The Canadian government has always claimed to want to encourage Canadian book publishers and many, many speeches and press conferences and announcements and gestures have been produced over the years (not just by the Liberals, but usually by the Liberals). The actual results of all that political performance? “Meh” at the very best:
Another of my favorite SHuSHs of 2022 was no. 168, “It Started as Polite Talk”, in which my colleague Dan Wells of Biblioasis complained of the dominance of foreign publishers in the Canadian book market. “I don’t think there’s a literate nation in the world whose native industry makes up a small percentage of its overall market”, he said. “This, perhaps, is the real crisis of Canadian publishing.”
The astonishing thing to me is that the stated policy of the federal government for more than half a century has been to foster and protect a Canadian-owned publishing sector to avoid outsourcing our intellectual life to New York and London. Acres of policy written. Billions spent. The results are risible. Here’s a visual representation of Dan’s point. The 113 members of the Association of Canadian Publishers, representing the vast majority of English-language book publishers in Canada, produce $34 million in annual sales against the $1.1 billion of foreign firms:
If you read the self-congratulatory reports from the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council, everything is fine: “The Canadian book publishing industry consistently demonstrates a high degree of resilience.”
Does this look resilient to you?
I’ve never been much of a Canadian nationalist and, all things considered, I’d prefer less of a government presence in our arts sector, but government is now so deeply entrenched in book publishing and has made such a hash of the industry that there’s really no way out that doesn’t involve better government policy.
What, exactly, better policy might look like is next year’s project.
