By Susan Burgess
Small publishers say the high cost of shipping books through Canada Post is squeezing the life out of their business.
Sean Fordyce, an Ottawa resident who has run Voyageur Publishing since 1988, says shipping-rate increases have driven the cost of sending a book up 10 times in the last seven years.
“It costs more to ship a book across the country than it’s worth,” he says.
Fordyce is calling for a special book-mailing rate that would bring his costs back down. He’d like to see it available to any individual or business that send books — like the “printed papers” rate offered by the U.S. Postal Service.
Failing that, he says he’d be happy with a special rate for all publishers, regardless of how much they ship per year.
Fordyce says he’s been pressing Canada Post for months to make the changes.
Recently, he also sent the Liberal Party a copy of his report, “Improving Canada Post Policy With Respect to Books.”
So far, all Fordyce has received from the Liberals is a form letter outlining the party’s commitment to Canada’s cultural industries.
Nicholas Macklem, general manager of Oberon Press on Sparks Street, says although he now uses a courier to move his books, he’d also like to see a lower Canada Post book rate.
But he doesn’t believe the political will to create one exists.
“We used to be a much more liberal government,” says Macklem. “It’s not a nice time to be an independent Canadian publisher.”
Fordyce says high shipping costs get passed on to bookstores, who may then opt to buy from larger publishers that get volume discounts from Canada Post.
“Shipping costs will just tip you over the edge,” says Pat Caven, manager of a bookstore on Elgin Street called Perfect Books, as well as the store’s other branch on Bank Street.
Caven says that even if she doesn’t consider shipping rates, she’s more likely to do business with larger companies for their bigger selection and easier return policy.
And when she has to make a decision between two similar books offered by publishers that charge different amounts for shipping, the firm with the lower rate wins.
Jan Geddes, the owner of a small literary press in Dunvegan called Cormorant Books, says Canada Post’s shipping-rate increases have also driven up the cost of marketing. She says her company pays hundreds of dollars to get copies of three or four titles out to reviewers, who spread the word to readers.
“We have to do it for our authors,” she says. “We just end up with a poor bottom line.”
Fordyce argues that as a Crown corporation, Canada Post should be concerned with the bottom line of small-press publishers. He says giving readers in one region access to the books of writers who publish in another promotes national unity.
Fordyce says a good example of a book that deserved attention coast-to-coast is one he published in 1988, called On Guard For Thee: An Independent Review of the Free Trade Agreement.
He sold 52,000 copies of the book to readers across Canada for $3.91 a piece — a price he says would be impossible today because of higher shipping rates.
However, Canada Post says those concerns are irrelevant to the corporation as governed by the Canada Post Act — its first responsibility is to operate as a business, not to promote culture or national unity.
“We haven’t taken any taxpayer subsidies since 1988,” says John Caines, a Canada Post spokesperson. “The market dictates the price.”
Caines says Canada Post doesn’t buy Fordyce’s argument that the corporation could lower its shipping rates for small publishers without getting into financial trouble.
He says Canada Post is forced to offer discounts to high-volume shippers because it has to compete with other courier services, which do the same thing.
Caines says Canada Post’s advice for publishers who find their shipping costs too high is to do what any business would do when faced with such a situation: look to the competition.
But Fordyce says he’s more likely to look for other work, even though he describes publishing as “part of (his) identity.”
“If the government doesn’t want culture, why am I giving it to them?”