Books a better buy in Canada? After all the problems caused by the high Canadian dollar in 2007, Canadian publishers and booksellers are “cautiously optimistic” at the start of this year’s holidays according to Vit Wagner in the Toronto Star:
“The climate is much better this year,” says [Nancy] Frater, proprietor of the Orangeville store BookLore. “My reason for optimism is that in challenging economic times, people do turn to books. As gifts, books have long-lasting value and they’re reasonably priced.”
It’s all relative though:
“I can’t look into the future and say everything’s going to be sanguine,” says Random House of Canada’s [Brad] Martin. “We’re doing a lot of cost cutting, but it’s more discretionary, like cutting the number of sales conferences from two to one. But we believe that the organization that we have now is what we need to successfully publish books in this country at the level that we have been publishing them.
“What I can’t tell you is what is going to happen to the market over the first six months of next year. It’s concerning for all of us. But certainly right now we seem to be performing better in a difficult market than the two other major English-language markets.”
And I’m not sure how this all sits with the recently reported “belt-tightening” in Canadian publishing — including staff changes at KidsCan Press and Thomas Allen postponing most of their spring 2009 list — and all the grim news coming out of the US.
Is there worse to come? Any Thoughts?
I find it funny that recently in the news, every industry is claiming that their product as gifts that provide “long-lasting value” for a “reasonable price” — ranging from the iphone to the Wii to the movies at the cinema, etc. and of course all the way to books. It must be the messaging that every business wants to send out to the customer.
For the most part, when it comes to belt tightening … most of the focus and energy is now placed on short-term goals and profits so all the longer-term initiatives get placed on the backburner :) I’m not sure if that helps at all, but it tends to be a pretty typical business response. The peculiar thing is that the number of books being published hasn’t really been reduced … or at least I haven’t heard of any reduction despite the cuts in employees.
There must be some sort of increase in the # of books purchased / person that I’m not aware of :)