Some naive proposals

Mr. Hancox: What Mr. Nobleman might like to consider is how does a monthly magazine which publishes a digest of material from a variety of other magazines, inhibit the growth of a newsmagazine? I think that that point hasn't been considered. Some naive proposals JAMES DOUGLAS Speaking as a new, but certainly not a young publisher - and I hope not a dilettante - I would like to do some summarizing of the specific proposals that have been made not just by Mel Hurtig, but by the different speakers on general trade publishing. For the present and certainly for this meeting, we have to accept the fact that there is no immediate legislative help coming to strengthen the climate for stronger Canadian publishing. We have to accept, too, that if there is no immediate legislation, there will be no immediate regulation. And so I suggest that we rely on cooperation. I would like to summarize and comment on some of the proposals, and to suggest specific cooperative and even practical measures; but I admit that many of them are naive. Ceram, in his foreword to the March of Archeology, said that he would never write another book on this subject because he had lost his naivete. If I lose mine, I shall leave the publishing industry. I hope that by making practical proposals and forcing cooperation we will see the various sectors of the industry declaring how far they are prepared to cooperate. The beginning of any publisher's programme is in the title to his property. No builder or developer builds a building unless he knows he has clear title to the land, and our title lies in the contract in the Copyright Act. I have been greatly surprised at the lack of interest and of comment about the contract , and yet this is the fundamental docu72 ment with which we begin the publishing of a book. I know, of course, that the Writers' Union has developed a minimum contract. But it really hasn't been discussed here, and so I cannot comment on any proposals. But I do suggest that publishers get together and create a guide to Canadian publishing contracts . My experience with the young publishers , even the dilettante ones, and with the writers themselves is that they do not always understand the implications of the various clauses. I find it amazing that almost nothing has been said about the Copyright Act itself. This is the most important and indeed the only piece of legislation that governs the publishing of books, and it is 50 years old. In the year that I have been attending IPA executive meetings there has been no discussion regarding the Copyright Act. Ye~ we are pushing for legislation, and this is the document that focuses on what it is that we want in our copyright. I do not really know what we are looking for as publishers in the Copyright Act, because no one has discussed it. I think that publishers could agree, hopefully with the other elements of the industry, that the philosophy implicit in the old Copyright Act must shift from the emphasis of the free flow of information to emphasizing the establishment of a Canadian culture first, as well as the free flow of information of books from the United States and England and elsewhere. I agree with the Secretary of State that the Copyright Act cannot be changed and chopped around in a piecemeal fashion, but that it has to have Revue d'etudes canadiennes input from all manners of people and sectors in the industry. The one thing that we have to fight immediately and to seek immediately to change is the loophole that the Coles bookstores have uncovered in their action with McClelland and Stewart. As a cooperative action, I endorse Jack McClelland's appeal that all members of the publishing industry and the retail industry, in fact the whole of the book industry, send telegrams to Mr. Faulkner and to Members of Parliament emphasizing the need for clarification to the title of our books. I visited Jack Coles last week in the office he has occupied for the last five years. He told me I was...