST: Very cool, there’s a bit of family heritage there. Do you keep a personal book collection?

SF: Well, yeah, but I don’t really buy for myself anymore. I have a couple of legacy collections of things I have never bothered getting rid of. I lived in San Francisco for many years before I moved to Canada; that’s where I got my start in the book trade. San Francisco has a really interesting history and people who live there are really into it, I was too, so I have an amazing collection of books on San Francisco. I brought them to Toronto with me when I moved here.

ST: What about the books in your store? Are they mostly Canadian, or do they tend to be international titles?

SF: No, they are not mostly Canadian. Although, the longer I’ve lived here and the longer I’ve had a Canadian bookshop, I’ve become more… well, I opened this shop after I had been in Toronto for four years and like most Americans, I didn’t know anything about Canada at all. Even when you move here and live here for a couple of years, Canada is a blank spot on the map if you’re from the States.

ST: I completely agree!

SF: Are you from the States?

ST: I actually moved here from Saudi Arabia and when I immigrated, I didn't even know what Canada was.

SF: I can imagine then; it was even more so for you. At least with America, it’s next door. If you’re coming from Saudi, that’s like––

ST: Insane.

SF: Ha-ha, right. It turns out that Canada actually does have its own culture and its own history but who knew, you know? It was weird when I first opened this story to be like, “Oh, I have a bookshop in Toronto, and I know nothing about Canadian history, Canadian literature or Canadian culture…” I was learning as fast as I could, but there was a lot of catching up to do. Now I’ve had a bookshop in Toronto for 16 years and we have a really good Toronto section. We have a not-that-great Canadian section, I’ve learned. Canadian publishing is basically books about Canada or CanLit.

ST: Could you expand on that?

SF: Historically, that’s what it is. If you want the best book about ants, well, Harvard University Press out of Massachusetts publishes the best book on ants. Or maybe Cambridge University Press publishes the best book on ants. It’s not coming out of Canada. Canada, they like publishing books on Canadian history, or they publish literature books on or by Canadian authors. So, because I have a, let’s say, more cosmopolitan view. Most of the books in here are published in the States or in Britain.

ST: That makes a lot of sense.

SF: But, you know, occasionally it’s like, okay, here’s a book on Canadian birds and it was published in Ottawa. But no, [The Monkey’s Paw] is not a Canadian-focused bookstore.

ST: You said the store was 16 years old. When’s the store’s birthday?

SF: March 4, 2006.

ST: That's amazing, happy belated birthday! Did you do anything special for it?

SF: Not this year, no. I think it’s enough to just be open right now.

ST: You must have been very busy after the reopening.

SF: Yeah. Prior to the pandemic––May 2019––when we moved to this space, it was so busy I could not keep the store stocked. Right before the pandemic, February 2020, I was freaking out because we had a really big Christmas season, and it didn’t stop. These books are very unusual books. In most cases, they are hard to find, especially the older copies. So, all the shelves were half empty you know, and then the pandemic happened, and I had to be closed for nine months so I managed to fill it back up. Now, things are sort of back to normal and I am panicking again about how I am going to keep the place stocked.

ST: During the pandemic, I am sure you saw a lot of changes in the running of the store. Was stocking the shelves the main thing you worked on during the pandemic closures?

SF: I mean, part of the time I just, you know, lay on the sofa crying. As soon as I was able to get back into the shop, I just spent all my energy fixing it up. When we reopened in June of 2021, the last time we reopened permanently, it was the nicest it’s ever been.

ST: What motivated you to establish a rare and unique book store rather than a contemporary bookstore?

SF: Well, I had always worked in second-hand and antiquarian shops and never really had that much of an interest in new books. I mean, I have also been a writer. My family members are journalists, and I did a certain amount of writing as a young man, so I had some contact with the new book business, and I have good friends in the new book trade in California, so I hear about it. But I just don't find new books all that interesting. Also, it’s a terrible business to be in because books are dead, right? There is still a publishing industry and they do still technically make books, but publishing has been annihilated by digital. I wouldn’t want to be selling books that are competing with digital. Apparently, people still buy new books, which I think is very heroic of them. There was a time when, before digital, every house had shelves of books in them, and every town had bookstores and every city had many bookstores and it's just not like that anymore.

ST: No, not at all—-especially with chain bookstores.

SF: It’s kind of weird right? Old books already exist. They're packed with totally interesting information, and they are beautiful objects. Books are just compelling artifacts and so I am a geek for old ones. For me there’s no question, old books are a viable business option. Even if you could download the text, the reason you want an old book is because of the artifact. So, it makes sense to sell the artifact. As to why I picked like really obscure, weird, hard-to-find, bizarre, old books––that’s just my personality. I just like weird stuff. I’m an eccentric. From a business standpoint, the rarity adds the interest and value to the object.

ST: Do you have a section for old canon novels?

SF: Yes. We have a fiction section which has a lot of classic literature in it. Basically, the first thing I try to find are books so obscure I’ve never seen them before. I have been doing this for 30 years, so I’ve seen a lot of books. To find ones that I’m not familiar with gets harder and harder. That’s the first thing I look for: books I’ve never seen before. But yes, if it’s like a Great Gatsby or if it's a Jane Austen novel, I’ll acquire it. In that case, I just look for nice, old, and attractive copies. We do sell that stuff and despite the store’s reputation as a source for weird nonfiction, the truth is the best-selling section in the store is the fiction section.
I was on a buying trip, and I brought back some nice, handsome editions of classical, canonical literature. One of them was a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and I thought, I’ll put this on the shelf and it’s just going to sell immediately. As soon as I put the book on the shelf, some tourists came in and bought that book maybe 30 minutes later. Still, that’s not the kind of book the store’s identity is built on.

ST: Could you talk a bit more about the store’s identity and brand, what it’s actually built on? What are the major factors that go into it?

SF: When I first opened, I was looking for books that were beautiful, arcane, macabre, and absurd. A lot of booksellers want books that are beautiful, and some booksellers want books that are arcane, because they understand the value in the sort of rarity of obscure books. Some want books that are macabre because it’s like goth-y, you know, dark academia––something or other. But absurd, I feel like we really own that one. Books that you almost want to laugh at. You can’t believe somebody printed this book. Just books that are kind of ludicrous and I marvel at their absurdity. A lot of them you can see on my Instagram, the really odd books.

ST: Those were your original goals; have they changed at all since you have been in business?

SF: I think I probably sell stuff that’s a little more mainstream now, which is just the pressure of the marketplace. Not everybody has the vision to buy the most bizarre book, and sometimes I’m just like, well, this is a nice copy of a book that doesn’t strike me as that interesting, but it's also, you know, it’s a Great Gatsby or something, and there will be a demand for it. I’ve kind of broadened my view of what I think is “cool enough”. I used to be really harsh about that. But I like to think that the spirit of the store has not changed at all.

ST: Could you tell us a bit more about the process of acquisition?

SF: It’s definitely the hard part of the business. For me, it’s the most fun part of the business, too. However hard it is for me to sell old books, it’s harder for me to find them and to buy them. There just aren't that many out there, and with each passing year there are fewer and fewer. So, at the same time my reach gets greater, what I’m reaching for gets smaller. It’s just as hard for me now as it was 15 years ago. Even though there were way more books 15 years ago. It’s a total scramble, all the time. I buy books over the counter.
I travel a lot and I buy estates; that’s the best way, frankly. You know, dead people’s books. When Professor so and so dies, his 59-year-old daughter calls me, and I go there, and I buy everything. I find books in every kind of way you can imagine. If I’m just out walking around and see a garage sale, we stop, and I always stop and take a couple of things. In North America there are library sales or charity sales. There’s an entire ecology of book dealers who haunt those sales. I’ve gone to a lot of those sales, and they do well for the store. That’s another way.
Unfortunately, the sales haven’t happened in two years. The sales in the States have been going, so I’ve been going there this whole time. The Canadian sales are just starting again. That accounts for maybe a quarter of my stock. Half my stock is purchased from the states and over the counter. Maybe a quarter of my stock comes from other ways, such as wholesaling from other booksellers––people who are kind of lower or higher on the pyramid than I am.

ST: Out of curiosity, do you ever plan to take on an apprentice?

SF: I mean, I have two kids, who together have less than a half a person’s worth of interest in this business. Sometimes bookstores are generational, but I don’t think this one is going to be. I’ve had various part-time helpers over the years. None of them were really looking for a lifetime in the trade. I don’t have anybody lined up to do that, but I would love to have somebody come in here and say, “I want to be a lifer in the antiquarian book trade, and I want you to teach me from the ground up.'' One of these days I’m going to find the person who wants to do that. It’s a weird business, and you basically must have closed all the other doors before this.

ST: Wow, that sounds like a plan. You must have a lot of pride in this book store and what you do.

SF: I have to say, literally no one thought it would be a viable business, so it was nice to prove them all wrong. My wife was so supportive all along. She worked really hard to support us, and finally, I make almost as much as she does! But really, you know, opening a bookshop in 2006 seemed like madness, but I had this instinct that I could make it work.

ST: Did you have immediate success, or was it a slow build-up?

SF: Weirdly, because I was so careful, I kind of did have immediate success in the sense that I paid my rent from the first month and I never had to borrow money or anything like that. It took a while before I was paying myself properly. Then we introduced the Biblio-Mat there. That was in 2012 and it struck a crazy nerve and became this massive internet and media phenomenon. Since then, the store has been profitable. It’s been busy since then.

ST: What inspired the Biblio-Mat?

SF: I had a basement full of old books that I thought were kind of cool, but my experience told me I could never sell them for 20 or 50 dollars off the shelf. I wanted to come up with a sort of gimmick to get rid of books like that. Traditional book stores will have a gimmick where they wheel out a cart, like a dollar-cart, in front of the store for bargain books. I didn’t want to do that because it seemed boring and the truth of it is, if somebody is not going to buy it for 20 dollars, why would they buy it for one dollar? If it's not a book they want to buy, they won't buy it. So, I thought of doing this as a stunt. There was going to be a street fair on Dundas Street, and I imagined having a fake vending machine that I would put my assistant inside, like a box. And basically, you could drop a coin in and get a surprise book. I thought that would make it interesting. I told my friend Craig about this idea and Craig, because he’s in advertising, he thought it was a great idea! And he’s also a total tinkerer, he said he’d build me a machine and so he built me the [Biblio-Mat].

ST: In your opinion, what were some of the key points in the store’s history?

SF: Well, the Biblio-Mat was kind of the turning point in terms of the store’s notoriety. I think it was probably around that time or a little earlier that I got involved with the Bookseller’s Association of Canada. I joined the association and that gave the store this sort of legitimacy within the industry. That was one turning point, and then I got on the board of the association, and I got involved with running the annual book fair, which all gave me an established profile. Then, we moved. Our original store, although very charming, was extremely tiny. It was too small, and I couldn’t have the depth of stock that I wanted. We moved here when the owner of the building invited us. She’s an architect upstairs and she sort of remodelled it to suit The Monkey’s Paw. We got the space that we wanted, with the right storage. This is our best iteration so far.

ST: Do you plan on opening a second location?

SF: No, I don't even know much longer I can do this. I’m getting older and it’s hard. Also, the world is running out of these books. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find stock in 3 years. I certainly won’t be able to find stock in 10 years. These books just won't exist anymore. I’m not doing this to make money, I do this because I like doing it and if it pays for me to do it, then that’s great. As it happens, I’m making close to a grown up’s income, but that was not the point. The point was like, I just want to do this, and I have to make a minimum to bring home to my family so as to not live in shame. And enough money to be able to keep the business going. There were many moments where, if I were motivated by money, I would’ve done something different. There would’ve been like a “The Monkey's Paw Uptown” where we sell the expensive books. There would be a “The Monkey's Paw Mega” where we just sell sale-priced books by the bucketload. There were various ways I could have exploited this business to make more money. But I just like the one shop and the level that I'm at. A regular person with a little bit of disposable income can come in here and buy a book for not too much money. And I like that.

ST: In the context of Canadian literature, have you seen a change in the target demographic that comes in here or who you target as the owner of The Monkey's Paw?

SF: I just put out a bunch of books that I think are interesting and see what happens. I’ve definitely noticed that my customers are becoming younger. I have customers who are in high school, who were hardly born when the store opened. That’s amazing. I attribute that to the maturing of the digital era. People are so sick of life on screens, they just want something concrete, they want something physical. It’s also just a trend that could be traced to all kinds of things. I didn’t even know about the world of “dark academia” until my younger brother mentioned it. Interestingly enough, and this is a testament to how awesome books are, nobody doesn’t know how to use one. Like, they’ll pick it up and they’ll understand that here’s where the content is. That part is so intuitive. Then they’re like, “well, what do you do with it after?”
The academics don't really like the store very well, never really hit it off— well some do, but people who are actual academics, for them, books are literally just containers for texts and all they care about is the text, they don't care about the container. So, they come here, and they're confused because we're selling the artifact, and I try to make sure it has good text also, visual content, whatever, but it's artifact first and important content second. My regular customers, I would just call them Bibliophiles. They are just into books as a format.

ST: In one of our classes at my Creative Writing & Publishing program at Sheridan College, we talked about why books do not go extinct in such a digital age. A lot of things get put online and you don't need the physical versions of them anymore. But books remain, and I think you said it best, it’s an artifact for people to find.

SF: That’s right, the book is the artifact. The Monkey’s Paw is a unique place where people can come just to browse those artifacts, and maybe take one home.

*This interview has been edited for length.

SUHA TARIQ

is a Canadian writer and editor who was born in Pakistan and spent her childhood in Saudi Arabia. She now resides in Milton, Ontario. Suha is the Publishing & Web Intern for The Ampersand Review of Writing & Publishing. She is a third year student in the Creative Writing and Publishing program at Sheridan College and works as a ghostwriter for The Urban Writers. Suha writes mostly shorter non-fiction works, however, she plans to author her own fiction novels in the upcoming years. She was also featured on Canada One News for their “Students In A Pandemic” special.