About The Book Man Bookstore

We are driven by our community and our people.

The Book Man is a family run, locally owned used bookstore with two locations and a staff of 15 unique and amazing individuals. Between our 5,000 sq ft bookstore in Historic Downtown Chilliwack (the second largest used bookstore in BC) and our cozy 1,600 sq ft store in Abbotsford’s Little Oak Mall, we house over half a million beautifully organized books for you to peruse.

Our Story

Our passion for books will amaze and delight you almost as much as our store cats (Nietzsche and Beatrix in Chilliwack and Gatsby in Abbotsford). We want to create a friendly, clean, and comfortable environment where you can easily lose yourself in a sea of books, enjoy uninterrupted browsing, and relax in a comfy chair. We are also committed to constantly enlarging and refreshing our collection, adding up to 4,500 titles per week!

Customers can even enjoy our signature “bookmark bathroom” where even the ceiling is wallpapered in bookmarks, as well as the little touches, such as unique framed book art and artisan book door handles, that accent the ambiance of our store.

At The Book Man, we are committed to the literacy and well-being of members of our community and the world at large. We have proudly received recognition for our values through both local and provincial awards for our employment standards, environmentalism, and retail excellence.

Us in a Nutshell:

Prolific authors works alphabetized in drawers with custom built cabinets (also organized by title within the drawers).
Most books priced at half of the publisher’s price. We also offer further discounts with trading credits and coupons.
Librarian, teacher, dealer, and homeschool discounts available.
Open 7 days a week, 364 days a year!
Our stores are well lit, clean, and inviting with a comfortable seating area and are air conditioned in the summertime for your browsing comfort.
Carbon neutral business that adds a yearly calculation of trees to a small privately run forest to renew this status.
Winner of multiple environmental, employment, and business awards.
Voted Chilliwack’s favourite bookstore multiple years in a row in local Chilliwack papers.
Hand-selected vinyl, covering a wide variety of music genres—classical, easy listening, rock, and jazz—at our Chilliwack location.
Personalized request service for any titles that are currently out of stock. We will call you when the next copy becomes available.
Special orders for books always available.
Children’s section with over 15,000 titles and a play area, complete with a toy box and tiny chairs.
Over 70 major categories of books in stock. No subject is neglected!

Take a Look through our gallery

Thanks to our amazing photographers: Robyn Bessenger Photography and Tina Kruger Kulich Photography.

All Abbotsford Location Chilliwack Location

More than Books! We also have geek chic swag!

In addition to our wide selection of new and used books for sale, we also have unique book-themed t-shirts, jewelry, handcrafted teas unique to The Book Man (Readers Rooibos and Book Man Blend), bookmarks, journals, book lights, greeting cards, and book-themed coasters to complement your reading experience. We also carry a wide variety of sturdy book bags to tote around your favourite tomes, including The Book Man branded bags designed by Diva Designs!

Give a fellow book lover the gift of reading. Perfect for any occasion, our gift certificates allow your loved ones to select books that they will open time and time again.

Parody music videos

Here at The Book Man, we’ve started making book-themed parody videos. We hope you’ll enjoy as much as we do!

Books & Cats Parody

This little jam will be stuck in your head all the way to the store and even as you shop (at least that’s what some of our customers have let us know)!

Caught in a Romance Parody

We present Caught in a Romance, a Lady Gaga Bad Romance parody that pays homage to some romance novels we know and love! Featuring spoofs on Gone with the Wind, The Twilight Saga, The Lady of the Lake, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, Rebecca, Jane Eyre, Jane Austen, The Nanny Diaries, and Bridget Jones’s Diary. Thanks to Opera Mariposa for the male costumes, Creative Outlet Performing Arts Studio for the rehearsal space, Chilliwack School of Performing Arts for the light and smoke machine effects, and Gwynne Vaughn Park and Chilliwack Museum and Archives for the shoot locations.

All About Them Books

We couldn’t be happier with how this turned out. Thanks to all the dancers and background actors who participated and to the amazing Matthew Hawkins who shot and edited the video!

Environmental Caring

We are strong believers that each person and business must decide that sustainability is not an option, it is a necessity. Our environmental consciousness must define our decisions in a way that honours all life and protects our planet.

Every decision that we make at The Book Man is made with the health of our planet in mind, from offsetting our carbon footprint with the help of The Carbon Farmer to choosing green cleaning products to use in our bookstores. We even ensure that the packaging materials we use in our internet sales department have a low impact on the environment.

Our store, in itself, is a massive recycling project, working to keep hundreds of thousands of books in circulation and out of landfills by utilizing the “reuse” factor in the triangle of the favoured recycling philosophy: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle!

Some of Our Recent Achievements Include:

Receiving our Carbon Neutral Status, courtesy of our involvement with The Carbon Farmer.
Presented with the 2009 – Green Excellence – Retail award by The City of Chilliwack and The Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce with an ensuing letter of congratulations from MLA Barry Penner.
Installing hand dryers in our Chilliwack restrooms to minimize paper waste.
Selecting recyclable packaging materials for the vast majority of our internet sales orders, such as corrugated cardboard and staples instead of foam mailers and tape.
Choosing environmentally responsible cleaning products.
Presented with the Green Hero Award by BCHydro and Premier Gordon Campbell.
In store incentive program that rewards customers for reusing or refusing a bag with their purchase. These customers receive a token worth 3¢ (the approximate cost of a bag) that they can donate to one of three charities. In Chilliwack, we support Safe Haven Animal Shelter, Early Years Literacy Group, and Ann Davis Transition Group. In Abbotsford, we support The Food Bank, Elizabeth’s Wildlife Rescue, and Volunteer Abbotsford. We pay the amount saved to these charities on a quarterly basis, and our customers now pride themselves on choosing to have bag-free transactions.

High-efficiency bulbs are used wherever possible in the store.
Replacing our large hot water heaters with tiny ones, saving countless gallons of water from being unnecessarily heated every day.
Running all in-store computers on energy efficient settings.
Turning off all computer monitors at night.
All unused books within the bookstore are either reused again by being recycled into the community through one of the five literacy initiatives we support/run or are physically taken to the recycling depot once a week when they’re “too far gone” to be reused another time.
In-store recycling program puts recycling bins in easy to find locations all throughout the store for both staff and customers to utilize.

With 6,600 square feet of books between
two convenient locations,