From Publishers Weekly:
One of the great pleasures of being a journalist from the United States browsing in a Canadian bookstore—be it Type Books in Toronto, McNally Robinson in Winnipeg, or maybe Woozles in Halifax—is the realization that there are so many new books in English that I’ve never seen before and that I must read now.
Books this fall that are all likely to prove more popular above the 49th parallel than below it include DK’s recently updated Our Great Prime Ministers, about Canada’s past leaders; Fernwood Publishing’s Viola Desmond: Her Life and Times by Graham Reynolds, about the Nova Scotia civil rights activist who adorns Canada’s new C$10 banknote; Dundurn’s Riding into Battle: Canadian Cyclists in the Great War by Ted Glenn; Portage and Main’s series of indigenous YA supernatural thrillers by David Robertson; and S&S Canada’s gossipy literary memoir In Other Words: How I Fell in Love with Canada One Book at a Time, by former publisher Anna Porter.
. . . .
“Sometimes, we fear the rest of the world thinks of us as a giant Idaho,” says Leo MacDonald, senior v-p of sales and marketing at HarperCollins Canada. “As a company, we push back on that perception. Just look at a book like Forgiveness, the memoir by Mark Sakamoto that won the 2018 Canada Reads contest. That book is a very Canadian story—but, as it involves his family’s experience during World War II, is very relatable. And the theme of forgiveness is, well, universal. And it is about a family divided, which makes it very timely.”
. . . .
Earlier this year BookNet, the Canadian organization that compiles sales and other data about Canadian publishing, conducted a survey on reading habits and found that 81% of people responding had read or listened to a book in the last year, with 33.5% saying their reading or listening had increased over the previous year. What has sparked a change? It is likely the combination of several factors, including a boom in locally produced audiobooks and the popularity of homegrown international bestselling authors such as pop poet Rupi Kaur, controversial self-help polemicist Jordan Peterson, and literary icons Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje—and even an increased awareness of the availability of free-to-read material from libraries. To wit: half of Canadians have checked an item out of a library in the past year, and the Toronto Public Library, which is one of the largest library systems in the world, saw 3.7 million e-book loans, nearly one million audiobook loans, and nearly 25 million print-book loans last year. When it comes to print books, that is nearly five books loaned for each resident of Toronto, a city the same size as Chicago. And that is good for authors; Canada has a program, the Public Lending Right, which compensates writers for these library loans (alas, not publishers).
Overall, Canada’s publishing market is the 12th largest in the world and is valued at approximately $2.1 billion, according to the latest statistics released by BookMap. It’s a strong showing for a nation of 37 million people that, in effect, represents two wholly separate publishing industries: one in English and one in French.
. . . .
Sales Are Steady-ish
In 2017, sales of print books in Canada fell 4%, compared to 2016, according to BookNet. “But, when you include e-books, sales have been generally flat for the last seven years,” said Noah Genner, CEO of BookNet, during a presentation on the industry at the organization’s annual TechForum event. In total, the Canadian book industry sold approximately 51.5 million copies in 2017. The organization tracked some 700,000 ISBNs in 2017 and saw, as had been the trend in previous years, more books being published but each title selling in fewer quantities. In 2017, 60% of all print book sales were for backlist books, which was up 2% over 2016, BookNet reported.
The generally flat sales trend is one of the reasons so many publishers have poured resources into pushing harder and harder into the American book market. Those who attend industry events in the U.S. (such as Winter Institute, the American Library Association annual meeting, or BookExpo) have noticed more booths from Canadian publishers, be they Second Story Press or Coach House Books from Toronto, Talon Books or Arsenal Pulp from Vancouver, or Biblioasis from Windsor. For many publishers, U.S. sales can account for as much as 50% of sales, and for many children’s publishers, it is even more. Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press credits the U.S. with 55% of its annual sales, while at Groundwood Books the U.S. amounts to 65% of sales. In all, export sales accounted for 19% of the overall book market in 2016, rising 11.8% for the year to C$260.5 million, according to Statistics Canada. This success is enabled in part by Livre Canada Books, the organization responsible for promoting export and rights sales abroad.
. . . .
The ACP reported in a press release in 2017 that “books imported to Canada from the U.S. contribute to a trade deficit with the U.S. book industry of approximately C$375 million each year.” It went on to state, “Without the government programs and policies the cultural exception makes possible, this deficit would grow and limit the domestic industry’s capacity to publish new Canadian-authored books and educational resources.”
What’s more, it’s not just Canadian publishers who need be concerned about the relationship between Canada and the U.S. Some 245 publishing companies are Canadian-owned, but several of the 15 conglomerate publishers in the country are not. In fact, the foreign-controlled companies accounted for 53.8% of revenue in 2016, while 46.2% was generated by Canadian-controlled firms. All this means that Germany’s Bertelsmann, which owns Penguin Random House Canada, as well as U.S.-owned HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster (both of which have large Canadian operations), are paying attention to what happens in Washington and Ottawa.
But if there is one company that needs to keep an eye on the relationship between Trump and Trudeau, it is Indigo. The dominant Canadian bricks-and-mortar retailer is opening its first store in the U.S. in New Jersey later this year, and it has expressed ambitions to open three to five more in the near term. The company has also been rumored to be a possible buyer for beleaguered Barnes & Noble, something that the company will not address.
Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly
PG notes the OP manages to touch on just about everything relevant to understanding the Canadian book market except Amazon.ca.
At least Idaho is famous enough to be some Canadian’s go-to pejorative. There are plenty of other states too empty to even exist in people’s minds.
For the record, though, that attitude is about 20 years out of date now. Boise is getting a fairly trendy downtown with a burgeoning tech sector, and keeps getting listed as a most-desirable-city. Lots of Seattle-ites fleeing here for some quality of life. Meridian (next door to Boise) was the 10th fastest-growing city in the U.S. last year.
“PG notes the OP manages to touch on just about everything relevant to understanding the Canadian book market except Amazon.ca.”
Sadly, Amazon.ca is not simply Amazon.com in Canada. Although it’s slowly improving, there are still many things we aren’t allowed to have here in .ca.
The Amazon Echo has only been sold in Canada for less than a year. The Fire was sold here, then wasn’t, now is again. I just tried to download the Kindle Reader and had to login through the second Amazon.com account I created just for things like this.
Most difficult for Canadian writers is we have no guarantee when our print books will appear on Amazon.ca. We publish through CreateSpace (KDP now, I guess) and our paperbacks are near-instantly available all over the world … but not in Canada, and customer service will never commit to an availability date. For those who want to do them, this makes print launches at home kind of a dud.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m an Amazon fan, but Amazon.ca is still, to a certain extent, Amazon-lite.
Thanks for the information we don’t understand here in the US, Tudor.
Would I be correct in assuming that using a VPN to log into Amazon.com from (apparently) somewhere in the US would still not permit a Canadian to purchase a physical product not included in Amazon.ca and have it shipped to Canada?
Formerly we couldn’t shop on Amazon.com at all. Now we can buy some items on .com, but many retailers won’t ship to Canada. Those that do often seem to think we’re in Timbuktu and charge unbelievable shipping rates.
To be honest, most people I know don’t go through extensive evasive manoeuvres because the border is very close – many people where I live maintain mailboxes in Ogdensburg, NY and just order US items there and go pick them up (and get some cheap dairy products and gas while they’re at it).
The regional blocks don’t seem to be a big concern, it’s really the shipping address and the credit card address that are the problem. As Tudor said, Amazon.com doesn’t particularly care, I have my account there, everything shows up fine, it’s just that when I go to order, often the shipper will only ship within continental US *or*, as Tudor said, they’ll treat it as the international shipping rate to Europe and it’s ridiculously expensive.
There is an exception, and it’s mind boggling complex. KIndle purchases. I used to have an Amazon.com account before .ca started, and I kept it for some time afterwards. IN theory, I could have kept it indefinitely. It regularly asked me if I wanted to transfer everything to .ca, and I ignored it. Eventually I caved and said “why not”. BUT now it doesn’t really want me to purchase .COM ebooks, it wants to route me only to .ca, and it does so not by my IP but simply the address that matches my credit card. If it isn’t US, it blocks the purchase. I don’t know if it is universal, but it is pernicious.
Amazon PRIME membership is another “light” version too…for a long time, you got free shipping, but not AMazon TV. Now we get SOME TV, but not all. Music launched today, but it isn’t quite clear if it is the full monty or not. And just for fun? The contact info for Amazon Music Canada is, wait for it, in Seattle. Yet we’re building distribution centres out the wazoo up here, second HQs, etc.
We have not given up our Indigo/Chapters stores yet though. Amazon is growing, but not quite as strongly as it has in the US for rural delivery.
P.
Canada has books?
I live in Idaho. You know what everyone says who comes here from big cities? “Wow, you people are so nice and polite.”
I’ll take that any day.
And what the average Canadian’s signature trait?
Politeness.
“PG notes the OP manages to touch on just about everything relevant to understanding the Canadian book market except Amazon.ca.”
Shhh. Maybe if we ignore them they’ll go away.
Poor poor publishers. Sad.
I can hardly control my weeping! Perhaps they can establish Patreon or GoFundMe accounts so we can all assuage our consciences.
Canadian author here. It’s not even that great for authors, though it’s certainly better than a kick in the pants. New titles get $50/yr, up to 5 years old. Older titles get less. So if you have three titles in libraries, you’ll get a max of $150, if they are all published within the last five years. And that’s if those titles are all in the survey of libraries they do each year (they change which libraries they survey each year, and if your book doesn’t happen to be in those libraries, but is in others not surveyed, you don’t get the $50). It’s a nice cheque once a year, but it certainly isn’t anything the publishers should be fussing over.
Per library? Or (it sounds like) overall.
Overall. (Per title, not per library.)
“In 2017, 60% of all print book sales were for backlist books, which was up 2% over 2016, BookNet reported.”
Which says something about their more current offerings.
@ Felix – They’re stuck in qig5 land. 😉
@ PG – it’s ‘Publishers Weekly’, not ‘Writers Weekly’, the ADS will always be strong in them. 😛
Gotta ask (serious question): What does “ADS” mean? I missed the birth of that acronym somehow.
Amazon.
Derangement.
Syndrome.
But he knew ‘qig5’! (or was afraid to ask! 😉 )
Ah, as in: AMZN will blow up their world? Springing from the Trump Derangement Syndrome where people abandon all logic and reason? That kind of thing?
Thanks.
It predates the orange guy but is comparable; a total abandonment of common sense and civility in service of an outdated orthodoxy. As if it weren’t the 21st century out there.
And of course, an irrational attachment to tired and debunked memes, like “Amazon sells books below their cost”.
What’s wrong with being “a giant Idaho?” 😉
(I have a couple of Canadian friends who think highly of the US midwest, having lived there.)
Sounds like the New York type attitude has spread to the North.
They do have something of a regional divide but, politics aside, that attitude is most often reserved for Newfoundland. 😎
Actually, the reverse. They were pointing out that the New York type attitude that paints Idaho as small and backward is closer to the general view of Canada by most US publishers, and it is not realistic.
P.