Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Feb 09/00) - Publishers now offer magazines catering to everything from aviation to yoga, and that vast selection will soon be available in Yellowknife.

All you have to do is ask.

The place to ask is the city's first store -- aptly called The Magazine Store -- devoted almost exclusively to magazines. It also stocks the top 25 selling paperbacks.

"We have some things we'd like to bring in, but it's a two-way street -- we want to hear from our customers," said store owner Judith Drinnan.

Store manager Rob Waddell said he eventually hopes to have three times the amount of titles the store had carried.

The Magazine Store opened last Wednesday in the former Centre Square Mall home of Chapter III. Although there was a delay in delivery of new titles, Drinnan said the response was immediate.

"Even though we hadn't actually expanded our inventory, our magazine sales went radically up just because we had spread them out," said Drinnan.

The store is expecting its first major shipment today. "We're hoping for double the size of what we usually get," said Waddell. "That's more titles and more copies of each."

Chapter III, which stocked mainly children's books, parenting books, magazines and newly-released books, has become part of the Book Cellar.

Drinnan owns both stores and merged them in Panda II Mall because it eliminates the headaches of operating two book stores in two different locations.

"I wanted all my books in one location," said Drinnan.

With time left on her lease in Centre Square Mall, she decided to give the magazine store idea a try. Drinnan said the store will run for at least a year.

"We intend to bring in more literary magazines, more English language European magazines and we want to expand in a lot of popular areas, like sports," she said. The store will also stock comics.

Drinnan said the literary magazines raise awareness of emerging authors and new releases, which in turn benefits the Book Cellar's business.

She added there are hundreds of magazines in the catalogues of the three wholesalers from which the store will order. Previously, the store's stock came from one wholesaler that shipped magazines based on a profile of what the store sold in the past.

One thing that won't be on the shelves are pornographic magazines.

Drinnan said those are available at other stores in Yellowknife.