Will Toronto's Pages still be selling magazines two months from now?

One of Toronto's best indie newsstands, Pages Books & Magazines, looks likely to go out of business within two months, as the increasingly forlorn hopes of its supporters that it will find another, affordable location, fades.

According to a post in BlogTO, owner Marc Glassman has spent almost two years searching all over the city for a place to land and finds that landlords simply want too much. How much too much? Well, right now, Pages pays $200,000 annually and the landlord of the 265 Queen Street West location intends to jack it up to $400,000 come the end of February. That hit, plus the fact that book sales have been declining for two years, makes Glassman less than optimistic about the future.

Pages is particularly valued by independent magazine publishers since it is so open to carrying their titles, even when -- like Spacing -- the editors lug in copies themselves from the trunks of their cars, bypassing normal distribution channels. Indie titles are prominently and sympathetically displayed and browsing is encouraged.

Independent magazine stores are disappearing across Canada, such as the Magpie Magazine Gallery in Vancouver, Front Page News in Edmonton and Black Cat International in Sudbury.