Sitting in a white office lit by the afternoon sun, Kieran Leblanc, the current Director of the BPAA, tells me of the association's founding in 1975. It was then called the Publisher’s Association of Alberta. “We started out with 5 members and grew to a high of 45 in 1994-5, and we currently sit at 32 with 27 active members.” Collectively, their members publish about 250 titles a year, with a wide range of genres.
To sum up what they do for publishers in Alberta, she says: “we support the publishing industry of Alberta through advocacy work, lobby different levels of government for funding and support, and run an extensive professional development program for our members. We keep them current in terms of industry trends and knowledge, and we do an awards program every year for Alberta-published books.”
The BPAA’s members print and distribute all over the world, so the BPAA’s organizational work helps the publishers lengthy operations. Some choose to print in India and China, for example, since ink is cheaper there. But the bigger Canadian printers such as McCallum, Friesens, and Marquis Books, located in Manitoba and Ontario, still take most of the home front business because Canadian printing may be subsidized by the government at all levels (provided the printing is done in Canada). BPAA members may hear about other distributors (or associations) at book launches and events they attend, but Kieran guesses that currently their most popular choice for distribution is the University of Toronto Press.
She then informs me that the distribution of eBooks is different than print. “They have to live somewhere on a server. So, if you’re the librarian in Lethbridge and you want to buy the eBook of Birds in Ontario, you have to be able to access that file and figure out where to buy it from. Most people don’t buy direct from the publisher but from the distributor. There are two or three big distributors to libraries, so the books go into that database, then that distributor would sell it to the library, give a percentage to the publisher, and then the publisher would give the royalty to the author, usually. Libraries are a big consumer of books, eBooks and physical.”
There’s a large American-owned eBook distributor called OverDrive. Kieran notes that “libraries love to hate them. They kind of have a monopoly, though it’s changing. But they keep 50% of retail. Chapters/Indigo keeps 50%. Costco discounts, and then keeps 50%, and they both return tons. So the distributor will get a commitment from each of these outlets (Chapters/Indigo, Western Canada, Central Canada, Costco, Walmart), and these all deeply cut into the publisher’s profit, which cuts into the author’s.” So if a publisher can distribute independently, it’s much more cost-effective than hiring a third-party.
But getting to that point of efficiency takes time and money, which is why joint events with large-scale publishers and booksellers is a good idea for small presses starting out. These events also give presses the chance to network with other associations similar to the BPAA but which operate at the federal and national levels, such as the LPG (Literary Press Group of Canada) and ACP (Association of Canadian Publishers). Or they may simply meet someone like Dave Reynolds, from Chapters.
Kieran’s relationship with Chapters/Indigo started in 2009 doing a magazine, music, and film project for Alberta Art Days. “We produced banners and distributed to all of the libraries, Chapters, Indigos, and independent booksellers in Alberta. We simply asked them to pull Canadian content and display it during Arts Days. Chapters/Indigo tries to regularly profile Canadian content in sections of their stores, but it was nice to see it at that event upfront.”
Kieran thinks most Edmontonians read fiction, regional authors and stories like Babiak’s Garneau Block, “which a lot of people here have read because they relate to it. They also read biographies, mysteries, and I think some historical nonfiction. Nonfiction is a pretty strong but specific market. And some poetry, and that’s kind of a local thing, like Alice Major. People are very loyal to her.”
