Culture, money and Canadian readers

Culture, money and Canadian readers WILLIAM ROBERTS We talk about the cultural importance of Canadian ideas and writings as opposed to British or U.S. ideas and writings; and Canadian publishing as opposed to branch plant and foreign publishers. And we talk about good independent bookstores well stocked with Canadian books and magazines as opposed to foreign-owned or even domestic chains with their emphasis on the best seller and the remainder, whatever its origins. But in all these discussions before long we have to work in the bit about money profits for writers and publishers and booksellers . Although this aspect of the problem can cause great unease in cultural quarters, it is an essential one. The two things are inextricably entwined. Culture runs on money. Yin and Yang. The proverb says "If you drop your money and your books, pick up your books first." But it never suggests that you leave your money lying there for your neighbour to pocket. It's worth keeping the piggy-back relationship between culture and money in mind because when we talk about making Canadian publishing - and bookselling - profitable, a lot of the books that such a discussion implies will be profitable, maybe, but they will be culturally irrelevant. Yet they do produce income which in turn produces more important Canadian books. Let me begin as I shall end, by insisting that a large part of the solution to our problems lies in getting more people to spend on Canadian books, and in getting those who control big book budgets to spend them responsibly. In other words, I would like, whenever possible, to switch the focus of discussion temporarily away from producers (authors and publishers) and move down the line to the consumer, the buyer, the reader. There, I believe, our attention really belongs. That is a natural point of view for a Journal of Canadian Studies bookseller. After our bank manager, our customers are the people we think most about. I think everyone here at least dimly comprehends the booksellers' problem, the very great problem of attempting to inventory adequately for his customers' needs at such high cost, due to diversity, and over such greiat distances from his source of supply. Let me drop a few figures - rough ones. The backlist of Canadian titles is about 15,000 and each year, lately, another 2,000 or so come along. To obtain all these books you would have to deal with about 1,000 publishers in Canada. British backlist is about a quarter of a million books from 7,000 publishers. And U.S. backlist about half a million from 4,000 publishers. In practice, of course, a bookseller in Canada obtains virtually everything via the 100 or so publishers listed in Quill & Quire's 'C a n a d i a n Publishers Directory.' Indeed, probably he does 90% of his business with about 40 Toronto publishers: Canadian books, agency books, everything. Since he can only stock or be aware of a minute fraction of the total available universe of books in English, these sources are of obsessive concern to him. Their efficiency or inefficiency can quite literally make or break him. An author may shop for a publisher. A publisher may dally with book clubs or direct mail as a means of achieving his ends. But the bookseller has no such choice. Book 'A' comes only from Publisher 'A'; Book 'B' only from Publisher 'B'. Paragons of business efficiency or otherwise, it makes no matter. We must deal with them. When they flounder, we flounder. If publishers feel the economic cold, booksellers sneeze. Booksellers, you know, are often invited to affairs of this sort less for what they have to say about bookselling, than for what they have to say about publishing, in order to goad publishers with accusations of incompetence and ineffioiency. I do not for a moment impute any such motive to Trent 25 University so that you will not be disappointed if I do not linger over the painful details of just how bad publishers' service in Canada is. The details at this stage are not important. Stupidity and apathy do exist in the Canadian booktrade, as they exist...