Next weekend marks the beginning of the end for Vancouver's Raincoast Books.
Not the end, mind you, of its existence as a publisher, distributor and wholesaler — or at least, so one hopes. But definitely the beginning of the end of its highly profitable status as the originating Canadian publisher and distributor of each new novel in the Harry Potter series.
This is because the seventh and final instalment in J.K. Rowling's magnum opus, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, goes on sale across Canada next Saturday. Already, in online presales alone, Amazon.ca has proclaimed the upcoming novel "the bestselling book ever" in its five-year history. And by Monday morning, if precedent holds, Raincoast's two principals, veteran publisher Allan McDougall, who co-founded the company in 1979, and Vancouver entrepreneur David Mindell, will wake up knowing that as many as 750,000 hardcover copies of Harry's swan song have already made it into customers' hands via book shops, department stores and Canada Post delivery trucks.
Not bad for a country where 10,000 purchases of a fiction title are often enough to put a book onto bestseller lists.
Printing of Rowling's 608-page novel, in fact, started in late April, with Montreal-based Quebecor World contracting several plants in the United States to use the 100-per-cent postconsumer recycled /ancient-forest-friendly paper the publisher has mandated since its 2003 release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In recent weeks, padlocked trucks have travelled north, ferrying their valuable, plastic-wrapped cargo — an estimated 1.3 million copies in total — to secret distribution points.
Next weekend's sale, of course, represents a lot of cash flow which, it is safe to presume, Raincoast will never ever see again from a single book, let alone a book that is part of a series. As Jamie Broadhurst, Raincoast's vice-president of marketing and Potter spokesperson, recently observed, the company's annual revenue B.H. (Before Harry) was between $20-million and $25-million; this year it's expected to be at least triple that.
And afterward? Can a company revered in the industry for its fleet, efficient distribution (Raincoast does fulfilment for more than 45 U.S., British and Canadian imprints), and that is known to the public, if it's known at all, as the publisher of Rowling, celebrity foodie Anthony Bourdain and Griffin & Sabine creator Nick Bantock, find new sources of magic in a post-Hogwarts universe? It's a question with a lot at stake.
Raincoast has been associated with the Potter phenomenon before it was, well, a phenomenon. Initially, the company was simply the Canadian distributor of the British hardcover edition of Rowling's debut, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, published in June, 1997, by Bloomsbury. Raincoast's first Potter order, for 150 copies, came from Vancouver Kidsbooks in late 1998.
It was only with the second title, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, issued in 1999, that Raincoast came aboard as publisher, in a joint venture with Bloomsbury.
Nine years into its careful stewardship of what one writer has called "publishing's equivalent of the Alberta oil sands," Raincoast can claim to have sold more than seven million Potters in hardcover and paperback. In fact, according to pollsters Ipsos Reid, 45 per cent of all Canadian households, including 4.5 million adults, have read at least one Potter novel.
For some retailers, Harry's rewards have been elusive
If anyone's been less than enamoured of these impressive numbers, it's retailers — or more precisely, those retailers who make their living almost exclusively from the sale of books. Sure, they entertain the hope that today's Potter fan is tomorrow's voracious reader. They like the traffic, the excitement and the sense of occasion a new Potter generates.
What booksellers don't like is the competitive pricing regime that's distinguished the Potter market in the last four years. Although the suggested list price of The Deathly Hallows in Canada is $45, no one who's preordered the book from, say, Amazon.ca has paid that, nor will anyone wandering into a retail outlet next Saturday afternoon.
