A basic rule of small business is to have a diversified market for your product or service. If you have one or even two clients providing the bulk of your work and something happens to them, you lose your meal ticket. Big business, unfortunately, is making it difficult for the little guys to follow the rule. It's happening in the Canadian book publishing industry.
Chapters is the largest book seller in Canada.
It's the third largest in North America. President Larry Stevenson told the House of Commons standing committee on Canadian heritage recently that a Chapters superstore might have 125,000 titles on its shelves. A good quality bookstore used to carry about 20,000, he said. And that's great. It's hard to argue against a business that's doing so much to promote reading.