Bookstores in Saint John
If you judge a town by its bookshops, Saint John, NB gives you 8 to judge by. That's 8 bookshops mapped around Saint John, each with its own shelves and specialties. The used sections are where the real bargains hide. Staff picks shelves are the fastest way to read a shop's personality.
This guide covers every bookstore we could verify in and around Saint John (within about 40 km), built from OpenStreetMap's community-maintained data. Names you'll run into include Dave Shoots Books and Heroes' Beacon Comics & Games, plus UNB Inprint. If a bookshop's missing from Saint John's list, it probably just hasn't been mapped yet.

The Saint John bookstore lineup
8 mapped within about 40 km:
Dave Shoots Books
Bookstore
Dave Shoots Books is Bookstore.
Heroes' Beacon Comics & Games
Bookstore
Heroes' Beacon Comics & Games — Bookstore.
UNB Inprint
Bookstore
UNB Inprint — Bookstore, found on 16 King Street in Saint John. Also worth knowing about UNB Inprint: the map lists its hours as Mo-Sa 09:30-17:00.
16 King Street, Saint John
Hours: Mo-Sa 09:30-17:00
Indigo's
Bookstore
Indigo's — Bookstore.

Coles
Bookstore
Coles is Bookstore.
Anglican House
Bookstore
Anglican House — Bookstore.
Catholic Bookstore
Bookstore
Catholic Bookstore is Bookstore on 48 Waterloo Street, Saint John.
48 Waterloo Street, Saint John
Scheherazade Books and Music
Bookstore
Scheherazade Books and Music — Bookstore. Also worth knowing about Scheherazade Books and Music: the map lists its hours as Mo-Sa 10:00-17:00.
Hours: Mo-Sa 10:00-17:00


What the map tells us about bookstores in Saint John
2 of the 8 list their opening hours on the map, which is genuinely useful — bookshops keep civilised hours, so the listed ones are usually reliable.
The Saint John bookstore crawl
The efficient Saint John bookstore crawl strings these together: Dave Shoots Books, Heroes' Beacon Comics & Games, UNB Inprint on 16 King Street, Indigo's, Coles, Anglican House, Catholic Bookstore on 48 Waterloo Street, and Scheherazade Books and Music — 8 stops, one logical order.
Bookstore tips for Saint John
Browsing in Saint John? A little strategy helps:
- Ask about the book club discount at Dave Shoots Books. Many shops discount book-club orders. If your club buys local, everyone wins.
- Look for local history at Heroes' Beacon Comics & Games. The local-interest shelf tells you what a town thinks of itself. Great for visitors, better for new residents.
- Check the staff picks shelf first. It's the fastest read of a shop's personality. If the picks excite you, the rest of the store will too.
- Don't overlook the classics wall. Every shop has one. Cheap editions of the books everyone claims to have read — your chance to actually read them.
Good to know
We searched about 40 km around Saint John — that covers the town itself plus the surrounding communities you'd reasonably drive to. Listings come from OpenStreetMap, mapped by local volunteers, so a brand-new bookstore in Saint John can take a while to appear. If you spot one of the 8 that's closed, or a great bookstore we missed, the fix is to update the map itself — that's where this guide reads from.
We don't list prices — they change constantly and vary by edition. What we list is the where: real shops, verified by real mappers, in alphabetical order with no favourites.
If you run one of the 8 listed here and something's wrong — a closure, a move, new hours — the fix is the same: update the shop on OpenStreetMap and the correction flows through to this page on the next daily refresh.
Bookstore listings for Saint John: 8 mapped from OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Photos from Wikimedia Commons contributors; individual photo credits appear in captions. Listing data was last refreshed automatically — verify hours before visiting.