If popular opinion is to be believed, we are witnessing the death throes of print, an industry assailed by a growing economic tempest, fundamental changes in reading habits, and cultural shifts of the tech-tonic sort.
Reports of poor returns are everywhere. The recent announcement that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has abandoned print came mere weeks after the demise of the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News. Magazine sales dropped nearly six per cent in the past year, a number buoyed largely by demand for celebrity gossip rags. Average profits for the Washington Post declined by 25 per cent in the last 15 years, while the New York Times saw a 50 per cent decrease. Publishing giant Random House shuttered whole imprints, and the equally prominent Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ceased acquisitions of new titles altogether.
During a phone interview with ECW Press publicity director Simon Ware, I wonder if the constant barrage of bad news has desensitized him. Perhaps it could account for the strange serenity in his voice, as he invokes Mark Twain and replies, blithely: “Oh, I think the rumours of print’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.”
In an industry beset with a surfeit of difficulties, a response like Ware’s is rare, if not inexplicable. He speaks not with confidence, nor stoicism, which belongs more to the set-jawed commander surveying the field oblivious to the shells exploding around him. It’s not the noble endurance of hardship taking place here, but rather a brazen, almost insolent, unwillingness to even acknowledge such a danger. Performance? Perhaps. Delusion? Not entirely out of the question. But there could be another explanation of his response, the wild possibility that perhaps he’s not actually worried.
Ware’s employer, ECW Press, is a midsized, independent Canadian publishing house, the kind that can afford to be a little cocky these days. Unlike larger publishing operations encumbered by huge print runs, bigger budgets, and make-or-break deals, this operation is smaller, sleeker, releasing only a modest number of titles each year, most of which are directed at a specific niche. ECW receives massive financial assistance from the government, and benefits from a small, dedicated readership. There are hundreds of operations like it in Canada that are well-equipped to deal with the winds of change, and may take it all in stride.
Indeed, in comparison to newsprint and magazines, Canada’s publishing industry seems relatively unruffled by recent events. “Two to three per cent is good,” says ECW’s co-publisher David Caron of his profit margin.
Evan Munday, publicist at the fabled Coach House Press, concurs, “Coach House hasn’t noticed any great impact of the economic downturn on our book sales.”
The health of small Canadian publishers is due in part to BPIDP. The Book Publishing Industry Development Program is a government initiative designed to help Canadian publishers. It doles out thousands of dollars, in some cases hundreds of thousands, in funding (U of T’s own UTP received nearly $225,000 this year alone) which helps to pay for everything from printing costs to small author tours. The grants are effective—they translate into larger profit margins. And with the program’s recent expansion, up to 75 per cent of a publisher’s costs related to exploring options made possible by new technologies such as the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader are covered, ensuring their competitiveness.
But government assistance only goes so far. Indeed, more than funding, it may be an economy of size, in audience and operation, which proves to be the greatest boon to Canada’s small press. “We have something of a dedicated fan base,” says Munday. “Working with small budgets and small staff, small presses are already pretty good at adapting. The future will just bring more of that adaptation.”
There was a time when the publishing world wasn’t divided between niche and numbers. Differences existed, but not so extremely until 1991, when a now infamous legal battle began when Dillon’s, a British version of Chapters or Indigo, started offering books at a discounted price. In doing so, they challenged a long-standing price fixing agreement between publishers and booksellers. 1997 brought the end of the Net Book Agreement, which stood for nearly a hundred years. The result was the distortion of the book publishing industry’s calculus: warehouse-sized bookstores began to undercut independents and put them out of business while imposing larger, skewed run numbers on publishers. These publishers became less likely to wager on emerging voices whose lukewarm reception could mean the loss of millions, opting instead to rely on established writers with proven track records. The loss in richness of voices is a danger that looms now in the offing.
Not so in Canada.
“Canada’s small press keep the literary scene vibrant and fresh,” says Munday, citing author Christian Bok, whose book of experimental poetry Eunoia has become one of its best-selling titles. Coach House Press published the early works of Margaret Atwood, Gwendolyn MacEwen, and Michael Ondaatje among others, long before they went on to form Canada’s literary vanguard.
“Bigger publishers can’t take the kind of risks that make for exciting literature,” he says. “But there is a market for ‘risky’ books. The small presses help Canada’s literary scene evolve and grow.”
“We hear news from the U.S.,” says ECW’s Caron. “Layoffs at Barnes & Noble, Borders cutting back on stock, a 25 per cent reduction in orders from Baker & Taylor—and we worry.”
“But sales remain steady,” he says.
