Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Marc Côté on Canadian Publishing

A couple of weeks ago, an article in The Globe and Mail decried the fact that Canadian authors do not sell very well, even in their own country, and laid most of the responsibility for this on Canadian publishers, accusing them of not marketing their authors very well.

To which the publisher of Cormorant Books, Marc Côté, responded by pointing out that the situation is not as cut and dry as the previous article claimed.

Marc's response paints what I believe to be a fairly accurate portrait of the Canadian publishing environment as it stands now. The root causes of the current situation are so deeply embedded in our ongoing national identity crisis that it is naive to lay all the blame on a single group of people for what is happening. Which isn't to say that Canadian-owned publishers aren't partially responsible for the way things are - we are - but to claim that we are the end all and be all of it is like blaming farmers for bad weather.

Canadian cultural industries face a serious problem. It is the same problem we have faced for decades. It affects more than just the publishing industry. And it will take more than just the publishing industry to set us moving in the right direction.

Anyways, here's Marc's article. I'm curious to see how you folks feel about it.

1 comment:

Susan Glickman said...

Articulate and persuasive. Did Marc get any response from readers of the G&M?