If you were looking for a working definition of “big fish in a small pond,” you could do worse than “prominent independent Canadian publisher.”
That’s Coach House Books. They’re the bass in the bathtub.
Except that, suddenly, the little press is awash in attention.
After 50 years in business, the imprint has won its first Giller Prize, Canada’s pre-eminent literary award, for the novel Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis. Just a week before, the same book won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
Editorial director Alana Wilcox has a lot of strong feelings about the sudden flush of fame.
“All day yesterday, Taylor and I thought we were going to throw up,” she said, referring to inventory manager Taylor Berry. “It was all the pukes: exhilaration; a little anxiety over these big expensive decisions we have to make; exhaustion.”
On Thursday afternoon, the office was in a state of giddy dishevelment.
Mr. Alexis sat at a long wooden table in the publisher’s cramped second-storey office furiously signing copies of his book.
“After a while I find that I start signing Alexis Alexis,” he said.
It was that kind of day.
It was also the kind of day in which Michael Ondaatje just happened to be hanging around the office, offering sales advice. (He published with Coach House before becoming famous and still has friends at the company.)
“Have you tried dog parks?” he said, biting into a piece of chocolate-covered fruit sent by a Coach House sales rep.
The Edible Arrangements baskets are new here, but the anarchic collaboration of Mr. Ondaatje’s comment is not; it’s just that kind of thing that has made the press so resilient over the years.
“The thing about small presses is they always die young – that’s the tradition,” Mr. Ondaatje said.
Not Coach House. Founded in 1965 by Stan Bevington – now the imprint’s bearded sage and publisher – the press drew young writers into its fold with an experimental ethos and an emphasis on design and craft printing. “There was great intimacy between the publisher and the writer and the editor, which doesn’t always happen,” Mr. Ondaatje said. “There’s a much more democratic process around making a book.”
As publishing conglomerates continue to swallow up smaller presses – and then do battle with the even bigger behemoth, Amazon – Coach House’s attention to detail and appetite for the avant garde have bucked the corporate trend.
“There really are not a lot of houses like that around any more – they either got run over or sort of soaked up by the American houses,” said John Lorinc, a frequent Globe contributor who edited a Coach House anthology on the Ward, a historic Toronto neighbourhood.
Tucked away in an alley near the University of Toronto campus and marked only by a small yellow sign, the Coach House office has more in common with the 18th century than the 21st. The second storey looks like a Georgian London garret, with its creaky wooden floors and low light. The first storey is full of ancient printing equipment, some of it still in use.
That cozy, artisanal character could have sat awkwardly with the trappings of success. The company has commissioned an initial post-Giller print run of 36,000 for Fifteen Dogs – up from the book’s first run of 3,000 copies. That’s going to require Coach House to cheat on its tradition of printing all of its books entirely in-house.
But Ms. Wilcox insists that the Toronto-based contractors handling the title will be using the press’s own arcane materials and exacting standards, from its vegetable-based ink to its Zephyr Antique Laid paper stock.
How to fit two awards medallions on the new editions is another new, and enviable, problem for Coach House.
“We were joking we should put it there,” said Ms. Wilcox, pointing to a spot on the cover between the legs of a dog.
Irreverent humour has helped Coach House take its new reknown in stride. Shyly, Ms. Wilcox asked The Globe to focus on less-heralded members of the publishing staff.
“Goldfish would be nice,” she said, pointing at the office aquarium. “They’re photogenic, chatty.”
The publishers of avant-garde poetry by the likes of Christian Bök, Coach House has no intention of being tamed by its laurels. “We’re still going to publish weird things,” Ms. Wilcox said. “It’s not going to be Giller bait all the time.”
While they’re elated for Mr. Alexis, it’s obvious that being in the midst of the CanLit maelstrom makes the Coach House staff slightly uncomfortable. Gathered around a table in the office, they scarcely knew what to make of the congratulatory flowers sent by Penguin.
“We’ve always felt most comfortable in an underdog role,” Ms. Wilcox said.
Coach House has long been a de facto farm team for the Canadian literary world: Mr. Ondaatje, Michael Redhill, Ann-Marie MacDonald and Anne Michaels all published with the imprint or worked there as editors at various points.
Its close relationship with young authors has given it an outsize role in the country’s book culture. No mere talent scout, the imprint has had a deep influence on the writers it has published.
Mr. Alexis praised the intensity Ms. Wilcox brought to her craft. During one deliberation over a paragraph in the book’s fourth chapter, both author and editor burst into tears.
“Editing is like doing Sudoku, so you don’t usually cry,” Mr. Alexis said.
If working on a book she loves was emotionally taxing, Ms. Wilcox said, then cheering it on through awards season nearly put her out of commission.
Now, she’s looking forward to some rest and getting back to putting out the small, quirky books that have made Coach House’s name.
“My blood pressure can’t handle another one of these,” she said.