There’s a good book waiting to be written about the 2023 Indigo saga. The plot’s got something for everyone: a cybersecurity attack for the tech junkies, a CEO see-saw and mass board exodus for the corporate drama aficionados, the ambient hum of the Canadian book industry’s existential crisis for the doomsayers, and for the nonfiction zealots—well, it’s not fiction. At this point, maybe a marketing scheme as absurd as selling a bestseller about itself is what Indigo needs to move on and, like Taylor Swift’s Reputation, reclaim its precarious rep as a selling point.
Ironically, if they did ever publish this magnum opus, it’s unclear they would even stock it. “Books Music & More” has long been the hallmark of Indigo’s approach to mass appeal, with “More” a blanket term for its interest in selling book lovers everything under the sun—including blankets. At the time of writing, on indigo.ca, there are fifty-seven items in the sex toys category, with a five-speed vibrator stamped “Staff Pick.” There’s an $800 patio umbrella in the garden section. Also: pinball machines, mug presses, portable barbeques, rowing machines, a five-foot artificial willow tree. Three hundred and two items in mug and tea sets, thirty-one in vitamins and supplements, seventeen in poufs and ottomans, 198 in bed and bath.
