While Chapters and Indigo wage war over the customers in the market for a shiny new book, a Toronto man is trying to change the buying landscape for their second-hand brethren.

Stephen Gosewich, through his company Half Price Books and Music, is trying to establish a strong franchise operation in Canada for his Media Encore stores – which sell used books and cds under one roof.

Media Encore stores are not for those second-hand book buyers who love to get lost in small, dark, mom-and-pop shops.

Rather, Media Encore is trying to do for the second-hand book buying experience what book superstores have done for book buying in general – sanitize it.

‘The stores are very atyptical,’ says Gosewich. Media Encore stores (there are three in the Toronto area and Gosewich has placed ads in Toronto newspapers seeking interested franchisers to open more) are larger than the typical used bookstore (2,500 to 4,000 square feet), well-lit, organized (alphabetically, and by subject) and clean. ‘They don’t smell,’ he says.

Customers can bring in their books to sell any time the stores are open and Gosewich says no book will be refused. ‘Those that are dated or badly damaged, we donate,’ he says.

The stores, which stand out with their bright yellow signs, also enjoy good locations in relatively high-end neighborhoods and, like mainstream bookstores, offer Interac and credit card transactions. Gosewich says the company is also working on a deal that will put a coffee bar into its future stores.

‘They have all the things that you would want to find in a contemporary bookstore,’ says Gosewich. Except the sometimes shocking blow at the cash register.

Books and cds are, for the most part, sold for half-price or less, says Gosewich (publisher’s overstocks, which are new, are often excepted from this rule). While the half-price principle is good for newer books, it becomes a real deal when a customer is looking for an older classic. A used version of Catcher in the Rye, for example, which originally sold for about $2, would cost $1 at Media Encore, says Gosewich.

Media Encore also offers a ‘Frequent Reader Card’ wherein a customer can have each letter of the alphabet stamped for each book purchased and then receive $5 off a book or music purchase.

Gosewich didn’t come up with the idea of a clean used bookstore chain out of the blue. Rather, after reading in a trade publication about the growing slice that second-hand books were taking out of the book-buying pie, he went down to Dallas, Tex., to study the success of Half Price Books, which operates about 80 stores across the country.

Armed with the knowledge he gained from helpful executives at the u.s. company (the u.s. company had no intention of entering the Canadian market and is not affiliated with Media Encore) plus several thousand books purchased from someone’s storage locker as well as cds from his own collection, Gosewich opened his first store in 1994.

He has opened two more stores since then, selling one to a franchiser, and is now concentrating on selling the franchise to prospective parties, courting about a half-dozen potential partners.

Rather than see stores like Chapters as a competitive threat to his company’s business, Gosewich says they make ideal neighbors because of the promise of run-off traffic.

His mandate seems to be to let the Chapters of the world do the legwork – spending time and money marketing the joys of reading and books – while Media Encore will pick up the business of the comparison shopper or inspire customers to re-sell their new books.

‘We would want to locate ourselves as close as possible (to superstores Chapters or Indigo),’ says Gosewich. ‘We thrive off of people like that.’