Mark Leslie Lefebvre

A self-confessed book-nerd, Mr. Lefebvre (born 1969 in Sudbury, Ontario) has surrounded himself with books and reading materials his entire life.

He has been writing since he was 13 years old, having spent a good part of his summer vacations banging out stories on an old Underwood typewriter rather than playing outside. The desire to write is something that has never left him and though he works full-time he still spends large pockets of time (usually the pre-dawn hours between 4:30 AM and 6:30 AM) working on various writing projects.

He was bitten by the bookselling bug in 1992 when he started working as a part-time bookseller at a Coles on Sparks Street in Ottawa. He managed various sized bookstores in the Ottawa region, was Product Manager at the Chapters in Ancaster from 1997 to 1999, then moved into the world of online bookselling of Chapters Online in late 1999. He spent 7 years as the Database Manager for Chapters/Indigo’s head office, establishing efficiencies with respect to mass data cleanup and maintenance projects as well as overseeing data feeds from thousands of publishers and working on various industry bibliographic data committees where the Gold, Silver, and Bronze standards of bibliographic data feeds were firmly established.

In 2006, he left Indigo’s head office to become Book Operations Manager at the independently operated Titles Bookstore at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. An active member of various industry associations, he sits on the Board of Directors for BookNet Canada as a representative of Canadian Booksellers Association, is currently President of CBA, and is an active participant in Campus Stores Canada, Canadian Campus Retail Associates and Collegiate Retail Alliance.

In 2008, he helped the bookstore at McMaster to become the second location in Canada to own an Espresso Book Machine, a fully integrated patented book making machine which can automatically print, bind, and trim perfect bound library quality paperback books with 4-color cover on demand directly in the bookstore.

Seen as a visionary and passionate bookseller, he is regularly asked to speak at industry events and symposiums, and recently gave talks at Humber College’s Creative Book Publishing program, Campus Stores Canada’s 2009 Symposium, and CBA’s 2009 Summer Conference. His short fiction appears in various magazines and anthologies and he is a regular contributor to Canadian Bookseller. His most recent book is Campus Chills, an all Canadian anthology of thriller/ghost stories set on campuses across Canada. You can follow him on Twitter.

Photo by Greg Roberts