In part two of this week?s feature series on the merit of independent presses, I insert my?thoughts?around?statements?from Thomas Allen/Cormorant?s Marc Cote, House of Anansi?s Matt Williams, and Coach House Book?s Alana Wilcox. In a nutshell this article explores:
- How independent presses publish books they like without having to answer to international bosses and boards on whether a book will surely generate profit, etc. I.e ? they?re more free to publish what they like, based on literary merit,?without?consulting with?marketing?department on sales potential.
- How Canlit?s diversity depends on many publishers, with many different tastes, acquiring manmy different kinds of writers. Many smaller publishers with varying tastes ensures a bit of everything ? from wild books to straight-laced lit, hits our shelves.
A Discussion with Marc Cote, Publisher at both Cormorant Books and Thomas Allen & Sons
When I asked Marc Cote to share some thoughts on this week?s discussion, he was reminded of the time he, at a bookseller?s function, pointed out to bigwigs at HarperCollins and Penguin, that that year?s ?Author of the Year? nominees for the Libris Award had all started out with Canadian presses ? Joseph Boyden, with Cormorant; Elizabeth Hay, with Cormorant and New Star; Michael Ondaatje with Coach House and Anansi.
He?s not sure if that makes Canada?s small presses the ?farm team? many see them as, but he is sure it indicates they?ve got a finger on the pulse of Canada?s sharpest writers. ?We?re in the research and development arm of the Canadian publishing industry,? he says ?The difference between, say, Cormorant Books and Pfizer is that when Cormorant publishes an author and she?s a success, a larger company takes her away. [But] when Pfizer develops Viagra, they have twenty to twenty-five years of unfettered monopolistic access to the market.?
He?s not suggesting writers should be bound to publishers who gave them their start, he?s speaking to a point I have observed myself: Canada?s small presses are tastemakers, while the international houses ? driven by economic returns ? are not quite as able to take chances on new things. It?s not until a certain kind of fiction, or a specific writer, proves successful in the Farm Team atmosphere of small press publishing that the big guns will take a risk on it. So, without our?independent?presses, our freshest voices would never be given a shot to rise up, and out literature?would?go stale. I?m speaking in hyperbole based in truth. Because?I?ve seen it happen over the years.
?Farm teams train and graduate the best pitchers ? and boutiques create the styles that are eventually mimicked and marketed widely by larger and larger retailers? Cote says. And he?s right, I can?t and shouldn?t list who here, but I have friends who?ve been rejected by the Big 3, only to have their VERY same book accepted ? once a hip and well-regarded acquiring editor at a smaller press expressed interest in that book. The two books I?m not saying by name here went on to become massively succesful (and in contention for this year?s CBC Canada Reads).
Marc expressed the sentiment that what he and many small presses do is launch or re-vitalize the careers of tremendous authors the big presses can?t take a shot on.
And why can?t they???Here?s where I?m going to get my head blown off,? he says. ?It? because we?re more engaged with the literary culture and less concerned with the bottom line. No, I don?t mean that we?re all grant-supported literary toffs with no sense of business. Not in the least. But what I do mean is that our jobs depend less on the demands made by the management on behalf of the shareholders who want a return. [Which is the case with] any of the large publishers.? What Cote proposes is that an independent publisher is concerned with literary merit, not profit.
?We can take chances the larger corporations can?t. I can make very risky decisions, because at the end of the day if the publishing program at Cormorant under-performs, the only shareholders I have to talk to are myself and my spouse. I don?t have to explain myself to Berlin or New York or London, who in turn have to explain themselves to their shareholders. I don?t know the details of the ownership of the companies [Salty Ink is referring to as admirable Canadian publishers], but my guess is this: every single one is operated by someone who has a degree of ownership or reports directly to a board made up of owners. We?re masters of our own houses. Yes, of course the editors and publishers and staff at the Big Three are all Canadian, but they answer to their bosses off-shore who aren?t.?
Ruminations on Matt Williams? Thoughts on the Matter. Matt is the VP of Publishing Operations at Anansi
I touched base with Anansi, whom we can all agree prove independent publishers are not only alive and well, but able to run with the big guns. They?re possibly Caanda?s most well-regarded publishing house. Arguably, for three years in a row, Anansi has published The Big Book of the Year. In 2010, Annabel. In 2011, The Sisters Brothers. This year, Inside, proving they second-rate to no one, nor a stepping stone to the Big 3. If anything, Anansi is where most writers I know demand their agents first sends their manuscript.
In a brief chat with publisher and president Sarah MacLachlan last week, she echoed my boutique shop versus Wal-Mart analogy. ?Do people as a consumer prefer shopping in a department store or a boutique? ?This theory can easily be applied to publishing. ?We curate and spend time developing ? it?s our strength.?
But I needn?t have grilled her on the matter of this week?s discussion, as she prepared for the Writers Trust Awards last week, because Matt Williams, Anansi?s VP of publishing operations, had plenty of applicable things to say in his recent open letter on the vitality of independent publishing in Canada right now.
A few weeks ago, in the National Post, Williams declared that, ?Independent publishing in this country is alive, vigorous and vital.? Because it is, it?s all three of those things. Not to mention, for the attentive reader ? more exciting and better than ever.
Salty Ink gets so many review copies in the mail I?ve stopped buying books by publishers not sending them along ? since I can?t keep up with what?s arriving in my mailbox. As a result, I read primarily books by the independent publishers with whom I?ve forged a healthy blogger-publisher mainline with. Never have I been more riveted as a reader than in the last two years. Our independent presses are on fire with fresh fiction and poetry, and what they?re supplying me with is more than enough to keep me stocked with more fantastic books than I could ever read.
?There are more than 100 active publisher members of the Association of Canadian Publishers,? Williams points out.? These publishers are doing the same thing today as they did last week, and indeed, as they will do next week ? working like hell to publish books by Canadian authors and illustrators for readers across Canada and around the world. Our strength lies not in the size or the reach of any one publisher, but in the diversity and breadth of the publishers considered as a whole.?
That?s what I?m talking about here: the ecology of independent publishing. I?m a biologist, by academic background, so bare with me through this analogy: In a forest, the more habitats there are, for different kinds of animals to fill, the more animals can thrive in that forest. It?s why rainforests are thriving with a diversity of animals: because there?s a place for every kind of beast. CanLit?s no different. Think of the animals as authors, and the publishers as different habitats. For CanLit to be a healthy and diverse thing, there needs to be 50 different publishers interested in 50 different types of fiction, so there?s a home for all of our writers tics, quirks, styles, and stories. What doesn?t please the acquiring editor at Thomas Allen or Anansi, might be just what Nimbus is looking for in a writer. Chris Labonte, for example, branded Douglas & MacIntyre as home to some of Canada?s freshest, wildest fiction ? stuff that other publishers would be afraid to touch. He wasn?t wrong, many of his picks went on to great reception. Much like how Invisible Publishing can be relied upon for very dazzling writing. CanLit?s health and vitality depends many different publishers all having different affinities for different kinds of books. But, a big conglomerate like Random-Penguin ? acquiring based on sales potential ? is disastrous for the ecology of CanLit. If we only had multinationals on Canadian soil, it would not produce the diverse, Something-for-Everyone kind of CanLit we have today.
Alana Wilcox, Coach House Books? Editorial Director, Echoes Sentiments from the above Discussion
Alana was busy in a sales conference in The States when I contacted her. While not looking to position internationals as better or worse than independents in any regard, she did share logic that echoes the sentiments in the discussion above. ?The impending merger of Random House and Penguin is a bad thing in a lot of ways, she said, ?but the big getting bigger will maybe leave a little more space for the rest of us.?
She also echoed the sentiments behind an article I wrote earlier thus year, in the wake of the LPG funding slash, that we ought to call our Canadian presses what they are: not ?small? ? which implies inferior or second-rate ? but ?independent,? and embrace what that means: Canadian, ours, publishers focusing mainly on Canadian writers. ?Let?s go with ?indie? instead of ?small? publishers,? she said, ?And there?s some fertile ground there. I mean, it?s pretty sweet to be an indie publisher: here at Coach House, we have no corporate Big Daddy to answer to, no massive machine to keep oiled, no German overlord deciding what?s best for CanLit.?
?The downside,? she admits, ?is that we don?t have access to all that German overlordish infrastructure or capital, but we persevere. Times are tough in publishing, there?s no denying it, but most of us aren?t in it for the cash, so as long as we manage to make enough to keep going (and it?s easier to navigate a canoe over rough waters than an ocean liner), we can maintain our focus on making books we believe in.?
Related posts:
sugar cookie recipe how the grinch stole christmas macaroni and cheese festivus festivus zeno melanie amaro
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন