Reading Akiwenzie Damm’s “Editing as a Cultural Practice in Canada” and Elaine Dewar’s “How Canada Sold out Its Publishing Industry” makes me wonder how many Canadian and First Nation owned and operated publishing companies there are. This project explores the British Columbia Book Fund recipients from 2014-2015 (most recent list retrieved from http://canada.pch.gc.ca/eng/1450356457855) and highlights multinational; First Nation and fully Canadian owned publishing houses. The above interactive map shows all the publishers who have received Canada Book Fund funding. If you click on the top left side bar icon a categorized list of funding amounts and their recipients will be populated. The blues represent funding of less than $50k, greens received funding between $50k to $100k, yellowy-orange received funding between $100k to $200k, and the reds received funding between $201k to $352k. What is interesting about this data is that there isn’t a multinational company in B.C. although Orca Book Publishers does distribute to the U.S. and internationally. However, they received the most funding in the whole of B.C. with over $80k more than the second highest recipient, Company’s Coming Publishing Limited. Company’s Coming sells cook books and has been around since 1981, so their success is obvious. What is interesting is Douglas and Mcintyre (2013) is owned by Harbour Publishing, with a combined funding total of over $420k. Heritage House Publishing Co. owns Greystone Books, with a combined funding total of over $280k. This puts a relatively small number of publishers in the top 5 Book Fund Recipients list:
The total amount of funding awarded in 2014-2015 is $2,904,957. Of that these top 5 received $1,559,993, which is about 54% of all funding. So looking at these numbers we can see a bit of a problem. There is a bit of a monopoly of the market from Harbour Publishing and Heritage House Publishing Co. who each own two relatively, a very successful publishing house. Another topic I wanted to explore was funding for Indigenous Publishers. None of the recipients solely publish Indigenous text, but Talon Books does publish the second most Native voices in Canada after Theytus Books and they received about $70k in funding. The rest of the list are all Canadian owned publishers who don’t solely publish Indigenous text. According to The University of Toronto (https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/Aboriginalpublishers), there are at least a handful of Indigenous publishers in B.C:
However they did not receive funding through the Book Fund, keeping in mind the lowest amount of funding on this list was $9,703 for Anvil Press Publishers. There seems to be something wrong here. This map and table shows us that there are 5 publishing houses in Canada who have received over half of the Canada Book Fund in 2014-2015, but it also shows that, at least in B.C. there aren’t any multinationals squeezing their way into this particular provincial market. What is interesting is that Orca Book Publishers, Company’s Coming and Lone Pine Media Productions all seem to be relatively successful and it may be because of their very unique and narrow focus on what they publish. Harbour Publishing and Heritage House Publishing Co, each own another successful publishing house. Does this mean that more heads are better than one? Both owners acquired publishing houses that are, on paper more successful than themselves. Douglas and Mcintyre (2013) received more funding than Harbour publishing. It is also the same with Greystone Books and Heritage House Publishing. Does this mean that the future of publishing is for smaller houses to merge into one? This way they can share resources and possibly protect each other from bankruptcy as well as push each other to publish more books. Or is it to change their mission and goal; to focus on one type of publishing. And then there seems to be missing a big chunk of Canada in the Canada Book Fund; the Indigenous voice. As Akiwenzie Damm outlined in “Editing as a Cultural Practice in Canada”, Indigenous text should be, in a perfect or best world, be edited by someone who knows the language, nuances and culture of the original text. But the Canada Book Fund seems to be missing this voice, doesn’t Canada also belong to the First Nations, Inuit and Metis?
| Publisher | Funding | Website | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anvil Press Publishers Inc. | $9,703 | http://www.anvilpress.com/ | |
| Nightwood Editions Ltd. | $11,157 | http://www.nightwoodeditions.com/ | |
| New Star Books Ltd. | $11,510 | http://www.newstarbooks.com/ | |
| Ronsdale Press Ltd. | $26,434 | http://ronsdalepress.com/ | |
| Morriss Publishing Ltd. (o/a Sono Nis Press) | $27,807 | http://www.sononis.com/ | |
| Tradewind Books Ltd. | $30,272 | http://tradewindbooks.com/ | |
| Caitlin Press Inc. | $31,349 | http://caitlin-press.com/ | |
| Wood Lake Publishing Inc. | $44,007 | https://www.woodlakebooks.com/ | |
| Ekstasis Editions Canada Ltd. | $51,942 | http://www.ekstasiseditions.com/ | |
| Talon Books Ltd. | $70,486 | http://www.talonbooks.com/ | Publishes the second most Native voices in Canada, after Theytus Books |
| New Society Publishers Ltd. | $71,767 | https://www.newsociety.com/ | |
| Simply Read Books Inc. | $75,776 | http://www.simplyreadbooks.com/home.php | |
| TouchWood Editions Ltd. | $87,258 | http://www.touchwoodeditions.com/ | |
| Rocky Mountain Books Ltd. | $96,455 | http://www.rmbooks.com/contact.php | |
| Heritage House Publishing Co. Ltd. | $114,988 | http://www.heritagehouse.ca/ | Owns Greystone Books Ltd. |
| Arsenal Pulp Press Ltd. | $126,197 | http://www.arsenalpulp.com/home.php | |
| AIM Language Learning Inc. | $133,992 | http://www.aimlanguagelearning.com/ | |
| International Self‐Counsel Press Ltd. | $143,288 | http://www.self-counsel.com/ | |
| CCI Learning Solutions Inc. | $164,007 | http://ccilearning.com/ | |
| Greystone Books Ltd. | $171,310 | https://greystonebooks.com/ | Owned by Heritage House Publishing Co. Ltd. |
| Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd. | $181,097 | http://www.harbourpublishing.com/ | Owns Douglas and Mcintyre (2013) Ltd. |
| The University of British Columbia Press | $218,168 | https://www.ubcpress.ca/ | |
| Lone Pine Media Productions Ltd. | $234,361 | https://www.lonepinepublishing.com/ | |
| Douglas and Mcintyre (2013) Ltd. | $239,287 | http://www.douglas-mcintyre.com/home | Owned by Harbour Publishing |
| Company's Coming Publishing Limited | $267,177 | http://www.companyscoming.com/ | |
| *Orca Book Publishers Ltd. | $351,773 | http://www.orcabook.com/Assets/ClientPages/landingpage.html |
Retrieved from: http://canada.pch.gc.ca/eng/1450356457855