Books by the bicycle-load: mobile bookstore hits Edmonton roads - Action News
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Edmonton

Books by the bicycle-load: mobile bookstore hits Edmonton roads

An Edmonton couple is turning a page on their new life in Edmonton by opening the citys first bookstore on two wheels. The pair have been peddling their paperbacks in locations across the downtown core.

Nomad Books will be peddling paperbacks for the first time this month on city streets

An Edmonton couple is turning a page on their new life in Edmonton by opening the city's first bookstore on two wheels.

Yvonne and Jared Epp have turned their bicycle into a tiny business on wheels, selling and trading a small selection of used books to customers on the street.

Nomad Books hit the streets for the first time this month. The pair have been peddling their paperbacks in locations across the downtown core, including Churchill Square and the Edmonton Night Market.
Nomad Books has been roving downtown, offering a small selection of used books to Edmonton customers. (Supplied )

The couple moved back to Edmonton this past year after four years in Ottawa. They wanted to get out in the communityand find a way to take their passion for the written word on the road.

"I had been collecting and trading books for a while and then had wanted to start selling some of my own, and was thinking about how to do that without too much expense going into it," Jared said during an interview with CBC Radio's Edmonton AM.

"And we thought, 'Why don't we just sell books on the trailer and kind of cruise around downtown and sell books that way?' We thought, 'Let's do it, let's see what happens.'"

Why don't we just sell books on the trailer and kind of cruise around downtown and sell books that way? Let's do it, let's see what happens.- Jared Epp

They then got to work designing their tiny trailer. The entire contraption cost them less than $40.

"We tried to make it as cheaply as possible,"Yvonne said.

"The base is a kids chariot that you can use to pull behind a bike. The wooden box, we built with my dad, we use that for storage. And the shelves, my grandfather made them about 25 years ago we just found some scraps of wood in my dad's garage and pieced it together."

They say the project is less about pushing a profit, and more about making personalconnections.

"That's kind of our main goal, I mean it would be nice to make money from it,that would be awesome, but we're prepared not to," Yvonne said with a laugh.

"By the time we pay for the insurance and the business license, we have a long wayto go before we break even, but it's worth it."