Brian Hades, owner of Hades Publications Ltd. based in Calgary, explained the current status of this niche market, “Science fiction, as I suppose any sort of genre publishing endeavour, has a built-in following. It’s a market that is dedicated to the subject matter. I can’t qualify it as large but I will say it isn’t small. It’s a substantial market.”
Science Fiction Book Industry in Alberta
Candas Jane Dorsey is a past-publisher of Tesseract Books which was sold to EDGE Publishing in Calgary in 2003. Dorsey had been involved with Tesseract since 1994 when they were the only speculative fiction imprint and says that science fiction is an active writing and publishing scene these days.
“Science fiction publishing in Alberta has grown tremendously. If you look at when we bought Tesseract Books in 1994, we were the only speculative fiction imprint in Canada. No one was doing specialized imprints and now you have Hades Publications which started Edge Books and another imprint called Dragon Moon in Calgary. They have now joined together with Hades – I don’t know if it’s actually taken over or if they’ve simply gotten together for administrative and promotional purposes – so there’s Dragon Moon and Edge and Hades. Anyway, Hades Publications purchased Tesseract and they have Edge, Tesseract, and Dragon Moon. There’s another imprint they’ve taken over as well if I’m not mistaken. Fitzhenry and Whiteside has Robert J. Sawyer Books and it has a new reprint imprint that’s not provincial but Robert J. Sawyer Books started as part of Red Deer Press. So basically we have a little hotbed of speculative fiction writing and publishing here in Alberta.”
Alberta Books in Competition with U.S. Science Fiction Books
Dorsey makes an interesting point, “If we are discussing science fiction book publishing, when a single press is bringing out anywhere from three to a dozen paperbacks and an equivalent proportion of hardcover’s per month and putting them on Canadian shelves – and there are many, many U.S. presses that do this – then a Canadian publisher who can bring out four titles a year is even more disadvantaged in a genre area. Those titles have to be published in a certain format and they have to be distributed in a certain way and that’s where you get the ants in bed with the elephants.”
Future of Science Fiction Book Publishing in Alberta
And what are the challenges of science fiction book publishing? Hades explains, “It’s hard to know where the funding may or may not come from in the future for small press, especially for small literary press. As a result, publishers are in the state of an unknown future. It’s hard to make plans when you aren’t sure of what sort of support you have. For Hades Publications, we have been very fortunate to be in a niche marketplace and we’re growing so for us, it’s a positive environment that we hope can only get better.”
For information on the overall book publishing industry in Alberta, check out The Realities of Book Publishing in Alberta.
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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