Canadian Publishing 2013

Canadian
Publishing 2013
P u b l i s h e r s W e e k ly . c o m
A Special
Report
Publishers in Canada
are taking advantage of
new ways to reach readers
A TIME
OF
OPPORTUNITY
Sowing new seeds in
Canadian publishing
Read with us.

166 King Street East, Suite 300
Toronto, ON Canada
Canadian Publishing 2013
Despite some trouble spots, Canadian

publishers see chances for growth
Opportunity
Knocks
By Leigh Anne Williams
While the Canadian news headlines have painted a rather dark

picture of the countrys publishing scene, those working in the
market insist things are not as gloomy as the general media has
portrayed. In fact, interviews with leading industry figures
found a number of bright spots. Of course, the landscape of Canadian publishing, like that of publishing around the world, was
changed by the PenguinRandom House merger. Its too soon
to say what aftershocks may follow or what the effects may be on
publishing in this market of 34 million (20% of which is a mostly
separate francophone market), but changes are sure to come at
the countrys largest trade house.
he most troubling development

over the past 12 months has
been the demise of several
prominent independent
publishersD&M Publishers,
McArthur & Co., and Robert
Kennedy Publishing. Further worry was
caused when Thomas Allen & Son sold its
Canadian boutique publishing arm,
Thomas Allen Publishers, and as part of
shifts in strategy at their parent companies,
both John Wiley & Sons and Oxford
University Press announced that they
were closing their Canadian trade
publishing divisions.
According to BookNet Canada figures
released in June, Canadian first-quarter
print sales were down last year by about

11%. Many publishers attribute the drop in
their domestic sales to the dominant chain
in Canada, Indigo Books & Music, having
made a big leap last year to diversify into
designer gift and lifestyle products, leaving significantly less room for books.
Indigo CEO Heather Reisman described
the move as a survival strategy, and many
publishers acknowledge that an Indigo
ordering fewer books is still better than
having it go the way of Borders. Nevertheless, the cuts have gone deep and have
hurt publishers, and there are fewer independent booksellers to step into the void.
But looking beyond the headlines and
talking with publishers, one finds many
views of the Canadian landscape are surprisingly sunlit. Noah Genner, CEO of
BookNet, acknowledges that the firms
quarterly numbers dont tell the whole
story. As both BookNets June report and
the most recent quarterly report from
Indigo reminded readers, 2012 sales figures included the large sales spikes from
the Fifty Shades and Hunger Games trilogies. When we look at the whole market . . . those big titles really can skew
things, Genner says. So individual publishers, such as a Canadian-owned independent publisher, could be having a great
year, and the market could still be down.
Indeed, most of the publishers who
spoke to PW for this report were remarkably upbeat about sales that were as good
as last years or in many cases better. Previous anxieties about e-books also seemed
to be generally allayed as average e-book
sales seem to be stable at about 17% or
revenue. Although they are still growing,
they are no longer tripling as they did at
first.
While the big story in retail is undoubtedly Indigos reduced book inventory and
the ways publishers are coping with it,
there has also been some good news in the
form of Target migrating north and opening up stores and bookselling opportunities across the country. Target doesnt take
the place of independent booksellers, says
ECW Press copublisher David Caron. We
can put our Taylor Swift book into Target,
but thats the not the fiction or poetry title
that the independent would have sold
well. Nevertheless, Caron says ECW is
adapting and building relationships with
stores such as Costco, Wal-Mart, and Target, both in Canada and the U.S. Were
learning more about what works there,
Caron says, along with what doesnt.
Costco Canada, in particular, does a good
job of picking stores for a regional title, he
says. Weve seen big sales through a small
number of stores when they do that.
In spite of challenges, Caron says publishing in Canada is healthier than it is
reported to be. Theres a perception in
mainstream media that the book publishing industry is beleaguered because thats
what people have been writing for the past
three years, so thats what people think. I
W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY. C O M
The
Scotiabank
Giller Prize.
Writing the
book on
Canadian
fiction
for 20 years.

would say the only rough year was two years
ago, and it wasnt because of e-books, it was
because of Borders. For ECW, he says, sales
are up over last year, and last year was up
over the year before that.
But even among the headlines there
have been signs of growthnew players
both big and small entering the market,
publishers acquiring other houses or at
least their lists, companies expanding in
new directions, and even silver linings to
the dark clouds of some of the closures.
Of course, much of (new and established) publishers confidence is tied to
their passionate belief in the books they
are publishing, but they are also finding
successful strategiesboth innovative
and old-fashionedto bring those books
to the attention of readers, even as the
familiar ground of bookselling shifts
beneath their feet in a digital and online
world. Read on for a closer look at where
Canadian confidence and optimism is
coming from.
Penguin Random
House
In spite of competing interests, the Canadian publishing community is a small and

generally collegial one. That collegiality
seemed apparent when PW met with the
people at the top of the newly integrated
Penguin Random House. President and
CEO Brad Martin, executive v-p and executive publisher of the McClelland & Stewart/
Doubleday Canada Publishing Group
Kristin Cochrane, and executive v-p and
executive publisher of the Knopf Random
House Canada Publishing Group Louise
Dennys gathered in a conference room at
the Random House offices at 1 Toronto
Street, along with Nicole Winstanley, president and publisher of Penguin Group
Canada, who had commuted downtown
from Penguins office at Yonge Street and
Eglinton Avenue East. A theme of
playful competition threaded its
way through the conversation.
Nicole has the biggest book of
the fall, Martin announces early on.
Orr: My Story, Bobby Orrs
memoir, Winstanley agrees, is
going to be huge. Published jointly
in the U.S. with Putnam, the book is

everything that everybody has ever
wanted to know about the hockey legend, she says. From his early days in
Parry Sound, Ont., slapping a puck up
against a stone wall, to losing everythinghis ability to play because of a
knee injury to the Eagleson scandal, which
he has long declined to speak aboutto
his life as an agent and his views on the
game and the way it is played today.
But later, when the conversation turns
to the Knopf Canada list, Martin acknowledges that Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfields book, An Astronauts Guide to Life
on Earth, might also be a contender to be
the biggest book of the fall.
Whos to say? Dennys says with a
laugh. We might go up into a little bit
of an arm wrestle. She describes Hadfield
as a rock star who captivated Canadians
and the world while he was in space and
will tour with his book coast to coast. At
one point, every [elementary] school in
Canada stopped at the same hour to sing
along with him and to have a conversation in space, she adds, noting that the
initial print run is 135,000 copies.
Thats less than the Bobby Orr, which
is 140,000, teases Martin.
I dont want to know that, says Dennys, shaking her head.
Weve been clear were going to stay
competitive. This is an example of it,
Cochrane says with a laugh. (Although
Look who could make literary history

this November.
13 authors. 13 books. An outstanding longlist for the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Who do you think will win?
SCOTIABANKGILLERPRIZE.CA
she didnt bring it up until later, Doubleday has its own contender for the big
book of the year, MaddAddam, the third
book in the apocalyptic trilogy by Margaret Atwood. Martin characterized
Atwoods book and Penguins The Orenda,
Joseph Boydens account of the brutal
conflict between the French and the Iroquois and Huron tribes in Canadas early
history, as the two biggest literary
events of the fall.)
Martin has the last conciliatory word
on the competition: Its not about what
we start with, its what we end with. We
are just blessed to have both these books.
And therein lies the crux of concerns
from authors and agents. All the competitive talk feels pretty friendly, and
ultimately, Penguin and Random House
are all on the same, very big team now.
Were competitive within and without
as long as theres someone else involved.
As soon as there are only our own divisions involved, then it distills down to
Were not going to bid against each
other, Martin says. But in terms of editorial diversity and identities, they are
going to remain. Hamish Hamilton is
different from Bond Street is different
from Knopf. Random House is different
from Doubleday.
Cochrane says that she doesnt believe
the merger will change much in the way
books come to Penguin Random House:
Agents dont come to each project uninformed. They have an informed opinion
of the editors, the lists, the positioning
that they want for the book.
Dennys agrees, saying, On a working
basis, one hasnt seen the change. The
agents are still coming to us, or we are
commissioning and going to agents
exactly the same way as we ever did.
Agents who spoke to PW said it is too
soon to see the effects of the merger in the
market, and they are waiting to see how
things develop. They agreed that they
will still approach Penguin and Random
House as they always have, but they also
noted that the merger does mean that at
a certain point in the process one more
piece of competition has disappeared
from the market. One agent described it
as contributing to an increasingly con6
The Launch of Hazlitt
Last fall, Random House of Canada took a big leap,

launching its own online magazine, Hazlitt. When he
announced the launch, CEO Brad Martin wrote, While
traditionally many book publishers have been primarily
using their Web sites for sales and marketing purposes,
we want to also use ours to publish original content.
Random hired prominent Toronto journalist Christopher
Frey as Hazlitts editor-in-chief. Hazlitt was intended to
cover a broad range of cultural topics and current affairs,
and one year later has celebrated critical success, being Brad Martin
nominated for four National Magazine Awards and winning threemagazine
Web site of the year, best magazine Web site design, and best online video.
Random reports that monthly traffic has reached as high as 130,000 unique
visitors, and that almost half the traffic on the site is from outside Canada.
We did a piece on [Oscar] Pistorius.... We have a piece coming up on the
Bikram Yoga scandal. Were trying to be of the moment, says Martin. Hazlitt
has also had good success with its original e-books, particularly Ivor Tossells
The Gift of Ford, about Torontos notoriously controversial mayor. Martin tells
PW that both Penguin and Random have been finding ways to bring their
authors closer to readers for years. Louise Dennys also notes that Hazlitt has
provided writers with an outlet for their nonfiction and creative ideas when
theyre between books. Penguin authors will now benefit from their ties to
Hazlitt. This is just an opportunity for us to pool our resources, to be even
more aggressive about our relationship with readers, says Martin.
stricted ecology for book publishing in

the country.
When asked if the merging of Penguin
and Randoms Web sites would involve
direct sales and e-commerce, Martin says,
Those discussions havent taken place.
Simon & Schuster

Canada
Even though it didnt acknowledge the

proposed PenguinRandom House
merger as a factor in its decision, this
spring the Canadian government granted
Simon & Schuster Canada permission to
launch a domestic publishing program
and thus introduced a new multinational
publisher into the Canadian mix just
before the merger was approved. The
move excepted S&S from a foreign ownership rule that had limited its operations
in Canada to distributing international
titles since it bought Distican and entered
the Canadian market in 2002. (Random,
Penguin, and HarperCollins were all
established in Canada early enough to be
grandfathered out of the restriction.)
It was something that S&S Canada
P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY S E P T E M B E R 2 3 , 2 0 1 3
president and now publisher Kevin Hanson had wanted to do for a long time. In
2010, when the government opened up
a review of its foreign investment policy
for publishing and asked for input from
the industry, Hanson says he made it
clear that not only did we want to invest
in Canada and Canadian authors and in
our own team here at Simon & Schuster
Canada, but it was good for the marketplace itself to give authors choice as to
who they could be published by.
The inaugural fall list is small, just
three books, but Hanson says thats a
good start on a list that will grow organically, and hes convinced the three pack
a powerful punch. We have this little
book by the prime minister [Stephen
Harper] on hockey
thats coming out in
November, says Hanson with a grin. Whatever Canadians think
of the Toronto Maple
Leafs team or of Stephen Harper as a
politician, publishing A Great Game:

The Forgotten Leafs & the Rise of Professional
Hockey, a hockey book in a hockey-crazed
country by the sitting prime minister is,
as Hanson says, an auspicious start.
Hanson also has great expectations for
journalist Amanda Lindhouts account
(with Sarah Corbett) of her 15 months as
a hostage in Somalia. A House in the Sky
has already attracted lots of media attention and is bound to be a bestseller and
the kind of book people will read and
talk about for many years, not only for
the story of how Lindhout survived her
captivity and torture but also her remarkable refusal to let the experience define
the rest of her life, and her commitment
to become a better person and help the
people of Somalia, Hanson says.
The third book, which Hanson
describes as a Don Quixotestyle novel he
fell in love with as soon as he read it, is a
debut from Toronto writer Ian Thornton,
The Great and Calamitous Tale of Johan
Thoms: How One Man Scorched the Twentieth
Century But Didnt Mean To. What we
want to do is publish fine new voices or
work with authors who need a new home
to be published with and have a new plan
and a new vision, explains Hanson.
Canadian agents describe the decision
to let Simon & Schuster publish domestically as a refreshing turn of events, and
although the publishing program is
starting small, they are pleased that it is
a new, open list, not already filled by
commitments to authors with multibook
contracts.
president with her own imprint before

she left the company and later joined
S&S.)
The fact that HarperCollins Canadas
Canadian publishing program is more
profitable than any other part of the fully
integrated publishing and distribution
company might surprise many in the
industry. Most publishers talk about how
tough it is to produce books for the Canadian market. The English-language

Canadian market is the single most
crowded book market on the face of the
earth, says Kent. There are more new
books and new titles available here than
in any other book market in the world.
All the English books come, all the
American books come, and theres 12,000
CATALYSTPAPER.COM
INTRODUCING
ASCENT.
OUR HIGHEST
PEAK.
HarperCollins
Canada
As it begins its Canadian publishing program, S&S could find inspiration at the
only other unmerged multinational in
the country, HarperCollins Canada. President and CEO David Kent proudly says
HarperCollins Canadas domestic publishing program is the most profitable
part of the companys sales year after year.
(S&S may be benefiting from some of
HarperCollinss experience because both
Hanson and editor Phyllis Bruce spent
portions of their careers there, in Bruces
case, 20 years, most recently as a vice
Catalyst introduces Ascent our new Coated #3 grade specialty paper. Ascents
brightness, superiorquality and excellent printability make it ideal for magazines,
catalogues, high-end inserts, commercial print and direct mail. Ascent is also
available as Sage designated offering verifiable environmental values such as
sustainable fiber sources, chain of custody system and carbon neutrality.
Learn more about Ascent at catalystpaper.com
PaRTNeRs aND Rivals
The Uneasy Future of Chinas Relationship with the

United States
by Wendy Dobson
In Partners and Rivals, acclaimed economist Wendy

Dobson, examines the central role that China and the
United States will play on the global stage in the next
half-century.
RoTmaN oN DesigN
The Best on Design Thinking from Rotman Magazine
edited by Roger Martin and Karen Christensen
This collection features Rotman magazines best articles

on design thinking and business design. Insights are
drawn from the people on the frontlines of bringing
design into modern organizations, as well as from the
leading academics who are teaching design thinking to a
new generation of global leaders.
utppublishing.com

to 15,000 Canadian books published
each year.
As a publisher and distributor, HarperCollins Canada is bringing many of
those books in from the U.S., the U.K.,
and Australia, and will soon be bringing
them in from India as well. HarperCollinss ownership of Zondervan makes the
house the largest Christian publisher in
North America, and Kent says that HarperCollins is the largest reference publisher
in Canada. What sets us apart is that we
have the most diverse product list of anybody, and we are a totally integrated fullscale publishing company that controls
its own distribution, says Kent.
Although the distribution side of the
business took some hits in the past year
when clients McArthur & Co. and D&M
Publishers closed and some booksellers
continue to circumvent Canadian law by
buying directly from U.S. distributors,
Kent says distribution is still a good business in Canada if you do it right. . . . We
price our own books as we ship them, so
we can adjust prices. We sticker everything. We can also do our own shrinkwrapping, create our own special pricing,
so if Costco wants a package with three
HC Celebrating the AuthorReader Connection
New from
University of
Toronto Press
books combined we do it.

Thomas Nelson and Usborne Publishing are new clients. This fall two of
HarperCollinss distribution titles may
get big boosts from upcoming movie
releasesthe third book in Veronica
Roths Divergent series, Allegiant, and
the latest in the film trilogy of J.R.R.
Tolkiens The Hobbit.
So what makes the Canadian publishing program the most profitable part of
HarperCollins Canadas sales? It is riskreward. It is a much greater risk to be
originating books than it is to just distribute, Kent says, but some of the companys risks in recent years have been very
rewarding both in terms of sales and satisfaction. Lawrence Hills Book of Negroes
has sold more than 700,000 copies. Shilipi Somaya Gowdas
Secret Daughter has
sold almost 500,000
copies in Canada.
This fall, marketing
director Cory Beatty
says they are particularly excited about
two books from editor Patrick Creans
HarperCollins Canadas marketing creatively

combines the latest in social media and oldfashioned personal touches. HarperCollins Canada
has more than 110,000 Facebook friends, but
marketing director Cory Beatty says, One reason
why our marketing and social media has been so
successful compared to almost every other publisher
Cory Beatty
in the world is because its not about connecting
with 110,000 people at once. Its about trying to get to one person and
then expanding that. That approach was vividly illustrated in August
when the company threw a party in its Toronto offices for avid reader
Mary Tutshs 100th birthday. Beatty and Tutsh became friends after
Tutsh wrote a letter to Jonas Jonasson, author of The 100-Year-Old Man
Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared, and asked if someone at
HarperCollins Canada could direct it to him. Her letter, which talked
about her own wish to escape her 100th birthday, so touched staff at
HarperCollins that they asked for permission to reprint it in an
advertisement for the book, which subsequently became a bestseller in
Canada. Beatty kept in touch with Tutsh, often asking for her opinion
of new books, and as Tutshs 100th birthday approached, the company
decided to throw her a party. Her gifts included a special edition of
Jonassons book with her own letter and a letter from the author
thanking her for her interest in his book.
10 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y S E P T E M B E R 2 3 , 2 0 1 3

new eponymous imprint: David Gilmours novel Extraordinary, which takes on
the thorny issue of assisted suicide, and
Shaena Lamberts collection of short stories, Oh, My Darling. (Prior to joining
HarperCollins in 2012, Crean ran Thomas
Allen Publishers as a boutique publisher
and edited several Giller Prize-winning
novels.) On the nonfiction side, there is a
memoir from boxer George Chuvalo, whose
career included famous bouts with Muhammad Ali and
whose family tragedies required even more remarkable
strength.
HarperCollins acquired Wileys Canadian list when Wiley
shut down its trade publishing arm, and expects to do well
reprinting backlist books such as Jerry Langtons true crime
books, which examine gangs and organized crime, and Ken
Drydens The Game, one of the greatest hockey books ever
written, says Beatty.
EcW
EcW iS
EntErtainmEnt
978-1-77041-166-1
Oct. 2013 | $22.95
EcW iS
culturE
The Perilous Middle Ground
After the fall of D&M, its cofounder Scott McIntyre talked

with PW about the factors that contributed to the companys
problems. Some of them were particular to D&Mbeing
too leveraged and losing money on its BookRiff Media venturebut McIntyre made some general observations about
the industry. My own view is that there is room for the
smaller, niche players at the bottom, and theres room for the
majors, but the middle ground is a very uncomfortable
place, McIntyre said. But thats the case in all the cultural
industries and for book publishers everywhere in the English-speaking world, because you are up against people with
deep pockets.
So how do Canadas remaining midsize independents make
it work?
Torontos Dundurn Press says it is not only surviving, it
is thriving and growing. In August, Dundurn acquired
Thomas Allen Publishers, which had been run as a boutique
Canadian publisher by Patrick Crean as a part of Thomas
Allen & Son. Vice-president Beth Bruder says, Things are
good for Dundurn, and adds that the acquisition indicates
our positive feeling about the market.
Dundurn currently publishes about 100 books each year,
and Bruder notes that hiring Diane Young as the companys
new editorial director is part of Dundurns focus on increasing
editorial quality and being more competitive commercially.
The addition of 126 frontlist and backlist titles from Thomas
Allen will add luster to Dundurns list with many acclaimed
literary titles, including two Giller Prize winners, Austin
Clarkes The Polished Hoe (2002) and Esi Edugyans Half-Blood
Blues (2011). Dundurn president Kirk Howard says one of
the lead titles for fall will be one acquired from Thomas
Allen, Ted Barriss The Great Escape, a World War II story,
which in fact is a Canadian story, says Howard. And Ted
PrESS
978-1-77041-038-1
Sept. 2013 | $19.95
EcW iS
WritinG
978-1-77041-159-3
Oct. 2013 | $9.95
EcWPrESS.com
11

Barris has written 17 other
protection in late 2012. Buying
books on military history, so
the Douglas & McIntyre imprint
that will be a good fit with our
meant that Madeira Park, B.C.s
military list, says Howard,
Harbour Publishing, which
who began his career as a colhad been almost exclusively a
lege instructor frustrated by the
regional publisher, expanded its
lack of books on Canadian hislist to embrace a national scope.
tory and who remains devoted
Harbour co-owner Howard
to publishing books on both
White says the company sucCanadian and international his- Kirk Howard
ceeded in reviving the Douglas &
tory, current affairs, politics,
McIntyre imprint quickly, puband biography as well as adult and YA
lishing seven titles in the spring and 14 this
fiction.
fall. Its not quite the size of a normal D&M
The Thomas Allen acquisition is only
year, but its two-thirds of it.
the latest in a string for Dundurn. It
Greystone Books found new life in
bought Natural Heritage Books and
Vancouver when Rodger Touchie, presiBeach Holme Publishing in 2007, the
dent of Victoria-based Heritage House
English-language publishing arm of
Publishing, invested and became a partner
XYZ Publishing in 2008, and Napoleon
with former Greystone publisher Rob
& Co. in 2011. Dundurn also merged
Sanders, who says the new arrangement of
with Patrick Boyers company, Blue Butbeing a separate company, not owned by
terfly Books, in 2011.
but affiliated with Heritage, is working
Thomas Allen & Son president and
out well. We are able to take advantage
CEO Jim Allen says he decided to sell the
of some joint services . . . [such as] producCanadian publishing part of the business
tion management, overall Canadian sales
because it was increasingly difficult to
management, and then in turn were conoperate a boutique publishing company
tributing U.S. sales involvement through
that produced only a small number of
our relationship with Perseus PGW,
titles of high editorial quality each season.
which Heritage didnt have before, as well
Its the economics of having a very small
as Greystones international connections
literary list like we had and being able to
and rights sales experience, says Sanders.
get enough support for it each season to
Rebuilding has been hard work, conreally give some of these somewhat
tinues Sanders, but its paying off now.
unknown books a strong emphasis.
Weve had a big job of getting back out
But Allen notes that the Markham,
there and getting books back into stores and
Ont., companys international agency
building confidence, but its been workbusiness is growing. Its always been
ing very well. Although the list is not as
strong, but since 2011, weve taken on an
big as it will be next fall, Sanders says hes
additional 14 lines from the United States.
pleased that their fall 2013 books cover
Four or five of those lines came from H.B.
the key areas that they want to work in.
Fenn and their bankruptcy. We represent
Firefly Books president Lionel Koffler
29 publishers here. Allen says he has also
says business at the Richmond Hill, Ont.,
been investing in a fledgling software
house in the past year was up almost 11%.
company called Book Connect, which has
Whats the secret to Fireflys survival and
grown out of Thomas Allens own syssuccess? Its our backlist, Koffler says.
tems, including a bibliographic data sysIn any given week when we look at our
tem. Some of Thomas Allens distribution
top 100 books sold in Canada or America
clients, including Workman Publishing,
or both, 95 out of 100 are backlist books,
the Taunton Press, Square One Publishhe says. It takes a lot of time and money
ers, and Canadian indie press Coach
to develop our books, either the illusHouse Books are now using the system.
trated ones or the science-based or foodThe ending of D&M Publishers was also
based ones. They all have an unusually
much happier than it looked like it would
high degree of editorial effort in them, so
be when the company filed for bankruptcy
we have to go to reprints to make any
money from them, so we keep our books

in print for a long time, and we have an
unusually high degree of commitment to
backlist and also success with backlist
because of that. In order to help market
those backlist titles, which in turn pay for
new frontlist titles, Firefly refreshes covers and advertises in targeted consumer
markets, and lives by the rule Never,
ever surrender.
As mentioned in the introduction,
ECW Press, in Toronto, also reports that
business is good. Although Canadian
sales are down somewhat, U.S. sales are
up, which means that the year overall is
up so far. Weve always been very wary
of the Canadian market, says copublisher
Jack David. And that strategy has helped
them weather the changes at Indigo better. Less than 10% of our sales are Indigo/
Chapter sales now, he says.
David agrees with McIntyres assessment that it is tough to be a midsize independent publisher these days, but, he
says, Big, small, medium, I think the
key word is niche, and if you are selling
into the popular science market, the pop
culture market, the wrestling market,
thats a niche publisher. It doesnt matter
if you are big or small. Hockey books are
so popular in Canada, they perhaps cant
be considered niche, but one of ECWs
big books for fall is Dont Call Me Goon:
Hockeys Greatest Enforcers, Gunslingers, and
Bad Boys by Greg Oliver and Richard
Kamchen.
Several midsize and small publishers
have noted that consolidation among the
large houses may be sending more authors
their way. David notes that some authors
who left ECW for bigger houses, such as
Dr. Joe Schwarcz, have returned. Weve
seen more midlist authors come our way.
Ive seen more agent submissions than
Ive seen before, and from our point of
view, its great, says David. Were seeing better and better stuff, and were seeing it at advance rates that we consider
reasonable, that is, an advance that is
commensurate with whatever the first
printing is going to be.
House of Anansi Press president and
publisher Sarah MacLachlan agrees that it
is tough terrain for independent midsize

publishers, but it was ever
thus, she says philosophically.
We dont have the market
heft of the multinationals, and
now Random House is the big
gorilla. You are always battling
for attention, but thats not different than it ever was. Even
though Torontos Anansi has a
reputation for publishing critically acclaimed and award-winning books, MacLachlan says that
doesnt guarantee sales. Every season
youve got to prove it all again, she says.
Youve always got to be loud, and youve
always got to be working hard to create
media opportunities for your writers and
books.
A couple of Anansis titles seem destined for lots of media exposure this fall.
Lawrence Hill, author of the bestseller
The Book of Negroes, is this years speaker
for the CBC Massey Lecture series, for
which an author delivers a lecture in five
parts, each to an audience in a

different city across the country. Each part is also broadcast
nationally on CBC Radio and
in North America on Sirius
Satellite Radio. Hills lecture
will be based on his ninth
and latest book, Blood: The
Stuff of Life. While the scientific study of blood has
advanced medical knowledge and treatments, Hill will also focus
on the ways in which the cultural and
social representations of blood have
divided humans. Blood: The Stuff of Life is
published by Anansi this month. Activist
Maude Barlows book Blue Future, about
the deepening global water crisis and her
prescription for what must be done, is
also likely to attract the media spotlight.
Anansi also launched two new imprints
this past spring. Astoria is devoted to
short stories, both Canadian and international, and Arachnide Editions is devoted
to French Canadian literature in translation. Weve always done both of those

things, but I felt that creating an imprint
for each would focus our marketing
energy and peoples attention to it as distinct categories that we publish, explains
MacLachlan.
Small Presses
Some small presses say that more authors

are coming to them too, but Cormorant
Books publisher Marc Ct says that has
been happening for some time. Since the
merging started a while ago, there are
authors who feel they are not getting
enough attention, editorially, marketingwise at the larger houses, and so there are
big-name authors who are looking for
alternatives, he says. Over the years
weve picked up Neil Bissoondath and
Susan Swan....Everybody tells me Cormorant is first choice for the editing. They
just wish they could get bigger advances,
he says wryly. One of the Toronto houses
RELEASING THIS FALL

METAL ON ICE
Tales from Canadas Hard Rock and
Heavy Metal Heroes
9781459707092 | OCTOBER
LOST BENEATH THE ICE

The Story of
HMS Investigator
9781459719491 | DECEMBER
Highly
illustrated;
combines history
and modern day
underwater
archeology.
Canada has produced many successful proponents

of the genre known as heavy metal. Drawing
on interviews with original artists such as Helix,
Anvil, Coney Hatch, and Honeymoon Suite, as well
as industry insiders, this book provides a new perspective on the dreams of musicians shooting for an
American ideal of success ... and ultimately discovering a uniquely Canadian voice in the process.
CORPORATE ASSET
Next
A Jack Taggart Mystery, Book 7
in the series:
In 1850, HMS Investigator

was sent to search for the lost
Franklin ships. They failed, becoming trapped
in the ice, but completed Franklins quest for
the Northwest Passage. This book recounts
the voyage and Parks Canadas discovery of the wreck.
9781459708211 | OCTOBER
9781771022729 | OCTOBER
Corporate Asset takes RCMP undercover operative Jack Taggart into the
world of white-collar crime and murder.
Insurance companies are being bilked out of millions
of dollars. Unfortunately, he has to make a deal with
a sleazier and more dangerous brand of criminal in
order to get the job done.
On the night of March 24, 1944, eighty Commonwealth airmen crawled through a 336-foot-long tunnel and slipped into the dark pine forest beyond the
wire of a German POW compound. The event became
known as The Great Escape.
The Great Escape, gives us the real truth on a story
we thought we knew. Riveting. Linwood Barclay
The Benefactor,
releases May
2014.
THE GREAT ESCAPE

A Canadian Story
A unique
retelling of the
story through
first-hand recollections.
/dundurnpress | @dundurnpress | dundurn.com
13
Another year of
Publishing
ExcEllEncE
Winner of the 2013
Carol ShieldS Winnipeg
book aWard
and the Margaret laurenCe

aWard
for
fiCtion
Shortlisted for
Winner of the 2013

Cba libriS aWard
reader book of
for
the
Winner of the 2012
Young
Year
Finalist for the 2013

Cla Young adult
book aWard
Man booker prize

CoSta book aWard
for b eSt n oVel
CoSta book
of the
Shortlisted for the 2013
CbC Canada readS
WoMenS prize
Winner of the 2013
Longlisted for the 2013
helen and Stan Vine

Canadian JeWiSh book
aWard fiCtion
Man booker prize
Year
for
fiCtion
toronto book aWardS and the

laMbda literarY aWard in the
gaY MeMoir/biographY CategorY
SCotiabank giller prize
hilarY WeSton WriterS truSt

prize for nonfiCtion
@h arper c ollins Ca
h arper c ollins C anada
h arper c ollins . Ca

lead titles, Island: How Islands Transform
the World, is by J. Edward Chamberlin,
whose book If This Is Your Land, Where Are
Your Stories? was published by Knopf Canada. Ct is thrilled to have this one. It
is like having a conversation with the most
erudite uncle you can imagine. Its beautifully written and very informative.
Coach House Books editor Alana
Wilcox says she too has seen way more
agent submissions than I ever have
before....Some authors that I would have
thought would have a home at a bigger
house are being shopped around to places
like Coach House.
Small presses are also reporting good
news that runs counter to the perception
of a struggling industry. Wilcox says 2012
was Coach Houses best year ever. Tamara
Faith Bergers novel Maidenhead, which
Toronto-based Coach House marketed as
an edgier, more intellectual, and literary
alternative to Fifty Shades, had a lot to do
with it, says Wilcox, but it wasnt just
that. There was just a nice confluence of
good things.
NeWest Press general manager Paul
Matwychuk says sales were also up in the
companys fiscal year that ended in June.
We came off a year that I think was one
of our best years creatively, he says, mentioning that seven of the Edmonton houses
10 books for the year were nominated for
or won awards. The highlight of the year
critically and in terms of sales was Cassie
Stockss book, Dance, Gladys, Dance, which
won the national Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. That one feels
like it is just getting started with word of
mouth. It is a really winning, charming
book that is still getting attention in the
media, Matwychuk says. NeWests fall
list includes a debut collection of short
fiction from Thea Bowering, Love at Last
Sight, which is already getting some critical praise.
There also seems to be a
trend to experiment with
form, particularly shorterform fiction and nonfiction.
Anansi Digital is a home for
fiction and nonfiction from
5,000 to 10,000 words. And
among the small presses, Linda Leith
Coach House is launching a nonfiction

series called Exploded Views, shortish
books on cultural subjects, that Wilcox
says allow for long form and more lyrical
journalism. One of the first titles this fall,
In Love with Art, is Jeet Heers tribute to
Franoise Mouly, who has spent more
than 20 years as art editor of the New
Yorker and ran the influential RAW
Books with her husband, Art Spiegelman. And although Coach House doesnt
usually do much graphic novel publishing, it is reissuing a book that its predecessor Coach House Press published in
the 1970s, Martin Vaughn-Jamess The
Cage, which was a graphic novel before
the term was invented. It reads like an
acid trip, although it was not, says Wilcox. We wanted to get it back into print,
we get so many requests for it.
Arsenal Pulp Presss big book for fall
is also a graphic novel. Publisher Brian
Lam bought Blue Is the Warmest Color, a
French lesbian drama, by Julie Maroh
from a Belgian publisher last year. The
book was then turned into a feature film
that won the Palme dOr at the Cannes
Film Festival in May. Lam expects the
book, which Arsenal holds world English
rights for, to get another boost when the
film is released in the U.S. at the end of
October. Arsenal is releasing its own edition of the book in the U.K. and Australia as well.
Lam says Vancouver-based Arsenal has
been having good success with the international titles it imports. Earlier this year,
we published the North American edition of a British gay novel called London
Triptych [by Jonathan Kemp], and thats
been our number one bestseller in the
U.S. for the last three months. He looks
especially for titles that are midrange,
not something that a large publisher
would be interested in but
something that would fit our
program, Lam says.
Linda Leith Publishing,
in Westmount, Quebec, is a
relatively new house,
launched in June 2011, but
publisher Leith is wellknown in the Canadian literary world as the founder of
great books from annick
print or e-books!
Award-winning fiction
Fascinating non-fiction
endearing picture books
annick press
excellence & innovation
one of the most innovative and cutting-edge

publishers of books for children and young adults
www.annickpress.com
Distributed by www.fireflybooks.com
We acknowledge the assistance of the OMDC Book Fund, an initiative of Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Bringing
Human Rights
Books to the
Classroom
We
have
the
books
youre
looking
for
Talk to us
at BEA,
ALA, OLA
Distributed
in the US
by Orca
Books
Second Story Press

www.secondstorypress.ca
www.socialjusticestories.com

Quebecs Blue Metropolis literary festival. After leaving the
festival in 2010 and taking
some time to travel, she decided
to launch her own house specializing in literary fiction and
what she calls singles essays,
short nonfiction books published both digitally and in print. You
need a diversity of editorial taste, and
then some of the unusual, very original
voices get heard, Leith says of her literary
publishing. She thought the essays would
be a really good format because I think
people like to read a short argument, a
short sort of polemical essay both on a
device and in print. Success with singles
such as Wade Rowlands Saving the CBC,
which has been reprinted three times, is
a good sign that she was right. This fall,
Stephen Henighan, usually known for his
literary writing, is publishing a nonfiction single, A Green Reef: The Impact of
Climate Change, with Leith.
B.C.s Talon Books, on the other hand
has been publishing since the 1970s, and
is just completing a five-year renewal plan
with a new editorial team, led by publisher
Kevin Williams. An old infrastructure was
limiting Talons potential for growth, says
Williams, but with a new Web site and
computer system in place, Talon is forging
a new future for itself, complete with a
social media presence. The house will
remain focused on drama, poetry, ethnography (books about First Nations peoples)
and books in translation, particularly fiction and drama from Quebec.
Talon has now published two new editions (volumes 1 and 2) of Modern Canadian Plays with about 40% new content.
Williams describes them as the cornerstones of our drama list, which are
mainstream texts in university drama
courses in Canada. Our biggest book
right now is They Called Me Number One,
which is basically secrets of survival in an
Indian Residential School, and its been
a bestseller for us, says Williams. Its
author, Chief Bev Sellars, will be touring
in Canada and the U.S. this fall and next
spring. Lots of people are also looking
forward to The (Post) Mistress, from
prominent aboriginal playwright Tom-
son Highway, he adds

Victoria, B.C.s Rocky Mountain Books has been in business
for more than 30 years. It started
strictly as a guidebook publisher
of very utilitarian map books
about the Rocky Mountains but
has expanded. I took it over eight
years ago and reimagined what an established publishing company can do, says
publisher Don Gorman. RMB now has a
much broader scope, though it still
focuses on the outdoors. Our tagline is
Think outside. Were trying to tie everything we do to the landscape and natural
environment, whether thats spirituality,
climate change, travel, photography
everything is about a place and about how
we impact the landscape, says Gorman.
RMB began experimenting with short
nonfiction in 2008. The format became
its Manifesto series of small hardcover
books limited to 20,000 words, the most
successful of which has been The Incomparable Honeybee and the Economics of Pollination by Dr. Reese Halter. That one has
gone to a second printing, and Margaret
Atwood tweeted about it. It was on
MSNBC and CBC. It came out just at the
right time, when people were really starting to talk about honeybees in 2009.
Some people were surprised by how passionate and judgmental the Manifestos
were, but thats what they are supposed
to be, says Gorman.
One of the new titles for fall is Saving
Lake Winnipeg by Robert William Sandford. It is a massive lake, and it is about
to die as a result of pollution and climate
change and huge inaction on the part of
government and society at large to fix the
problem, Gorman says. The book is truly
is a manifesto. It is absolutely biased and
populist, it is not academic, its meant to
take a side.
Contradicting those dire headlines,
Gorman says, Its a great time to be in
publishing. Why? There arent any rules
anymore. We are competing with
e-books, so our format has to change. Not
every book can be five and a half, eight
and a half, and $19.95. Now we can start
changing that stuff, having more fun, and
controlling what we create.
Wheres Wigrum?
Spotlighting the big, the brave and the

musical
Childrens
Publishing in Fall
2013
Not unlike the adult side of the business, childrens publishing in Canada looks to be headed for a pretty good 2013 overall, despite limited school and library budgets and reduced
inventory and heavy return rates at Indigo Books and Music
stores. Rick Wilks, director of Annick Press, points to gains
in the nontraditional market that have helped make up for
some of what wouldve been lost. Weve been really successful at getting books into Target. Theyve got a good selection
of a number of titles. And weve done some special packages
for Costco. Publishers that emphasize U.S. and international
sales have also felt less impact from the cuts at Indigo. Owlkids Books publisher Karen Boersma says that efforts to promote the companys books in the U.S are paying off, with
double-digit growth in sales there.
ales to the school and library

market, however tough, are
more important than retail
sales for many publishers.
There is fierce competition
for dollars because a) there
are fewer of them b) theres more competition in terms of acquisitions for those
dollars, says Wilks, who notes that there
is a big demand for digital products in
addition to books. Good reviews are
essential, he says. Even if they are ordering in general fewer titles because of com-
petition for their budgets, if your title

gets noticed theres still a good market.
All publishers have sales and marketing strategies, but what they really want
to talk about is what they consider the
most powerful assetgreat books. This
year, PW highlights big books, brave
books, and books that keep the beat.
If I believe all the stories

I am told, so can you
Wigrum
Daniel Canty
Translated by Oana Avasilichioaei
Its October 1944. During a brief respite from

the aerial bombardment of London, Sebastian
Wigrum leaves his small at and disappears
into the fog for a walk in the Unreal City. This is
our rst, and last, encounter with the enigmatic
man we come to discover decades later
through the more than one hundred everyday
objects he has left behind.
Wigrums bequest is a meticulously catalogued
collection of ordinary items that once belonged
to writers, artists, and inventors. Moving through
the inventory, artifact to artifact, story to story,
we become immersed in a dreamlike narrative
bricolage determined as much by the objects
museological presentation as by the tender and
idiosyncratic mania of Wigrums impulse to
collect them.
Introducing readers to a new form of ction
an inventory! Wigrum explores the limits of
the postmodern novel. Having absorbed the
logic of lists and the principles of classication
systems, the Wigrumian narrative teeters on the
boundary between fact and ction, on the
uncertain edge of the real and the unreal.
A book for both the bibliophile and design lover,
Wigrum appeals to the latent collector in all of us.
$14.95 / 200 pp / Fiction / 978-0-88922-778-1
Talonbooks
www.talonbooks.com
Big
The names, especially in Canada, speak

largely for themselvesKenneth Oppel,
Robert Munsch, Barbara Reidbut it
19
also piques curiosity about what these

stars have been up to.
Scholastic Canada is publishing the
latest story from Robert Munsch called

Swamp Water along with a new
anthology, Munsch Mania.
Author illustrator Barbara
Reid, whose unique Plasticine-sculpted illustrations are
instantly recognizable, has
taken on another big name
Clement Moores The Night
Before Christmas, told with a
mousy twist.
HarperCollins Canada has an
new novel from one of the biggest
names in Canadian childrens literature. Kenneth Oppels The Boundless is set
in the late 1800s just as the dream of a
railroad crossing and uniting all of Canada was being completed.
It is historical fiction, but, of course,
it is Kenneth Oppel, so there is a healthy
dose of fantasy and magic in it. The
Boundless is the name of the worlds
largest train, its like the Titanic of trains,
many kilometers long, says Hadley
Dyer, executive editor of childrens books

at HarperCollins Canada. When young
Will Everett witnesses something he
shouldnt, he has to race from the end of
the train to the very front with a nefarious character on his heels. It is a pressure
cooker and full of imagination, says
Dyer.
B.C.s Orca Book Publishers Seven
series, tailored particularly to entice boys
to read, turned out to be big in a number
of ways. Seven authors writing seven
interconnected novels released simultaneously was an ambitious project for all
involved, from the writing through the
complicated editing process and the
coordinated cross-country author tours.
It also paid off in a big way with 80,000
copies sold, and rights sales that stretch
all the way to India, Bangladesh, Nepal,
and Pakistan, says publisher Andrew
Wooldridge. The sequel series by the
same authors writing stories with the
same characters will be out in fall 2014.

And in 2015, Orca plans to release a
series of seven linked novels by seven
female authors, including some wellknown names like Marthe Jocelyn,
Kathy Kacer, and Kelly Armstrong.
Brave
Many Canadian childrens publishers

have been recognized for going where
few others dare to gointo the delicate,
the provocative, and the really tough or
thorny issues of the dayand going
there in intelligent and sensitive ways.
Annick Press, shortlisted as one of five

publishers considered for the best childrens publisher of the year award at the
Bologna Book Fair, knows this territory
well. Rick Wilks says the 2012 graphic
novel War Brothers, by Sharon McKay
and Daniel Lafrance, about child soldiers
in Uganda, received starred reviews and
enjoyed great sales. No matter how worthy the subject, it has to be great storytelling, says Wilks.
Second Story Press is publishing
Until Today, a debut novel by Pam Fluttert about 13-year old Kat,
who is devastated when her
journal goes missing. It holds
the secret she has told no
onethe only record of the
sexual abuse she has sufferedat the hands of a friend
of her fathers. Theres nothing graphic, there are no
scenes of the abuse, but there
are scenes between her and
him where he tells her, You cant tell

anybody, it will be your fault, says Second Story marketing and promotions
manager Emma Rodgers. Obviously,
its a difficult subject, says Rogers, the
kind of book teachers and librarians will
want to handle carefully. Rodgers also
says shes been amazed by the overwhelmingly positive responses to the
book from the ALAs teen review group.
One of Owlkids Books lead titles this
fall is Why do we Fight?: Conflict, War and
Peace by Niki Walker. Publisher Karen
Boersma says the book, released in September, attracted a lot of attention at the
Bologna fair. She uses real-world examples, but shes been really careful not to
wade into any debates about current conflicts, Boersma says. Her intent is to
teach kids to recognize the shared structures, the factors, and the history that
create both personal conflicts and global
conflicts, so she does a great job of bringing it back for kids to conflicts that they
From Lawrence Hill,

the bestselling author of
Someone Knows My Name

(Published in Canada as The Book of Negroes)
A provocative look at blood from

the sacred to the secular, from blood
sports to blood lines, from gender to
race to genetic testing and how it
unites and divides us today
Available in print and e-book editions
anansi publishes very good books
www.houseofanansi.com
might experience in their own lives, with

a sibling, with someone at school.
Scholastic Canadas The Road to
Afghanistan, written by Linda Granfield,
is narrated by a soldier home from two
tours of duty in Afghanistan. Using stories from the narrators family history, the
book also honors soldiers who have
fought for Canada in previous wars.
Deborah Ellis traveled to Afghanistan,
as well as to Iraq, Israel, and Palestine in
order to tell the stories of children in
those troubled places. Her new book,
Looks Like Daylight: Voices of Indigenous
Kids, tells the stories of aboriginal children from Alaska and Canadas North
Lisa L yons (below) of

Kids Can Press reports
tremendous interest,
especially in relation to
the Common Core
curriculum, in the
Citizen Kid series.
and as far south as Florida. The result

of her interviews with them is
remarkable, says Groundwood
Books publisher Sheila Barry. Although
there are positive stories, there are also
many stories of despair and heartbreak.
Ellis tells PW that what stayed with her
most from her two years of traveling the
continent were the stories she heard from
the children about white adults going
out of their way on the streets or in a shop
just to say racist things right to their
face. Id hear those things over and over.
Profits from the project are going to the
First Nations Child and Family Caring
Society, which is a group in Canada that
advocates for the rights of native children
in foster care.
HarperCollins Canada is publishing
Rabbit Ears by Maggie de Vries. This
novel for teens is a very personal story
for her, says HarperCollinss Dyer. In
addition to publishing several other childrens books, de Vries has published an
adult memoir, Missing Sarah, which was
nominated for a Governor-Generals
award for nonfiction. Canadians know
Sarah de Vries, Maggies adopted sister,
as one of the many women who went
missing from the rough streets of Vancouvers downtown East Side and who
was later discovered to have been the victim of serial killer Robert Pickton. Rabbit Ears is a fictionalization of Sarahs
story as a young woman. It is the story
of two sisters, one who runs away and one
who stays home, and how the character
who was inspired by Sarah, Kaya, does
end up on the streets, does end up in
prostitution to support her drug habit,
says Dyer. And it explores the question
how can this happen to a kid who comes
from a very loving home, as many of
these women did. It is a really brave
book.
Razias Ray of Hope is the 12th book in
Kids Can Presss Citizen Kid series,
which president Lisa Lyons says has been
attracting tremendous interest, particularly in relation to Common Core curriculum. The series, written by multiple
authors, features books that aim to make
complex global issues accessible for children ages 812, covering topics such as
water conservation, biodiversity, food
security, and microlending. More than
700,000 copies of the first 11 books in
the series have sold worldwide and have
been translated into 20 languages.
Razias Ray of Hope is about an Afghan
girl who dreams of going to school. The
book was inspired by an Afghan woman,
Razia Jan, who worked as a tailor outside
of Boston and decided after 9/11 that she
wanted to build schools for girls in
Afghanistan, and founded the Zabuli
Education Centre in rural Afghanistan
that provides free education to 400 girls.
She is actually a character in the book,
says Lyons. The young girl in the book
is called Razia, but one of the things
Razia does is go to homes and sit down,
particularly with the fathers and brothers, and tell them its really important
that the girls are educated, and she does
that in the book.
This spring Orca launched its nonfiction Orca Footprints series. According to
publisher Andrew Wooldridge, the first
two books, Pedal It: How Bicycles Are
Changing the World and Down to Earth:
How Kids Help Feed the World, have both
done well. Pedal It has already been
reprinted, and hes sold rights for both in
Korea. The new title for fall is Brilliant:
Shining a Light on Sustainable Energy.
Were choosing a very specific niche for
our nonfiction. The books are environmentally themed but they wont beat you
over the head or make you feel bad about
how we are treating the planet, says
Wooldridge. Theyre more positive.
With a Beat
Books that mix with music in creative

ways are highlights for several publishers
this fall.
The Man with the Violin by Kathy Stinson, published by Annick, is based on
the true story of the renowned violinist
Joshua Bell playing his Stradivarius in a
Washington Metro station and observing that the people who paid the most
attention to his music were children.
Annicks Wilks says Stinsons book
highlights that theme. Its about how
kids really pay attention and are connected to the world in a way that adults
often forget. Sony music has created a
Web site where readers can listen to Bell
playing two Mozart pieces. There are
also plans for a childrens album and
Annick is discussing co-marketing
opportunities with Sony.
Groundwoods Northwest Passage uses
haunting paintings of the Arctic from
author and illustrator Matt James interspersed with the lyrics of Stan Rogerss
iconic folk song Northwest Passage to
bring alive the story of the historic search
for the Arctic passage from the Atlantic
to the Pacific. Groundwood does these
kind of nonfiction picture books that
take that information to a whole new
level. But this one I think is in a class of
its own, says publisher Sheila Barry.
Montreals Secret Mountain specializes in books for children that are paired
with music CDs, and, more specifically,
music that adults can enjoy. As publisher Roland Stringer explains: A child
can listen to the same album in the car
for hundreds of miles. And it can drive
a parent off the deep end, having to listen for hours to a basement recording
produced with a midi keyboard and a
singing puppet on steroids. Lets just say
we believe in public safety. So Secret
Mountain produces books with a broad
range of music from around the world as
well as different musical genres. This
falls title, A Gift for Sophie, was written
by the beloved Quebeois poet and songwriter Gilles Vigneault and published
first in French in 2007 and has now been
translated into English. It is accompanied by popular singers Martha Wainwright, Thomas Hellman, Jessica
Vigneault, Paul Compagne, and David
Francis. The book is illustrated by Stphane Jorisch.
The cross-generational appeal of great
music was also the inspiration for
Tundra Books lead fall title, from
Robbie Robertson, a member of The
Band. Robertsons Legends, Icons &
Rebels: Music That Changed the World was
written as a book (with two CDs) that
parents could read and listen to with
their children, introducing them to
musical innovators from Louis
Armstrong to Bob Dylan. Kristin
Cochrane, executive v-p and executive
publisher of the McClelland & Stewart
Doubleday Canada Publishing Group,
says Robertson talked about the
intrinsic taste in music that children
have that we dont give them credit for.
There are very few children in the world
who dont respond immediately to the
Beatles or Ella Fitzgerald. Tundra
expects the large and stylishly illustrated
book will be an adult crossover gift
book. Its very much a celebration of
music, a historical document of music in
a particular time, adds Cochrane. But
as the design and as the material came
in, and as the song list that Robbie
compiled with his co-writers evolved,
our numbers kept getting bigger and
bigger, and our vision for the book kept
getting bigger and bigger. Thats big
and brave and surely will have a beat.
THIS FALL FROM

Coach House Books
IN LOVE WITH ART

FRANOISE MOULYS
ADVENTURES IN COMICS
WITH ART SPIEGELMAN
JEET HEER
$13.95 (print) 978-1-55245-278-3
$6.95 (ebook) 978-1-77056-351-3
Franoise Mouly, art director
of the New Yorker, co-creator
and editor of RAW and
publisher of TOON Books,
has spent nearly four
decades transforming comics.
With her husband, Art
Spiegelman, she brought an
avant-garde sensibility to the
popular art form. Since 1993,
Mouly has remade the face
of the venerable New Yorker.
In Love With Art is both the
first book-length portrait of
a female pioneer in a maledominated industry and a
rare, behind-the-scenes look
at some of todays most
iconic images.
www.chbooks.com
23
TD Bank Makes
Childrens
Literacy a Priority
Each year in October, TD Bank Group adds glamour to the

Canadian childrens literature scene, sponsoring the TD Canadian Childrens Literature Awards gala in Toronto and a parallel event in Montreal for literature in French, including the
premiere prizes of C$30,000 for the most distinguished book
of the year in each language. But more important for Canadian
children is the banks ongoing commitment to providing essential funds to promote childrens literacy throughout the year.
his year, TD is
devoting
C$3.9 million to prog r a m s
designed
to nurture literacy and
a love of reading,
including putting
books into the hands of
children. Beyond that, it will
spend more than C$1 million in
marketing dollars, according to Alan
Convery, TDs national manager of community relations, who directs all of the
banks sponsorship of childrens literature, literacy, and reading programs.
Each fall, TD also sponsors the Canadian Childrens Book Centres TD Grade
One Book Giveaway program that gives
a book to every child in grade one across
the country. It amounts to about 550,000
books each year, but Convery says this
years printing of Boy Soup (La

soupe de garons), written by
Loris Lesynski, illustrated
by Michael Martchenko,
and published by Annick
Press, was closer to
650,000, so that there
would be extras to give
away beyond the school
program.
TD in Canada and in the
U.S. also partner with First Book,
which has distributed more than 100
million new, donated books to children
in need throughout North America. This
year, TD is also providing a $61,000
grant to First Book Canadas Marketplace
initiative, which provides funds to
schools and organizations to buy the
books of their choice, which publishers
provide at deeply discounted rates. (An
additional $50,000 went to schools in
the U.S.) TD Bank Group stepped up
right away when the First Book Canada

Marketplace was established and gave 50
high-needs groups significant grants,
Tom Best, First Book Canadas executive
director, tells PW. I cant begin to tell
you how meaningful those grants were
for the children from low income families in those groups. Teachers and community organizers were able to select the
very best books for these children and
allowed them to take them home. For
many, these are the very first books they
have ever owned. Next spring, TD
employees in both Canada and the U.S.
will be visiting schools with First Book
and reading to the children.
TD is also the lead sponsor of the
National Reading Campaign, which is
just launching in Canada this fall. The
campaign is aimed at cultivating a love of
reading throughout the whole of Canadian society, but TDs sponsorship is
focused at portions of the campaign aimed
at children. Patsy Aldana, one of the cofounders of the campaign and the founder
of Groundwood Books, tells PW that TDs
funding and sponsorship of reading promotion projects for children is exceptional. The National Reading Campaign has been extremely lucky to have
such a good partner in our work aimed at
ensuring that Canada is and remains a
nation of readers. Both the NRC and TD
understand that if children do not learn to
love to read, we will have problems of
adult literacy and reading in the future.
People I meet around the world are astonished to discover that there is such a forward-looking bank in Canada.
Each spring, TD also sponsors the TD
Canadian Childrens Book Week, which
sends 30 authors and illustrators out to
schools and community centers across
the country, particularly in remote areas
such as Canadas North, to inspire Canadian children to read. In his travels with
the bank, Convery has opportunities to
see the magic that happens when the
authors and illustrators, who he says are
generally great storytellers, meet the
children. If you could capture that and
bottle it and put it in the libraries and
the bookstores, it would make a big difference, he says.
The Giller Prize at 20

On September 16, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, in its 20th
year, released the longlist for this years prize. Jurors Esi Edugyan, Jonathan Lethem, and Margaret Atwood selected 13
titles from a field of 147. Among the authors on the list: Clare
Messud, Joseph Boyden, Lynn Coady, Lisa Moore, Dennis
Bock, and Michael Winter. (For the full list, visit www.scotiabank.com/gillerprize.)
year, the live presentation will again be
on CBC, on November 5.
The prizes cachet also grew as the
spikes in sales of shortlisted and winning
hot pulp
Now a major motion picture
The film adaptation of Blue Is the Warmest Color, directed

by Abdellatif Kechiche and starring La Seydoux and
Adle Exarchopoulos, won the Palme dOr at the 2013
Cannes Film Festival.
Clementine is a junior in high school who seems normal enough: she has
friends, family, and even a boyfriend. But she cant reciprocate his feelings
toward her, so she breaks up with him. When her openly gay best friend takes
her to a gay bar, she becomes captivated by Emma, a punkish, confident
girl with blue hair, an event that leads Clementine to discover new aspects of
herself, both passionate and tragic.
Blue Is the Warmest Color is a tender,
bittersweet, full-color graphic novel about the elusive,

reckless magic of love: a lesbian love story for
the ages that bristles with the energy of youth,
rebellion, and the eternal light of desire.
First published in French by Belgiums Glnat,
the book has won several awards, including the
Audience Prize at the Angoulme International
Comics Festival, Europes largest.
Graphic Novels
ISBN 978-1-55152-514-3
$19.95 Canada & USA
ARSENAL PULP PRESS
arsenalpulp.com
julie maroh
A hymn to love. Le Figaro
nnes
e dOr
Palm er
Winn
Blue is the warmest color
A story of deep love And deep heArtbreAk.
Steven Spielberg, Cannes Film Festival jury president
Ca
Fi
ooking back 20 years and

reflecting on the success of
the Scotiabank Giller Prize,
I am mindful of the many
finger prints that created
this literary prize, its
founder Jack Rabinovitch wrote to PW.
Foremost was my late friend Mordecai
Richler, who also served as a juror for the
first two years. Mordecai convinced
David Staines to join the founding group
and David in turn convinced Alice
Munro. However, the real founder was
my late wife Doris Giller, an outstanding
literary journalist, well-known for her
audacious (read: in your face) manner and
forthright honesty. She set the standard
and Canadian fiction writers did the
rest. Rabinovitch created the award in
Gillers honor the year after she died of
cancer.
The prize quickly gained prestige and
the awards gala became a glamorous televised event attended not only by the literary and publishing community but
also by celebrities from Canadas arts and
media world.
In 2005, Scotiabank became a partner,
and the prize increased from C$25,000
to C$50,000. In 2008, $5,000 awards to
the four other finalists increased the total
purse to $70,000.
CBCs live national broadcast in 2012
was watched by 347,000 people. This
KRISTIN SKIBSRUD ROSS
books were tracked. It became known

in the publishing industry as the Giller
effect. According to figures from
BookNet Canada, the average jump in
sales after a Giller win is 543%. Last
years spike for Will Fergusons novel
419, published by Penguin Canada, was
497% up from the week before the
shortlist was announced to the week
after, and then 803% from the week
before it was announced as the winner to
the next.
The biggest spike ever, which BookNet
does not include in
the average
because it skews it
too much, was
when Joanna Skibsruds novel The
Sentimentalists won
in 2010. Published by the small
artisanal Gaspereau Press in
Joanna Skibsrud
lm Fest
iv
Blue is
warmest
color
the
julie maroh
BLUE IS THE
WARMEST COLOR
UNIVERSAL HUNKS
Julie Maroh
David L. Chapman
with Douglas Brown
The controversial
graphic novel,
adapted into
the Palme dOrwinning film
released this fall.
A lively, wideranging visual

history of muscular
men from around
the world.
THE SIMPLYRAW
KITCHEN
Natasha Kyssa
Plant-powered,
gluten-free recipes
from this former
fashion model
turned raw vegan
advocate.
arsenal pulp press arsenalpulp.com

Distributed in the US by Consortium / Distributed in Canada by UTP
25
Nova Scotia, it spiked by

450% after it was
announced as the winner
and the available books
quickly sold out. Once
the books became available a couple weeks later,
it spiked again: 4906%
from one week to the
next.
Those figures have to
be satisfying to Rabinovitch, who always encourages those at the gala to
buy the shortlisted books.
For the price of a dinner
out in this town, you can
have all five books, he
q u i p s . We o w e t h e
growth of the prize these
last 20 years to the
remarkably talented writers working in Canada
today, he said.
Torontos P-Shift
University of Toronto Press has developed a comprehensive e-publishing system that can take a scholarly book through its whole lifespan, from the authors raw manuscript all the way to its digital distribution.
John Yates, president, publisher, and CEO at University of Toronto Press, says the press developed
its P-Shift system over three years to serve its own publishing needs, but it is now also being used by
client publishers, including the University Press of Colorado and Purdue University Press.
The first part of the P-Shift system can take a raw manuscript and convert it into a high quality
XML file, a data neutral format, which is easily converted into other formats. Today, its ePub2, but
five years from now it could be ePub15 or something entirely new, says Yates.
Along the way, he says, the P-Shift system can also save publishers copy-editing costs, by automatically doing tasks such as cleaning up the Word document, checking URLs and references within the
manuscript with the bibliography. It can also reduce a publishers typesetting costs, says Yates, explaining that UTP sent out a file to about 20 typesetters in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. The cost of typesetting a Word document was about $4$6 per page, but the cost for P-Shifts XML files was $2.75 a
page. Another benefit of the system is that the ePub files and the print editions can be produced at the
same time, so that publishers dont need to separately prepare files for post-production conversion.
P-Shift also includes a digital asset management system that gives publishers the ability to archive
and protect their files; it also makes it easy for non-technical people to send books to distributors such
as Kobo.
Yates adds that there is much interest in the system from scholarly presses in North America and
that he thinks it will build to become an important revenue source for UTP. Were continually working at enhancing it and making sure that we are adopting leading technology, he says.
Exploring Global Issues

with New Nonfiction
Razias Ray of Hope is based on the true
stories of the students of the Zabuli
Education Center for Girls, just outside
Kabul, founded by a generous and
resourceful woman named Razia Jan,
a CNN 2012 Hero, who also appears in
the story.
Also in the CitizenKid Collection
HCJ 978-1-55453-816-4 $18.95

Ages: 8-12
The CitizenKid books have sold over 700 000 copies worldwide! CitizenKidCentral.com
New Nonfiction from Kids Can Press
NEW IN
PAPERBACK
HCJ 978-1-55453-775-4
$21.95 Ages: 8-12
HCJ 978-1-55453-787-7
$17.95 Ages: 8-12
PB 978-1-55453-363-3
$12.95 Ages: 8-12
CANADIAN CHILDRENS BOOK CENTRE AWARDS
TD Bank Group anD The CanaDian ChilDrens Book CenTre

are pleaseD To announCe The finalisTs of The
2013 TD Canadian
Childrens Literature Award
The TD Canadian Childrens Literature Award honours the most distinguished
book of the year. Two $30,000 grand prizes are awarded, one for a book in
English and one for a book in French.
e ngL ish-LAnguAge FinALisTs
Kids of Kabul:
Living Bravely Through
a Never-Ending War
written by Deborah Ellis

Groundwood Books, 2012
978-1-55498-181-6 (hc) $15.95
978-1-55498-203-5 (ebook) $14.95
One Year in
Coal Harbour
written by Polly Horvath

Groundwood Books, 2012
978-1-55498-188-5 (pb) $14.95
978-1-55498-310-0 (ebook) $12.95
The Reluctant Journal

of Henry K. Larsen
written by Susin Nielsen

Tundra Books, 2012
978-1-77049-372-8 (hc) $19.99
978-1-77049-373-5 (ebook) $10.99
The Stamp Collector
written by Jennifer Lanthier

illustrated by Franois Thisdale
Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2012
978-1-55455-218-4 (hc) $18.95
Virginia Wolf
written by Kyo Maclear

illustrated by
Isabelle Arsenault
Kids Can Press, 2012
978-1-55453-649-8 (hc) $18.95
F r enCh-LAnguAge F in A L isT s
la recherche
du bout du monde
written by Michel Nol

ditions Hurtubise HMH, 2012
978-2-89647-919-1 (pb) $12.95
La cl molette
written and illustrated by

lise Gravel
ditions La courte chelle, 2012
978-2-89695-182-6 (hc) $14.95
Jane, le renard & moi
written by Fanny Britt

illustrated by
Isabelle Arsenault
ditions La Pastque, 2012
978-2-923841-32-8 (hc) $26.95
Mingan, mon village
poems by Inuit schoolchildren

illustrated by Rog
ditions de la Bagnole, 2012
978-2-92334-276-4 (hc) $24.95
Tu me prends en photo
written by
Marie-Francine Hbert
illustrated by
Jean-Luc Trudel
ditions Les 400 coups, 2012
978-2-89540-524-5 (hc) $16.95
The TD CanaDian ChilDrens liTeraTure awarD is aDminisTereD By The CanaDian ChilDrens Book CenTre.
for more informaTion anD for jury CommenTs, visiT www.bookCenTre.CA or www.TDreADs.Com

Canadian Publishing 2013

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Canadian Publishing 2013

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Canadian

Sowing new seeds in

Read with us.