Plight of Canadian Publishers: A Writer’s Perspective

Recent application by Amazon to set a warehouse facility in Canada has caused much soul searching in the media. It is suggested that the Canadian culture is at stake in the decision by an insensitive government whose sole occupation is the short term interest of the consumer. The real issue, how to fix the Canadian publishing model, has not even been raised.

A review of the process of the publication of a book is in order. An author, except for a few well known authors, sends his manuscript to one or more publishers. Occasionally there is a reading fee which must be enclosed with the manuscript. Publishers also require two self-addressed adequately stamped envelopes, one for the acknowledgement of receipt and the other to return the rejected manuscript. However, most of them are too busy to acknowledge the receipt. After six or more months, if the author is lucky, s/he will receive the manuscript back with or without a note refusing it and never with any editorial comment which could be helpful in improving his work. Most times, the author will not hear anything at all and enquiries by mail, phone or email will fall on deaf years. Sending a manuscript to a publisher is like shouting in the wilderness for help. You may receive a reply but only once in a blue moon.

In rare cases when the manuscript is worth publishing the author will receive a contract. The road is not clear yet. Publisher may ask the author to share, partly or fully, the cost of publishing and many authors agree. Sometimes, the authors receive royalties, around ten percent of the list price, only after the publisher has recovered the costs. Only rarely does the author receive proper accounting of the costs, books sold, royalties due etc although the royalty checks are not unknown.

The publishers are not entirely to blame for the situation. They are inundated by manuscripts arriving by the proverbial truck loads. As a letter in the Globe and Mail said recently there are more writers than readers in Canada. The reading fees by book and magazine publishers are one of the means to reduce the flood. The low, if any, profit business can not afford adequate staffing and every one is swamped by the overdue jobs and has little time to answer author queries. If the manuscripts are lost at some stage you can’t really blame overworked and underpaid staff.

The problem here is not the publishers but their business model. The distributor does not buy the books, he takes them on consignment. Similarly, major booksellers stock the books on consignment too. Books that remain unsold after a period, usually six months, are returned to the distributor who in turn debits the publisher’s account for them. This system has two problems for the publisher. First, he does not know what he has sold for sure and second, distributors and booksellers do not share the risk although they each receive thirty percent or higher of the cover price. This leaves the publisher with all the work of finding manuscripts and the cost of editing, designing and printing them into books. For all but the rare best sellers the best a publisher can hope for is to break even. That is why there is so much emphasis on government grants for publishing and failing that the contribution from authors themselves.

For the book culture to thrive the model has to change. Book publishing has to cease being a labour of love and become a business. For this to happen, the risk taken by authors and publishers must be shared by others in the business chain. Increasing popularity of eBooks should act as a warning to the distributors and booksellers because they cut them out entirely. Many people like to hold a book in their hands and read it reclining or lying down in bed or on the beach. It is a long time the computer tablet will replace books for them unless the untimely demise of book publishers hastens the process.


******************

Overheard in the parking lot:

News item: New strain of humankind identified. Don't we have enough strains already?

I hate all hate speeches exhorting hate for groups I hate to hate.

A Long Wait

“Hello! John Doe speaking.”
“Papa, I ran into Bob at the airport in Chicago. He gave me the shocking news that Mummy passed away. Is this true?”
“Yes. It is true.”
“When?”
“Oh, let us see. It was quite a while ago. When was the last time you phoned?”
“It is March now. I was much too busy even to breathe last year. It must have been April of 2008.”
“Well. She passed away between then and now.”
“Why didn’t you let me know? I am the only child you have.”
“You are a busy person. I didn’t want to distract you from whatever you were doing with a marginal detail in your life.”
“Marginal detail? Marginal detail? Death of the real birth mother is not a marginal detail. It is not as if she was a step mother.”
“I always thought that any one on the margins of your life is a marginal detail.”
“She was not on the margin of my life; she was at the centre. She brought me in this world, sustained me for years with her own milk, sacrificed her career to bring me up. She was a model for me to follow. You know it.”
“What I know is that during her long illness she craved to hear from you but never did.”
“How would I know she was ill if no one would tell me?”
“If you ever picked up the receiver or responded to the messages you would have been told. But you never did.”
“I am so busy – jobs, social demands, children’s activities. I can’t always attend to the phone.”
“Exactly. That is why Mummy and I were on the margins. Come to think of it I did leave the messages but you did not follow up.”
“I am in a fix now. My dear mother is long gone and I did not get the opportunity to grieve. How will I ever get a closure?”
“You are lucky you had the closure without having to grieve. What is left to close now?”
“The hurt. Hurt of a child for the dead mother. The wound has to be healed.
“You are a grown up with your own family and too busy to pay attention to any one else. The wound can’t be all that big. Get a Band Aid.”
“Stop hurting my feelings. What happened to the ashes?”
“She was buried, not cremated.”
“Buried! Why?”
“That is what she wanted and that is what she got. She had only one last wish and she was entitled to its fulfillment.”
“Where is her grave. I must visit it to pay my last respects.”
“She rests in Montgomery’s Everlasting Home. When will you be coming?”
I will check my calendar. I have too many calls on my time right now. Perhaps next summer I can stop over on my way to Timbuktu. In the meantime I will get my secretary to call the florist and send some flowers.”
“She will enjoy the flowers, she always did. Come whenever it suits you. The grave will be there for a long time. Just as well she stopped waiting for her baby when she was still alive.”
“You are incorrigible, Click.”
‘Click,”

Recently Published Letters

One ethnic enclave at a time
What worries this integrated immigrant is the concentration of visible minorities in specific part of cities, giving rise to Chinatown, Indiatown, Africville etc. If there is a racial conflict in the future, it will be caused by this ghettoization.
To promote integration, we need to homogenize the cities by making the various areas in them equally available to new immigrants, by each area having properties in a wide range of values, for rent as well as purchase.
(Globe and Mail, 11/03/100
***
Extend LRT
My two recent visits to Vancouver this month were made particularly convenient by the SkyTrain connection between the airport and downtown. The trains were fast, frequent and spacious. The return trip for two seniors cost $20 rather than nearly $100 for the cab or $70 for parking for a week. It saved us hassle, and pick up from the train station was more convenient for the hosts than the airport used to be. Calgary needs such a lonk to stay competitive for tourists. It will be environmentally desirable and more economic than continually adding parking spaces and widening Deerfoot and Barlow trails. If it is not too late, it should be added to the expansion plans of the airport.
(Calgary Herald, 22/02/10)
***
It’s that economy thing, again
Your editorial (Solid, Not A Turnaround, Feb.5) tells us, “A growing number of Albertans are restless.”
Indeed, they are, not with anything the Alberta government is doing but with what the government can’t do, given slumping oil and gas prices. When these prices and royalties rebound, the taps will open again and Albertans will be happy.
If this doesn’t happen before the election, no amount of tinkering will help honest Ed.
(Globe and Mail,06/02.10)
***
Renegades too hasty
Re: "Tories cross floor, leave war chest," (Jan. 4). The renegade Tories are hasty in deserting the ship for a tiny raft. The election is far away and Premier Ed Stelmach's crew is talking tough. Come election time, the goodies will flow, promises will be made, Stelmach will travel the province kissing babies and the pendulum will swing as it always does. And what will happen to the deserters? Their raft could survive the storm, but whether they will return to the legislature is something I have grave doubts about.
(Calgary Sun, 07/01/10)
***
Case for profiling
So far all the suicide airline bombers, successful or failed, have a clear profile: they are young Muslim males who live in or immigrated from the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
So why is the U.S. government inconveniencing the vast majority of travelers who have given no grounds for suspicion and spending huge sums of taxpayers' money on screening them?
This is taking political correctness way beyond any reasonableness and one can only hope some way can be found to bring some sense of proportion in the U.S. reaction to these threats.
(Vancouver Province , 07/01/10)
***
Borrowed time?
The biggest story of the last decade is the fall of mighty U.S. from undisputed sole world power to an ineffective country cowering in fear of a straggling band of bandits, struggling with two wars it cannot win and soaring debt it cannot repay, not only at the government level but also at the individual level.
The underlying lesson in this sorry tale of woe is that to continue to prosper, one has to make the best of available resources. When one lives on borrowed money, he is also living on borrowed time, and the jig is up when the lender comes calling.
Call it bad luck if you will, he usually comes on the day it suits him and which is most disastrous for the borrower.
(Edmonton Journal , 03/01/10)
***
Booked to die
Sadly, there are more writers than readers in Canada (How The Book World’s Rare Success Story Came To An End In Suburbia – front page, Dec. 30). Add to that the fact that readers can buy their books online, often more cheaply. Now you know why the goose called the bookseller is cooked.
Globe and Mail, 31/12/09)
***
Thoughts on our man in Copenhagen
I draw two clear conclusions from the inconclusive conference. First, most humans will not make sacrifices today for some calamity far in the future, whether well documented or not. Second, in view of the opposite positions taken by Ontario and Quebec on the one side and Alberta and Saskatchewan on the other, Canada is a federation of conflicting interests and it is a wonder that it has held together for so long.
(National Post, 22/12/09)
***

Doctor Who?

When I received my Ph.D degree several decades ago in a different country and in a somewhat pompous culture, I proudly introduced myself as Dr. Jain to all and sundry. The strange looks I received surprised me till my a frank colleague told me that “proper” doctors are financially well off and do not appear in tattered attire of “pretend” doctors just starting out in their career. The point was driven home and the title disappeared and was replaced by Ph.D. added to the name. After a few years even that was dropped because no one really cared what your educational qualifications were in my rather firmly grounded profession.

Even though we Canadians consider ourselves modest, there is a proliferation of the kinds of doctors around. When I see a doctor, in a party or in a grocery store, I feel the urge to tell her of my latest aches and pains. But every one in the healthcare industry claims to be a doctor, some with justification and others to raise their status a little higher. Dentists are perhaps justified in taking this elevated title, professors in academy too particularly when they are being addressed by students. It is open to debate whether practitioners of scientifically suspect treatments like chiropractic and naturopathy should assume a title which misrepresents their qualifications and hides the true nature of their profession. That said, if a lawn care company can call itself “Lawn Doctor” why shouldn’t a young man flipping burgers in the stall in the neighbourhood plaza call himself a Burger Doctor. Being able to serve hundreds of delicious burgers every day requires skill which many with Ph.D. degree may envy, particularly the writer whose last hamburger was mistaken, with justification, for a lump of coal.

The issue really is that a title should represent something concrete. In days gone by, the doctor was a person who looked after the physical health of the community. Poor sick went to his clinic and rich sick sent for him to drop everything to attend to their real or imaginary ailments. The doctors were on call every second of the day and the patients did not hesitate in relating their latest discomfort to them wherever their paths crossed. The doctors of yore did not necessarily have high level of education; in many developing countries that is still the case today. There is a vast difference in levels of education required to qualify as a medical doctor. In developing countries most medical degrees are equivalent, in terms of years spent in earning them, to a bachelor of whatever in other subjects though they are certified as M.D. Medical schools in North America generally require several years of post secondary education before accepting candidates for admission. However, in public’s perception of the title of doctor, the level of education is not critical, the type of service is. While Joe Blow, lawn doctor may be shrugged aside as funny, Dr. Joe Blow, lawn care specialist is not acceptable. While Dr. Joe Blow, naturopath or optometrist or pharmacist or chiropractor or Ayurvedist or whatever may be considered a grey area by some, it is undeniable that this pretension misleads general public into believing that their professions are equivalent to legitimate science based practice of medicine. Similarly, Dr. Joe Blow, Ph.D., is acceptable when the card is handed around in a conference but Dr. Joe Blow in a social gathering is misleading and deserves a long boring detailing of some one’s problems with constipation.

The title of Doctor does indicate a high level of education and secures favourable treatment from insurance companies and lenders. Still, I find it embarrassing that the credit card company put the title on my card and it often causes inconvenience to my wife, a “proper” doctor, when strangers wish to contact me and she is called to answer the phone. Relatively, this is a small inconvenience compared to confusion in the validity of professions caused by indiscriminate use of the title. May I suggest that academics call themselves phony doctors and the fringe professions use the title, Pseudo-doctor, to make it clear to the public what they really represent.

Problems of Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain.

While agreeing with many in the media that the news of the death of Euro is greatly exaggerated, I suggest that the current crisis was caused by grossly overfeeding the economies of countries abbreviated as PIGS who did not, perhaps could not, restrain themselves. To get them healthy again the bloated countries will have to suffer the pangs of hunger for some time; for more feeding of them by ‘not so prosperous now’ economies may kill the patient, not revive it.