The Scoop on the Soup

Alphabet Soup Queer Bookstore is a pop-up and market-based bookstore focusing exclusively on queer books. Our goal is to provide a joyful, affirming book-buying experience for all the glorious identities that fall within the 2sLGBTQIA+ acronym (and beyond). Through our curated selection of books, we're reaching wide and far for queer representation beyond what you'll find on other shelves.

Local Pickup Options

Audiobooks Via Libro.FM

The Team

Kaitlyn

Kaitlyn is a writer, reader, communicator, and mother who also happens to be a biromantic-asexual person living in Edmonton. Having come to queerness later in life, she is passionate about representation for queer identities in film, fiction, and all other media. She believes queer identities are on a spectrum of experience, and many more people would find their true selves if they saw their experiences represented in our hetero-allo-cisnormative culture.

Where can I find you?

We're so glad you wanna hang out. Right now, Alphabet Soup is a pop-up and market-based bookstore. Check out our events page to find out where we'll be next!

Can you bring in this book?

WE LOVE recommendations, it's a great way for us to find new titles. Right now we're limited in what we can bring in, but we're working on it. If we can't get the book you're interested in now, we'll put it on a 'wishlist' for when we get an account with that specific distributor!

Will you carry my book?

We love writers! (We're writers too). If you're a local independently or traditionally-published author and you think your book would be a good fit for Alphabet Soup, please send us a DM on Instagram or fill out our contact form on the website. We only accept books that have a queer main character, and/or a diversely queer cast or themes.

Why only queer books?

Hey, we love straight people. Some of our best friends are straight people. The thing is, heterosexual people can walk into any bookstore in the world and find fiction about heterosexual people. Just like a queer person might purchase a heteronormative book at typical bookstore, we believe heterosexual people should be able to read, purchase and enjoy queer books, too. Providing a better selection of queer books doesn't mean heterosexual people are left out -- it means they're provided an opportunity to read outside their personal experience and broaden their own understanding.

Do you offer local pickup or delivery?

Through the website we are limited in the options we can offer without a brick and mortar space. But we get it, traditional delivery costs are high! If you'd like to pick up your order at one of our markets, or arrange a local pickup, please get in touch with us via our local pickup page and form. We will invoice you for the order and arrange pick up through email!

I'd like a hardcover or soft cover of a book you carry

If we already carry a specific book, and the hardcover or softcover is available and for sale by the publisher please fill out the contact form on our site and we can special order your preferred format! We get it, sometimes you just want all the books in a series to match.

Do you do pre-orders or special orders?

Once in a while, a special book will come along that everyone is excited for! Time-to-time we may run a pre-order campaign to help us determine how many of a book we should order on launch. Please keep an eye on our Instagram or contact us if you are interested in a specific title!

Why Alphabet Soup?

On a trip to Calgary in 2023, Kaitlyn walked into a romance bookstore and grinned. It was gorgeous, curated, and thriving. The only downside? Because of the small footprint and niche audience, there wasn't a lot of shelf space for queer books, and what was on hand was mixed in with everything else, making it hard to browse. At the time, she didn't know a lot of titles or authors to look for, so it felt a little like wading through a heteronormative ocean to find the queer seashell. Upon investigation, it became clear that Canada was sorely lacking in queer bookshops even as other niches were on the rise.

Edmonton is lucky to have amazing queer-owned bookstores like Magpie Books and The Book Archive, we love them!! But it was Kaitlyn's dream to offer a curated selection of exclusively queer books across all genres, sorted by representation as well as other, intersectional markers, making the book-buying experience fun, easy, and affirmative.

At the moment, we are able to bring in a limited number of books available with specific distributors, but we hope to expand our offerings to include more independently published titles, and a wider variety of publishing houses in order to offer the spectrum of stories we envisioned from the start.

Oh, and why the name "Alphabet Soup Bookstore?" It's a bit of reclamation, a bit of tongue in cheek, and a bit of a crazy dream for a store that offers oodles of representation for every letter in the continually expanding acronym.

What about those shipping costs?

All shipping costs are automatically determined by our shipping vendor, however we're excited to offer FREE shipping on orders over $100 starting in October 2024.

Can I pick up my order instead?

Since we don't have a brick and mortar location, we don't have a set place to offer order pickup, however, if you fill out the form on our Local Pickup page, we will contact you via email to arrange free pick up either at our next pop-up, or at an agreed upon location.