When Indigo Books and Music announced earlier this year that it had received an offer to go private, it was the latest in a long string of headlines for the bookstore chain.

First, there was a cyberattack last February that took Indigo’s website – and online store – offline for weeks and disrupted ordering processes. The cyberattack led to poor fourth-quarter results, and was estimated to have cost the retailer $19 million.

Only weeks before those results were released, Indigo founder Heather Reisman announced her retirement and the company announced the departure of four board members – the first of several management shake-ups that was followed by the departure in September of CEO Peter Ruis, who had been elevated to that role only 12 months before, and an announcement a week later that Reisman would be returning to the position.

Not long after returning to the C-suite, Reisman announced a new direction for the beleaguered retailer: a shift of focus back to books. The industry greeted this shift, and Reisman’s stated goal of having books make up 65–70 per cent of Indigo’s sales, with cautious optimism last fall. But the shift back to books is not a move that comes entirely without difficult decisions: the company laid off an unspecified number of staff in January.

The news that Indigo would be going private – coupled with a perceived change in how the company has handled their interactions with publishers and distributors over the last few months – has led to increased optimism from many in the industry.

“It’s one thing to make pronouncements and it’s another thing to see it in activity,” says Jason Farrell, vice president of distribution and retail at University of Toronto Press. “We are seeing more Canadian literature on display. At the front of tables, the more visible parts of the store, Canadian literature is garnering a larger space.”

Farrell says Indigo has also been more collaborative and open in its interactions with UTP in recent months.

“We’ve seen a heightened level of transparency and I think a willingness to work with the Canadian publishers over the last little while,” Farrell says. “Not that they weren’t talking to us before, but we’ve seen an increased focus and effort in that area.”

The decision to take the company private, which will see the company’s shares delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange and was approved by shareholders at a vote in late May, frees Indigo from the relentless schedule of quarterly earnings reporting – and some industry veterans think it could give the company the time and space to make the changes necessary to shift its growth back to books.

“It removes the distraction,” says Raincoast Books CEO John Sawyer. “They really have to concentrate on making things work and they don’t need the distraction of that kind of reporting.”

Sawyer says he is bullish about Indigo’s future.

“I actually am a little more than cautiously optimistic – I’m optimistic,” Sawyer says. “They’ve improved their returns rate, they’re reducing their overheads, they’re focusing on books, which is their lifeblood, and reducing their distraction from having to be a public company. I think those are all great things to do.”

Canadian Publishers’ Council president David Swail is a little more circumspect.

“It’ll be interesting to see how they manage the business going forward now that they don’t have that public company pressure,” Swail says.

Robert Wheaton, chief strategy and operations officer at Penguin Random House Canada, points to Barnes & Noble in the U.S. and Waterstones in the U.K. as examples of chain bookstores enjoying greater success after going private – and refocusing their business on the written word. Wheaton says the freedom from the cadence of public financial reporting will only help Indigo achieve its goals. (Notably, both Barnes & Noble and Waterstones have British businessman James Daunt at their head.)

“It’s pretty exciting to contemplate how they’ll represent themselves as booksellers in the next five to 10 years,” says Wheaton, who worked at Indigo in a variety of roles from 2007 to 2011.

He noted gradual changes that have taken place since the start of this year, including a noticeable increase in space for books at certain Indigo stores, as well as a wider selection of books.

“It seems to be accelerating over the last month or two, which I think, by coincidence, aligns with privatization,” Wheaton told Q&Q in June. “When [Reisman] started talking about returning books to the centre of their business, the team that she brought back to execute that [plan] is a team that really has a proven track record of excellence.”

Although a lack of quarterly reports means there will be fewer opportunities for publishers and industry watchers to follow the state of Indigo’s business, Wheaton notes that publishers will still have access to their own sales to Indigo, as well as Indigo’s reports of sales to BookNet Canada.

Indigo declined to grant Q&Q an interview for this story, but said in a statement that the company intends to grow the overall book market in Canada, and has re-established its focus on books since Reisman’s return: “Every action the company takes will further strengthen this commitment, including increased local assortments and increased assortments of books by new and emerging Canadian writers across the country.”

In addition to committing to increase the proportion of books in its total sales, Indigo has also been working to reduce its rate of returns. Although PRHC and Raincoast have noted a decline in returns this year, some independent Canadian publishers were faced with an increase in returns this spring.

UTP’s Farrell, who has gone through a decade’s worth of returns data from Indigo, says that this heightened returns pattern has occurred six times in the last 10 years, and that the cases of increased returns for certain publishers this spring seem to be a direct result of increased purchasing by Indigo after the cyberattack in 2023, which halted its purchasing ability for a period of time.

“We think because they had the heightened purchases a year ago, these have turned into heightened returns this year. But over a long enough time horizon, there’s no real cause for concern yet,” Farrell says. “More importantly, Indigo is coming to the table to discuss it with us.”

Farrell says UTP is happy to work with affected publishers to take a closer look at their particular spring returns situation.

Although what the future will hold for Indigo as it goes private and pursues its renewed commitment to Canadian books is yet to be determined, publishers are hopeful that it will have a positive impact on book sales – and on the broader Canadian industry.