By Julie Middleton
Despite promises for compensation and advance payments on grants, Canadian publishers and authors continue to suffer.
“It was a very stressful time, extremely stressful,” says Ottawa author Richard Taylor.
Taylor is one of many Canadian authors affected by the collapse of the GPC (General Publishing Company) in April. The release of his new book, “House Inside the Waves” was delayed by three months, costing him valuable publicity time and his publishing company money.
“All publishing houses in Canada are skittish about publishing right now,” says Larry McCloskey, another Ottawa author. “Most are not interested in taking risks, or are on the verge of bankruptcy. And it’s getting worse.”
GPC owned many publishing houses, such as Boston Mills Press and Stoddart Publishing. Most importantly, it operated the General Distribution Service, which distributed books for more than 30 Canadian publishing companies, says Linda Cameron, President of the Association of Canadian Publishers.
For the last year, while GPC has struggled to stay afloat, publishers dependent on them “were not being paid for books already sold. They were not able to remove books from the warehouse, and they were reluctant to send books to the warehouse,” says Cameron.
In April, after all GPC’s assets were frozen under court order, “many Canadian publishers were stale-mated and trapped in the GDS (General Distribution Service) warehouse,” says Cameron.
Publishers were unable to claim their books until GPC officially declared bankruptcy in August.
Beach Holme Publishing, the publisher for both Taylor and McCloskey, was forced to delay the release of their books as they searched for a new distributor.
The delay forced the cancellation of Taylor’s book tour and three launches, he says.
“I was very worried that the book wouldn’t come out. It was cancelled and held off from the distributor [GDS]. If it had gone it would have been a disaster.”
Taylor says, fortunately, he has not lost any money, and his book has received “great reviews” following its launch in early September.
But not all authors are as lucky.
Ottawa author Kazimiera Cottam self-published a series of four books in 2001.
She signed a contract with distributor Hushion House Publishing who used GDS to fill their orders.
“All I got from Hushion was roughly $50. They didn’t pay me because GDS didn’t pay them,” says Cottam.
When given the option, she cancelled her contract with Hushion in July.
She will not receive any money for her book sales for the last two years, and she is still waiting for the return of her 183 books caught in the GDS warehouse, she says.
“The last two years have been really hard,” says Michael Carroll of Beach Holme Publishing in Vancouver.
He says the hostile takeover of Chapters by Indigo initiated the decline, while the collapse of GPC has created a crisis.
According to Heritage Canada’s announcement in early October, publishers will receive up to 65 per cent of the amount owed to them by GDS.
But, the same amount will be deducted from their usual government funding over the next six years.
“Money helps, but it’s just a short-term thing,” says Carroll. “They’re not compensating for anything, they’re just advancing what we would already get. If you get it, it just means you get less of an income at a later date.”
In total, Carroll estimates Beach Holme has lost close to $50,000.
Beach Holme, along with 18 other publishers which previously relied on GDS, have formed their own distributor in partnership with the Literary Press Group, an association of Canadian publishers.
With a new distributor, “We can get things moving along better than we have in the last two years,” says Carroll.
“We’re trying to be optimistic. I just keep thinking that it can’t get any worse than it already has.”