Running a small bookstore has not been one of the most secure enterprises over the past decade. The internet and giant chains have put many independent booksellers out of business.

But some, such as Brome Lake Books in Quebec's Eastern Townships are prospering.

"There's a new (Tracy) Chevalier that came in today along with a Jack Higgins," Lucy Hoblyn tells one of her best customers at her small bookstore in Knowlton, Que.

The customer is Jana Valasek, the librarian at the public library next door, one of the reasons Brome Lake Books is doing so well, compared to some of the other booksellers in the region.

"We buy all our English-language books here," says Valasek. "So that's $17,000 a year."

Stacked up at the cash on the last business day of the year are half a dozen books that make up the quota for the library for 2009.

Customer Jana Valasek (left) and Lucy Hoblyn, owner of Brome Lake Books in Quebec's Eastern Townships. (Fred Langan/CBC)

In 2009, Brome Lake Books sold 26,601 books. About 55 per cent of these sales were made at this small shop in Millpond Plaza, which, as the name suggests, sits on the old millpond in Knowlton.

The rest were sold to public institutions like the library, local schools, even the penitentiary in Cowansville, 15 kilometres away.

"The big sellers at the penitentiary are science fiction, new age and books on body building," says Hoblyn. "We held our first book fair there last year."

Rules of engagement

Hoblyn and her husband, Danny McAuley, have operated Brome Lake Books for the last four years and she says that about 65 per cent of her customers are women, who read mostly fiction.

The men who shop here prefer mostly history and biography.

Many of the in-store customers are tourists who drop in from the restaurant connected to the bookstore by an adjoining door. But the local shoppers are often members of the 10 book clubs in town.

Knowlton and the surrounding area is becoming a retirement community and retirees, it seems, like to join book clubs.

But, retirees aside, what really seems to be keeping this independent store afloat is the Quebec government's cultural policy.

Brome Lake Books is accredited by the government of Quebec as a supplier to English-language schools and other public institutions.

To gain this accreditation, the store has to maintain its English character (only about 1 per cent of the 6,000 titles in the store are in French) and it also has to sell just about only books.

Only 5 per cent of sales can come from things such as cards and stationery.

That means that 25 per cent of the books sold here are for children and young adults, while general fiction makes up 40 per cent and the rest is spread across a wide range of non-fiction and reference books.

Over the holiday period the best seller was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

No reading on the job

Hoblyn welcomes the cultural rules from Quebec. It means she can sell to 50 different public institutions, some as far away as Huntington, another English-speaking area about 150 kilometres west of Knowlton.

Those sales come in over the internet, which so far has not been a threat to her business model.

Mostly, "people like to come in and look over and touch the books they're going to buy," says Hoblyn.

Some of her customers even muse about buying her business. There is something romantic, it seems, about the idea of owning a small bookstore.

But Lucy Hoblyn says this job is hard work.

For one thing she is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 363 day a year, closing only on Christmas and New Year's Day.

"Quite a few people have this dream about owning a bookstore. Mostly it's because they like books and they like to read," she says.

"But there's no time to read during the day, and we often have to work at night."

Still she is a reader and many of her customers have come to rely on her for recommendations. It's something that comes with the territory when you run a small bookstore.