Carolyn Wood, the Executive Director of the Association of Canadian Publishers, offers an overview: “Book publishing in Alberta is under siege. Book publishing everywhere in Canada is a pretty fragile industry with the deluge of British and American books that come into our borders every day. In recent years, government support for publishing in Alberta has been the worst in the country.”
History of Alberta Book Publishing
It wasn’t very long ago that the book publishing industry in Alberta was thriving. Katherine Shute, past Executive Director of the Book Publishers Association of Alberta gives us a brief history.
“Through the 1980s and early 90s, publishing in Alberta was vigorous, was a growing industry, and we had new publishers starting up. Since 2001 the publishing industry has gone into a decline and that’s defined by the number of senior publishers – these are companies that have been around for 10, 20 years – that have had to sell, close their doors, or shut down. They are no longer able to be competitive with publishers in other provinces. That is a direct result of other provinces supporting their publishers.”
Alberta Book Publishing Industry Now
So what has been going on since 2001? In the past decade, government funding has been relatively nonexistent for book publishers in Alberta. Dennis Johnson, the past publisher of Red Deer Press and now a consultant in the industry explains, “I believe government investment in Alberta is around $230,000 a year. That sum is less than a single publisher in Ontario would receive by way of investment. And that $230,000 is supposed to look after the legitimate requirement for all Alberta publishers for Alberta books. You can’t compete. When you are receiving nothing or $20,000 - $25,00 a year and you are competing against an Ontario publisher whose government is investing $250,000 - $350,000 a year in that company, you simply can’t compete for the same writers, the same production, the same marketing, the same everything.”
Johnson continues, “The Alberta Publishers Association engaged in a very expensive, very long-term lobby with several ministers over the course of a decade and came up empty handed every time. It went well beyond neglect, it was basically a decision to kill an industry in a province and that is what they did. It’s basically a defunct industry in Alberta, all that talent – those editors, book designers, marketing people - they’ve either gone on to other things or other provinces, other careers. There was a wealth of talent. At one time Alberta was the third largest publishing community in Canada behind B.C. and we had plans and thought it was feasible that Alberta would overtake B.C. as the centre of Western Canadian publishing. Of course that didn’t happen because the B.C. government invested substantially in ensuring that B.C. stories now make it to the world but the Alberta government continuously ratcheted back investment in Alberta publishing.”
Johnson continues, “The short and long of it is that other provinces thought it important that their stories by their writers be told and Alberta didn’t. And it wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of the Alberta publishing community. We tried massive lobbies with everything we had down to our last nickel to try to get the Alberta government to recognize that there had to be some level playing field for Alberta publishers or they would simply be eliminated.”
The story of Red Deer Press is a great example of what is taking place. RDP was established in 1975 at Red Deer College and flourished. The press received the Alberta Publisher of the Year Award six times and over 30 other publishing Alberta awards. It also received over 300 national and international credits. But due to the same financial pressures that all Alberta publishers face, they sold to Fitzhenry & Whiteside Ltd. based in Ontario.
The slow extinction of book publishing seems to contrast the wealth and economy of Alberta. But as Katherine Shute pointed out about the boom a few years ago, “The boom did nothing to keep publishers in Alberta.” Dennis Johnson explains, “What Alberta publishers faced is the irony of living in the nation’s richest province but finding government continuously turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the need for investment in Alberta publishing, in Alberta stories. Alberta publishers were looking at situations where they received no government investment or such a paltry government investment that they simply couldn’t compete against their rivals across the rest of the country.”
Jerome Martin, publisher and co-owner of Spotted Cow Press based in Edmonton, shares his thoughts, “I’m a member of the Book Publishers Association of Alberta and we’ve been very concerned for a long time about the lack of support from government. The industry needs support that only the government can provide. It’s just a very, very tough time for the publishing business at the moment. We’ve lost several medium and small publishing firms and some large ones as well. This is a very difficult time for publishing in general. We hope that this turns around somewhat but it is a very difficult time.”
Future of Alberta Book Industry
What does the future hold for Alberta publishers? Katherine Shute shared her thoughts, “The only glimmer of hope is the recently announced cultural policy of Alberta with the cultural industries being named as one of the four key stones. If the government does follow through, there would be an expectation that they would provide support for cultural industries which includes book publishers and we would look forward to an announcement this spring of interest and forthcoming support. I don’t know what form it will take but that is the only thing that is going to help protect the publishers that continue to publish in Alberta and perhaps save those that are struggling at the moment.”
Dennis Johnson leaves us with a sobering thought – “The real question is: what happens to Alberta authors, what happens to Alberta books, what happens to Alberta stories?”
Toby Welch - Toby is a full-time freelance writer who specializes in magazine articles, online writing, e-books, and manuscript editing.
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