Literary Aspirations

“It would have made a difference to my state of mind and creative process if I’d known, while I was writing, that there were opportunities closer to home,” McGillis says. An artistic community, he points out, needs local outlets in order to thrive.

The Stelmach government’s commitment to cultural industries has Davis hopeful that Alberta’s artistic communities will now have that chance to grow. With the 2008 budget, the premier added half a million dollars to the $350,000 already allocated to provincial book publishers.

This July, Statistics Canada reported that in 2006 Ontario and Quebec accounted for 91% of the national publishing industry’s operating revenues and 95% of the industry’s operating profits. B.C. came in third, generating 6% of industry revenues, and Alberta was fourth at 2%. That may not sound like something for Alberta’s book-lovers to cheer about, but it represents a 12% rise in revenues since 2005, while most of the country – including Ontario and Quebec – took a bit of a fall.

Things could get much better. After receiving that $850,000 last year, the government has indicated that publishers will probably receive the same in the coming year. Davis adds that another publishing program should be announced this spring with new government funding to take effect in 2010. “They’ve been saying exactly the things we’ve been wanting to hear for so long,” says Davis. That said, he adds, especially in light of diminishing oil surpluses, “I’ve been in the game long enough to know to keep plugging away.”

Though Freehand’s success may give it good reason to hope for significant government support, the imprint received no direct government funding in its first year. “You have to take the plunge and commit some resources of your own,” says Don LePan.

LePan is president and CEO of Broadview Press, the academic publisher of which Freehand is an imprint – or what LePan calls a “literary wing.” He launched Broadview in 1985, in Peterborough, Ont., and in 1993 opened a Calgary office after relocating for family reasons. Rising costs, LePan notes, have created a significant new challenge since the mid-’90s: it has become more difficult to afford the office space and to find employees willing to work for the relatively low wages a publishing budget can provide.

Often encouraged to publish new literature alongside scholarly editions of classics like Frankenstein, LePan found the idea appealing, but it was never financially viable. Broadview was already struggling with falling profits as the Canadian dollar approached par with the American, and “literary publishing is probably the most difficult… to break even, let alone make money.”

Until the spring of 2007, LePan put his literary aspirations aside. Then he found a book-loving (but media-shy) Calgarian who shared them and whose contribution made it possible to commit the resources necessary to give the venture a go, publishing four titles in its first year, five in the second and with hopes to break even sometime around the third.

LePan’s first fortuitous step was to hire Little, a Calgary writer (who, at the time of publication of this story, has since decided to return to her own writing, working at Freehand on a freelance basis). Along with selecting each book from hundreds of submissions and editing them, Little even took part in designing the covers. She also broke the small-press mold by organizing a national tour for each author.

“Originally,” LePan recounts, “we had a very frugal budget for Freehand, and the more we took soundings… we thought, this is probably too frugal, particularly on the marketing and publicity side of things.” It was once possible, LePan recalls, to print cheaply produced trade books, publicize them only minimally and expect some attention. No longer – today’s readers aren’t as easily impressed. LePan decided to give Little a relatively hefty marketing budget “and hope that sales would balance out that extra expenditure. And it certainly looks… like it’s going to work.”

As Freehand’s authors travelled from coast to coast, readers stopped and took notice. Nawaz says the turnouts at her Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa readings left her amazed by the level of exposure her western publisher had provided her. But, as Little points out, there’s no reason an Alberta publisher shouldn’t produce literature of a quality equal to its Toronto counterparts and no reason it shouldn’t expect the same attention for it.

“We’ll see Alberta book publishing come back with a vengeance,” Davis promises. “It’ll be a strong, resilient industry.”

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