Chapters provided chairs and couches for their customers, as well as Starbucks coffee shops, and did not discourage reading inside the store.

However, the SmithBooks, the Book Company, and Classic Bookshops names have been gradually phased and locations rebranded as Coles stores in recent years.

Canada's first book superstore, Toronto's World's Biggest Bookstore, once part of the Coles chain, was also owned by Chapters and had continued to operate under its original name.

that Chapters also built its business around moving massive numbers of a few bestsellers, the majority of its sales came from backlist titles.

Headed by Heather Reisman, Indigo began to compete with Chapters in select markets and opened 14 stores.

Chapters aggressively expanded into online bookselling with chapters.ca to compete with Amazon and also was a minority investor in Pegasus, a book wholesaler.

[5] Since its takeover by Indigo, Chapters has been involved in several controversies, often tied to censorship concerns, or the strong support for Israel by the owner Heather Reisman and her husband Gerry Schwartz.

Reisman and Schwartz head the HESEG Foundation, which provides scholarships for discharged lone-soldiers who served in the Israel Defense Forces.