Inside a musty, dimly lit room, tucked away in the corner of a Queen St. W. building at the top of a steep flight of stairs, is the last holdout of a group of bookstores once informally known as Booksellers’ Row.

But in a few short months, Steven Temple Books, a Queen West staple for the past 40 years, will also disappear.

It’s the same tale as many others: the Internet ate up many of the independent bookstore’s clients.

Sitting amid piles of used books of all genres, Steven Temple, 66, recalls a time in the 1980s when he was located a bit further east on the street, and when people would flock to the dozen bookstores that sat between Simcoe St. and Spadina Ave., including a few “dirty stores,” as Temple calls the shops that sold softcore pornography.

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Those were the good old days for Temple and his bookselling colleagues. But what once seemed like a profitable venture to Temple has turned into a bit of a trap.

He must now get rid of his nearly 35,000 books, many of them rare and “obscure Canadian literature,” within the next few months so that he can recuperate some of his losses.

His first sale is on until Nov. 30.

“There isn’t much of a trade here,” said Temple, dressed in a green sweater and grey blazer, with a pencil sticking out of his breast pocket.

“Queen Street doesn’t have an intellectual base anymore,” he continued. “It used to be a neighbourhood. Now it’s just all big money.”

Everything in Temple’s store must go, with the exception of the books he’ll bring with him back to his home in Welland, Ont., where he will likely open a smaller operation out of his house.

Some books are selling for as little as $1.

When asked for his favourite books, Temple replies, “The ones that sell.”

There are definitely some in his store that would more easily fall into that category than others.

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Among the hidden treasures in his shop is a yellowed, tattered book from 1588 written in Latin and touching on Spanish law. Taking it out from behind a glass case, Temple says the paper with its black and red ink is still nearly intact after over 400 years.

It’s selling for $600. “I’m not sure who would want it, though,” he says.

Of more local interest is a set of six volumes of Robertson’s Landmarks of Toronto. The set, selling for $1,500, contains stunning sketches of landmarks of Toronto — and before that York — stretching most of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Walking between the shelves, Temple blames the “lack of support” from people who still love books, as well as the Internet, for his store’s downfall.

The statement is ironic, as Temple is the same bookseller quoted in a 2000 Star story praising the Internet as a godsend for his business, as book lovers from around the world were contacting him with orders.

“The Internet giveth and it taketh us away,” he told the Star 13 years later. “The Net opened a whole world to me. I was selling like crazy for a couple of years. I just couldn’t believe where it was going to lead … I didn’t want to think where it was going to end.”

Steven Temple Books is just the latest casualty in a long line of bookstores vanishing from Toronto’s landscape. Pages bookstore on Queen West was another notable closing. The store shut down in 2009 due to skyrocketing rent, something Temple still remembers clearly.

And then there’s World’s Biggest Bookstore, one of Toronto’s most famous retail landmarks, set to shut down in February.

“It’s killing me on the inside,” said Temple of his store’s imminent closing, but also while reflecting on a rapidly dying trade that was booming when he opened his first location in 1974.

“I’m an emotional wreck. It’s tearing my heart out.”