News

It was a year of shocks and unease for Canadian publishing, leavened by glad tidings as December slouched toward January.

One of the biggest shocks came when the year was only a week old: the announcement by Vancouver's Raincoast Books that it was scrapping its domestic publishing program and would also no longer distribute books from about a dozen small Canadian publishers. The decision, accompanied by the usual layoffs and warehouse streamlinings, was surprising because less than seven months earlier Raincoast had co-published Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the conclusion to J.K. Rowling's series of fantasy novels and the closest thing to printing money in Canadian publishing history.

True to form, Hallows proved as big a hardcover hit as its predecessors. Total sales for Raincoast alone were believed to be at least 800,000 copies. So why, with coffers overflowing, was a Canadian company forsaking Canadian writers and Canadian stories? Raincoast at one time or another published such Canadian authors as Bill Gaston, George Bowering, Cynthia Nugent and Chris Wood. Raincoast replied with nostrums about “wanting to get back to our core business,” “bringing costs into line” and “adjusting for uncertain times,” including the changes being wrought by the appreciation of the Canadian dollar relative to the Yankee greenback.

Now, almost 12 months later, Raincoast's move seems more prescient than callous or unpatriotic.

2008: In two parts The first, lasting seven or eight months, had Canadian publishers, both multinationals and independents, pondering how to price books in Canada in a world where the Canadian dollar was threatening to hover at par.

In fall 2007, these publishers had begun to be hammered by “book rage” – irate Canadian consumers miffed at having to pay 20 or 35 per cent more for, say, a U.S.-originated novel.

Clearly, to narrow the gap, prices had to come down. Which they did for the fall 2008 season, particularly on front-list international titles. For the first time in recent memory, imported international titles carried suggested list prices of under $30. However, this deflationary trend proved especially difficult for wholly owned Canadian firms to match. Lacking the economies of scale of the multinationals, these firms could only drop the prices of their made-in-Canada wares so far before their businesses became untenable. As a result, consumers found themselves potentially choosing between Richard Price's Lush Life for $28.50 or Nino Ricci's The Origin of Species for $34.95.

The year's second “part,” an inversion of the first, came in mid-September with the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market and the ensuing crises in the financial sector. Within weeks, the Canadian dollar was sagging below 80 cents (U.S.) – something of a blow to publishers (who'd priced their fall list six to eight months earlier when the loonie was strong) and a boon to book buyers (who, before Christmas, could still buy lower-priced titles in spite of a substantially weakened dollar). This prompted one independent bookseller to predict, “Customers aren't going to be complaining about prices this year.”

Late payoff

And lo it appears Canadian consumers have come through. In the 13 weeks ending Dec. 7 compared to that same 13-week period in 2007, the volume of book sales was up 6.3 per cent, and in spite of lower prices, revenues had also increased by 2 per cent, according to sales tracker BookNet Canada, which surveys an estimated 75 per cent of the Canadian retail market.

This was in sharp contrast to the American scene: Total unit sales there fell 7 per cent in the week ending Dec. 7 compared to the week ending Dec. 9, 2007. As a result, companies south of the border are ending this year closing and consolidating divisions, freezing salaries, cutting back on lists, restricting the intake of manuscripts and firing staff.

Canadian firms adopted some of these gambits but, as of this writing, none has been on the scale of what's happening in the United States. “We are going to tighten cost controls, of course,” said Brad Martin, CEO of Random House of Canada, the country's largest trade publisher. “But we are still going to publish good books and spend money to ensure that Canadian readers are aware of them. In times like these, good books are even more important.”

Writing was on the wall

Economics aside, Canadian publishing seemed to go tickety-boo in 2008. Veteran versifier Robin Blaser, 83, won the $50,000 Griffin Canadian Poetry Prize. Toronto's Nino Ricci earned his second Governor-General's Award for fiction for The Origin of Species, while House of Anansi published Montrealer Rawi Hage's second novel, Cockroach, to critical huzzahs and a raft of award nominations.

Commerce-wise, previously unknown Winnipeg author Andrew Davidson earned an estimated $2.5-million in advances for his debut novel, The Gargoyle. The book, eventually bought by more than a dozen publishers worldwide, scored two reviews in The New York Times, one in The New Yorker and leapt onto a mess of bestseller lists. Meanwhile, Vancouver “self-help spiritual teacher” Eckhart Tolle, 60, had the country's best-selling book this year in the paperback edition of A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, first issued in 2005.

Though not a Canadian, Twilight author Stephenie Meyer was one of the publishing stories of the year. Four years ago, Meyer was a Mormon housewife in Phoenix with a wacky idea for a series of vampire romance novels targeted to high-school females. Today Meyer is often mentioned in the same breath as J.K. Rowling, not least because her Twilight series has turned into a quick-march success of Potter-esque proportions. All four Twilight novels, including the 2005 original, were among the top five best-selling books in Canada in 2008 and undisputed champs of the juvenile fiction category.

Mr. Harper's one-man book club

Meanwhile, Man Booker Prize-winner Yann Martel, of Life of Pi fame, continued to send a free book to Prime Minister Stephen Harper every two weeks throughout the year. Martel started the stunt in spring 2007 as a way to bring “stillness” to the PM's life as well as a heightened appreciation of the arts. It hasn't seemed to work, if one is to judge by Harper's comments on the arts in the run-up to the federal election. Still, thanks to Martel, the PMO now has, gratis, a pretty impressive and highly eclectic mini-library, totalling as of Dec. 8, 44 books, including Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway and Maus by Art Spiegelman.

The Scotiabank Giller Prize marked its 15th anniversary in November with an unprecedented first-prize purse of $50,000, won by Joseph Boyden for his second novel, Through Black Spruce. The power of the Giller was demonstrated as well by the sustained appeal of the 2007 winner, Elizabeth Hay's L ate Nights on Air: The novel's trade paperback edition ranked as the fifth best-selling Canadian title of the year.

Wither the e-book?

“Paper” is, of course, still the operative format for Canadian books. While the Internet has become a major conduit to market, sell and re-sell books in the last five years, publishers have been less keen on embracing content digitization – a fact highlighted by the introduction only just this year of the Sony Reader eBook to the Canadian market. Everyone agrees digital delivery is going to gain in significance.

But will portable e-books catch on as a mass consumer phenomenon? And if they do, how disruptive will the switch be to the Indigos, Costcos, smaller independents and Amazon.cas that have defined the Canadian book universe? A BookNet study released earlier this month said “many retailers, especially independent bookstores, could have difficulty surviving a sustained 5-per-cent drop in revenue” if sufficient consumers get hooked on e-books.

THE TOP OF THE HEAP

Rankings are built from the BookNet Canada SalesData aggregate which does not include online sales or presales. Source: BookNet Canada

TOP FIVE TITLES SOLD IN CANADA IN 2008 (as of Dec. 7)

1. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose,

Eckhart Tolle (Penguin; first published in 2005)

2. Twilight,

Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown/H.B.Fenn; first published in 2005)

3. Breaking Dawn,

Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown/H.B. Fenn)

4. E clipse,

Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown/H.B. Fenn; first published in 2007)

5. New Moon,

Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown/H.B. Fenn; first published in 2006)

TOP FIVE CANADIAN-AUTHORED TITLES IN 2008 (as of Dec. 7)

1. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose,

Eckhart Tolle (Penguin)

2. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment,

Eckhart Tolle (New World Library/Penguin; first published in 1999)

3. The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity,

William Paul Young (Windblown Media/Crown; first published in 2007)

4. The Book of Negroes,

Lawrence Hill (HarperCollins; first published in 2007)

5. L ate Nights on Air,

Elizabeth Hay (McClelland & Stewart; first published in 2007)