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At a time when sales are declining everywhere, the Canadian book market is the envy of other countries. Canadian book sales are up, according to BookNet, which tracks them in approximately 75 per cent of our market. In New York and London, lists and imprints have been trimmed or eliminated and there have been layoffs, but Canadian publishers are not cutting back their lists and staff.

So why is it, when books are selling better than ever, that the perception is that Canadian publishers are getting worse at selling Canadian-authored titles? (See James Adams's feature article in last Saturday's Globe and Mail, "Publish, And Your Book Will Probably Perish.") If Canadian-authored titles are selling worse today than 20 years ago (I would agree they are), do we need to pin the tail on the nearest "donkey," or is the situation more complex?

For the media, the term "Canadian publisher" invariably means "Canadian-owned," with overtones of incompetence, including the canards of poor editing, ineffective marketing and an inability to sell books. Such is the lot of a noble industry in a market dominated by foreign-owned and foreign-controlled publishing houses, with capital and expertise built up over the last two centuries through colonialism, protectionist laws and tariffs, inexpensive labour and a unified market.

Canadian bookstore and library shelves are filled by approximately 80-per-cent foreign-authored and -published books. These are promoted by U.S. television programs and magazines such as 60 Minutes and People, which have, respectively, more viewers in Canada than The Fifth Estate and more readers than Maclean's. Canadian books occupy some 20 per cent of shelf space. Their greatest promotional vehicles are CBC's Canada Reads and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Authors lucky enough to be selected for glory will see their sales climb to an average 10,000 copies for a nomination and 30,000 for a win — numbers an Oprah selection can match in days.

Even without the benefit of the U.S. taste-setting machinery, certain popular American authors sell 6,000 to 8,000 copies a week in the first months of their release here; the average Canadian book will sell no more than 1,500 copies in its short and brutal life. Does this mean that Canadian authors are inferior, or that Canadian publishers are delinquent when it comes to publicity and sales?

The obstacle Canadian publishers must overcome in their own markets isn't Indigo Books, or Costco, or amazon.ca, or any of the large retailers that account for probably 75 per cent of the book market. It isn't the staggering geography, the two official languages, the small population or the millions of immigrants. It's the simple fact that our English-language media is dominated by U.S. and British culture.

This cultural colonialism is so pervasive as to seem normal. Recently on the CBC, a woman complained about the loss of Canadian symbols from schools. "They've taken everything away from us," she said. "First it was the pledge of allegiance." There is no pledge of allegiance in Canada. But the U.S. version has been heard and seen so often that she has come to think of it as her normal, her Canada.

Many Canadians expect the setting for a great novel to be somewhere else: London and New York, not Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal. Not St. John's, Prince Albert or Terrace. These cultural assumptions are symptomatic.

To find where this cultural colonialism begins, look no further than our schools. When the work of Edgar Allen Poe is taught in schools, students learn to read American Gothic horror. As adults, they have a taste for Stephen King, Poe's heir. The tastes of book buyers are shaped in the education system. Any marketing director in North America, if not the world, will base decisions on the formula that if X buys Y and lives in postal code Z, then X will likely buy A, B and C. In this example, X is a Canadian student, Y is Poe, A, B and C are Stephen King and company. An abandoned grand hotel in Colorado resonates with Canadians more than the Banff Springs Hotel.

To illustrate the problem, and to provide a small history of the Canadian book publishing industry, "the perilous trade," I'll use a book published by my company, Cormorant.

By 1943, Gwethalyn Graham had won the Governor-General's Literary Award for her first book, Swiss Sonata, which sold respectably. For her second novel, there were few Canadian publishers, and she had to look to Jonathan Cape in England and Lippincott in the United States. The book was "published" in Canada by Thomas Nelson & Sons, which means they did nothing but distribute it to retail accounts across the country. Earth and High Heaven was published in 1944 to critical acclaim and better sales, topping the bestseller list of The New York Times; yet, despite being one of our finest examples of social realism (as Hugh MacLennan said), 40 years later, the book was out of print.

Twenty and more years later, Canada's publishing industry began in earnest with such companies as New Press, Coach House, House of Anansi and Talon. They, and others that followed, were given life by a new generation of academics and writers who believed Canada had not only a right to its own culture, but an obligation to make that culture. The Canada Council, as well as federal and provincial governments, ensured that with barely adequate funding, this fledgling industry — and most important cultural endeavour — would survive.

Today, there are more than 100 Canadian-owned and -controlled publishing companies, and they're the ones most often found wanting in editorial prowess, marketing and sales. Current funding, although greater than in the 1970s, has far less impact due to inflation. In 1992, Canadian Heritage revamped two programs of assistance for Canadian publishers. These had a combined budget of $54-million. Had that figure it kept pace with inflation, it would now be $72,235,800 instead of the $37,000,000 it was in fiscal 2007-2008.

Why do we need government assistance for publishing? Because the Canadian book market is not dominated by Canadians but by publishers that benefited from the military and naval power of the British Empire and the protectionism of the United States in the 19th century. Canada did not conquer other parts of the world and install education systems identical to "back home." We were the colony.

Sixty years after Earth and High Heaven was first published, Cormorant re-issued it. I was invited to a morning television program to talk about it. Seconds before broadcast, the host dropped into the seat across from me and said he hadn't read the book. Lights, camera, action. He opened with his "informed" opinion: "You've got to admit, it isn't very well written." Shocked, I compared Gwethalyn Graham favourably to John Steinbeck. The host derided me; Steinbeck had won the Pulitzer Prize, Graham had not. And before I could answer, we were off air. What I did not say was: The Pulitzer Prize is not the pinnacle of literary excellence, and it is open only to Americans. But when Earth and High Heaven was published in the United States in 1945, it beat out Steinbeck's Cannery Row both in sales and in critical response.

The work of Steinbeck is taught today in high schools across Canada. So is a later example of social realism, To Kill a Mockingbird. The general lesson of Harper Lee's novel is universal, but the specifics — racism in the U.S. South — don't teach much about Canada, whereas Earth and High Heaven — which deals with the same themes — does. It is set in Montreal, the great linguistically divided Canadian city, and addresses anti-Semitism when its heroine, the daughter of a Westmount lawyer, falls in love with a Jew from Northern Ontario. The book offers an opportunity to talk about Canada's wartime policy on Jewish refugees (the shameful "none is too many") and the development and growth of our society since. But Earth and High Heaven is not taught in our schools because of the prevailing belief that Graham is second-rate.

It is natural to think of the United States and England as producing better writers than Canada not because that's true (it isn't), but because it's taught and reinforced every day by media that don't review Canadian books in significant numbers, don't interview Canadian authors and prefer the easy bad-news aspects of a story to serious investigation.

And should readers believe I have a personal and not a cultural axe to grind, let me provide the following disclaimer: Books published by Cormorant over the last eight years have been reviewed with greater regularity than those of the average publishing company operating in Canada (including the multinationals). We advertise in these book pages and elsewhere. Our books are reviewed widely — though not frequently nor at the length I believe is their due. We create trailers for our books, and use YouTube, Facebook and the Internet extensively. Our sales representatives have placed our books as far north as Yellowknife, and in Tofino and St. John's.

In a growing market, we — I'll risk speaking for all Canadian-owned publishers here — would like to see significant increases in sales of our Canadian-authored books. We will continue to work to that end, with fewer resources but greater resourcefulness. It'll take earth and high heaven to get there, but, as Canadian society has changed wonderfully since the 1940s, Canadian culture and the education systems that inform and shape it will, too.

Marc Coté is the publisher of Cormorant Books.