Last Sunday found Queen’s Park circle filled with students, families, and bibliophiles of every nature, all exploring the dozens of tents that made up the annual Word on the Street. Ever since it was founded 14 years ago, the festival has brought together small presses, independent authors, and NGOs that promote worldwide literacy for a free, single-day, outdoor festival.
At first glance, the festival seems to focus strictly on printed literature. It is a difficult stance to take in the changing world of publishing and the ever-present idea of the e-reader. Speaking with authors at various booths, it became clear that there is no one consensus when it comes to the method of sharing of stories.
Janet Campbell, a children’s book author, is a self-described “storyteller,” favouring the oral tradition for its range of verbal and facial expressions.
Anna Yin, a writer from the Canadian organization Poetry Alive, also favours the oral tradition but keeps her work in hand. “I prefer to read off the paper because each level gives me another meaning, gives me more layers of the poetry, of what it can bring to my experience,” she said.
Storytellers or not, few people I spoke with were eager to enter the age of digitization. “I firmly think that there will always be a place for the printed word and books,” said Kristen Blank from Toronto-based, press Quattro Books. “The experience of reading a book is tactile. It’s a sensory experience. I think that things are going to change, but there will always be a place for [physical books],” she said.
“Book launches would be different,” Banks said, adding: “Having an author signing their book, the excitement of cracking the spine, making notes in a book, putting your book down, having bookmarks… It would become consuming content as opposed to reading a book.”
Most of the authors and publishers at the festival seemed to share Blank’s optimistic view that despite some change, the printed word will always be around. “I work at a library,” one woman explained, “I still see so many people enjoying their books, and having the physical object seems really important to them.”
Many of the small independent presses present at the event seemed to be flying below the digitized, mass marketed radar. “There’s been a huge transition to digital which we’ve mostly been able to keep up with, but it hasn’t been that big for us,” said Nic Boshart of Toronto-Halifax press, Invisible Publishing. “Our print sales haven’t gone — they’ve actually gone up. It hasn’t been the big upheaval that we thought it would be.”
Other independent presses have echoed this view, suggesting that while larger publishing companies might have felt the impact of digitization, their small and specific audiences remain loyal.
“Numbers tell us that people are mostly still reading print,” said Erin Creasey, sales and marketing director at the Toronto-based Entertainment Culture Writing Press.
Certainly, the culture of print literature is not dead yet, and this issue ranks low on many independent presses’ concerns, compared to much more imminent issues, such as developing a public presence.
One dissenter to these views was Hamilton native Marshall Hryciuk, a poet from small poetry publisher Imago Press.
“The print industry is just about completely over,” he said. “If people that are young would rather read off a screen than carry [books] around, this is done for. In 20 years, [books] will be doorstops.”
When I told him that he was the only one I’d spoken with that day to share that view, he countered, “I don’t hate [books]; it’s just that you don’t have any choice. Everyone is trying to be positive, but I’ve got to deal with reality.”
Although Hryciuk could very well be right, it was hard to agree with him in the midst of the diverse and print-friendly crowd at Word on the Street.
“All I have to say about [the future of print] is that it’s still vibrant,” said a spokesperson for Montreal-based Vallum Contemporary Poetry magazine. “It may not seem mainstream anymore, but look at how many people are here today.”
