I always knew the University of Alberta had a press, but was never sure what they did or how they influenced Edmonton’s publishing industry. To learn more, I meet Linda Cameron at her office upstairs in Ring House 2 at the University of Alberta. As director at the Press, she is responsible for operations, budgeting, government grants and finances, as well as negotiations with authors and foreign distributors. She was recently honored with the Association of Canadian Publisher’s President’s Award.
Linda has been with the Press for 14 years. She is actively curious to discover what people read. “The most visible is transit reading: for example, the Metro, but not so much the Edmonton Journal. You see the occasional novel, assumedly for pleasure reading, but not as often as you see on a train in downtown London, England,” Linda notes. “It’s always interesting to see what people read on a daily basis.”
The UAP has its greatest impact on Edmonton readers through Audrey's Books. Since Steve Budnarchuk’s arrival to the independent scene in the 80s, the U of A Press has fostered a strong relationship with the book shop. Together, they coordinate events such as book launches, author readings and book releases, and directly order and receive books from each other to save cash, since a distributor can take a large chunk (up to 50%) of profit from book sales.
Selling and delivering books to Audreys is easy, given its proximity just across the North Saskatchewan river. But what about other bookstores farther away?
Before a book can be printed and sold, it starts as a simple manuscript. Sales reps advertise the potential book to various book vendors and bookstores, negotiating deals. The manuscript will be rigorously reviewed and edited by the Press and external peer reviewers before the manuscript is put into digital format. This digital version is sent to printing companies in either Saskatchewan or Manitoba (like Friesens) who print and bind the book into a series. For the UAPress, the number of books printed depends on a variety of factors, including popularity of author, intended audience, market reception and demand, and the choice of bookstores in which the book will be sold. These companies then send the books to the massive warehouses of the Georgetown Terminal Warehouse (GTW)--the UAPress’s main print distributor in Canada for 10 years. GTW distributes the books to various stores across Canada, such as Audreys Books. The process varies, depending where the book is to be distributed and sold. Consider, for example, how a book’s material travels, as it may be damaged with changes in humidity and temperature.
Advances in technology have not been overlooked by the UAPress. Linda is also one of the founders of BookNet Canada, and was, for a time, the president of the Association of Canadian Publishers. Part of the reason BNC was formed was because publishers needed to take a step forward and embrace the digital age of the book industry. Industry workers needed to know how to work and communicate with loads of metadata. A single book typically has a thousand pieces of digitized information attached to it: bibliographic, referential, or otherwise. Linda explains that working with larger bookstore aggregates such as Chapters/Indigo requires strict form of the digital process. It makes the relationship with these locations complex, since the Press has to advertise, through sales reps, their books complete with the relevant metadata before Chapters decides whether to take them on. But an old friend like Audreys, she says, will always be next door.
