• Scandal! Amazon charging Kindle users for free Project Gutenberg titles
• Sex! British media personality sues Sunday Times for writing that she “snogged” Salman Rushdie
• Passion! Nabokov’s love letters to be published in English next year
• Madness! “Writers Needed” spam drives Twitter users crazy
• Rednecks! Glenn Beck book event to be simulcast in 537 American movie theatres

Before Scott McIntyre’s head hit the pillow Tuesday night following the Giller gala, he sent a long email to his friend and colleague Andrew Steeves, co-publisher of Gaspereau Press, reporting on the extraordinary evening. McIntyre and Steeves immediately hatched a plan to make Johanna Skibsrud’s debut novel widely available to the Canadian book trade, while still honouring Gaspereau’s craft.

[...]

The first 30,000 copies of the Douglas & McIntyre edition of The Sentimentalists (ISBN 978-1-55365-895-5, $19.95, paperback), printed on high quality FSC eco-paper, will be shipped from the bindery on November 19, less than 10 days after the Giller was awarded. Paper is on hand for an immediate reprint of 20,000 copies. The e-book is already a bestseller on Kobo and Douglas & McIntyre will make it available through other e-book retailers, including the Apple iBookstore, Amazon Kindle, Sony eBook store, eBooks.com and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Store. Gaspereau Press will continue to issue copies of its original edition ($27.95, 978-1-55447-078-5, sewn paperback with letterpress-printed jacket), giving readers a choice of two quality editions of the book.

Agent Chris Bucci, of Anne McDermid & Associates, says that no one from Key Porter or H.B. Fenn was in contact with the agency prior to the news going public, even though McDermid client Christopher Shulgan is launching Superdad: A Memoir of Rebellion, Drugs, and Fatherhood this week. “We’re all waiting to hear exactly how it’s going to play out,” Bucci says. “It’s sad. It’s never good to see a publishing house – especially one that’s been around for a while – go under.” Bucci added that all of the agency’s Key Porter authors – who also include Julia Devaney and Kim Clarke Champniss – have bankruptcy clauses in their contracts.

Agent Beverly Slopen, who counts Key Porter author David Posen among her clients, says she had no advance word of the closure of the Toronto office either, but she’s hoping the impact on the company’s backlist titles will be minimal. “I’m assuming that Key Porter authors … will still be part of [H.B. Fenn and Company’s] distribution catalogue,” she says, adding that it’s hard to watch another Canadian company in crisis. “The options for publishing are shrinking so quickly…. These are very chaotic times, and I just hope we get through [this] retrenchment period.”

Few ex-staffers from Key Porter have been willing to speak about the situation, but former manager of special and corporate sales Paula Sloss says that everyone was in shock when the announcement was made yesterday afternoon. “The way things have been the past couple of months, we were all expecting some form of announcement, but it was surprising that it was so radical,” she says, adding that things have been “very scary” since May. “I’ve been there since 2001. All of a sudden it’s over. You don’t realize how much of who you are is attached to your profession.”

Meanwhile, former publicist Jenna Illies, who had been with the company only for the past few months, says she was “shattered” after the staff meeting. “But I have been through much worse, and I always seem to land on my feet,” she says.

“It was very abrupt,” says Mouland. “We were shocked, we just had our spring pre-sales conference the day before, and there was an expectation that everybody was going to move ahead.” According to Mouland, laid-off staffers were informed that the company, which celebrated its 30th birthday last year, will continue operating in a much reduced form. But Mouland says he doesn’t know how the five six remaining staffers will manage such a task. “It’s hard to speculate what’s going to happen. It’s a dark day for Canadian publishing.”

According to a press release sent out by Harold Fenn, owner of Key Porter parent company H.B. Fenn and Company, the Toronto offices of Key Porter will be closed and the remaining staffers will be moved to Fenn headquarters in Bolton, Ontario. “The results,” wrote Fenn, presumably referring to sales at Key Porter, “have been disappointing and substantially less than positive. It’s time to change our direction and direct our changes toward a smaller and more focused operation. The company will focus itself on a smaller list of annual new titles and limit the program to fewer categories in the future.”


Returning North

Globe-trotting novelist Dany Laferrière is a big-time celebrity in Quebec. Now, after a decade-long hiatus, he’s being published again in English

Exposing family secrets

Six authors on navigating the personal minefield of memoir writing

The English invasion

An upstart Quebec City house is discovering a surprising demand in its home province for English-Canadian writing. And more in the spotlight on Quebec publishing: The evolution of Conundrum Press, and the dying art of literary translation

Fall Announcements

The season’s complete listings

FRONTMATTER

Bonnie Burnard is back in the spotlight

Don LePan among the Animals

Snapshot: BookNet Canada’s new CEO Noah Genner

Cover to Cover: Lavie Tidhar and Nir Yaniv’s The Tel Aviv Dossier

The e-catalogue cometh

Harry Bruce on the Hugh MacLennan novel that almost never was

Local Buzz: Back to the Beach

GUEST OPINION

Canada’s beleaguered litmags must experiment online to stay relevant, argues Jason McBride

REVIEWS

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

Galore by Michael Crummey

The Fallen by Stephen Finucan

Animal by Alexandra Leggat

Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and poetry

BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

Violet by Tania Stehlik and Vanja Vuleta Jovanovic

The Winter Drey by Sean Dixon

The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade

Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and picture books

THE LAST WORD

The ups and downs of Amazon’s sales rankings can drive authors to distraction, writes Linwood Barclay

Hiding in plain sight
Anne Michaels has published her long-awaited second novel – and she prefers to let her fiction speak for her

Life after BookExpo Canada
Ideas are flying, but what does the industry really need?

The LPG’s got Jack
A new director plots a new course for the Literary Press Group

Kids’ announcements
The complete listing of spring children’s titles

FRONTMATTER

• Book acquisitions 101
• BPAC packs it in
• Snapshot: Robyn Read and Sarah Ivany of Freehand Books
• Coach House goes YA
• Cover to Cover: Lisa Moore’s February
• Lonely booksellers of the North
• Mining history
• Watch Your Language: What’s in a new name?
• Local Buzz: Tales of a Maritime veterinarian

REVIEWS

• Not Yet by Wayson Choy
• Diary of Interrupted Days by Dragan Todorovic
• The Johns by Victor Malarek
• Kahn & Englemann by Hans Eichner
• Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and poetry

BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

• When I Visit the Farm by Crystal Beshara
• Blue Mountain Trouble by Martin Mordecai
• The Insecto-files by Helaine Becker and Claudia Dávila
• Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and picture books

THE Q&Q/BOOKNET CANADA BESTSELLERS

THE LAST WORD
Lee Gowan on Canada’s unique take on tragedy

12 to watch
A sampling of the book industry’s best and brightest, 35 years old or younger

Rules of the game
Q&Q talks to industry veterans on how to keep a career moving forward in the book business. The bad news? There are no guarantees

Indie bookselling: the next generation
A second wave of booksellers prepares to take over the reins of stores their parents founded and fostered

Spring announcements
Nine hundred titles, 40 categories – the complete spring season, at a glance

FRONTMATTER

• Kim Echlin’s Cambodian connection
• Bruce McDonald, CanLit auteur
• Getting Canada behind CanLit
• Bök’s Petri dish poetics
• Cover to Cover: Karen Solie’s Pigeon
• Snapshot: Barbara Bower of Penguin Canada
• Local Buzz: The Delta Is My Home

REVIEWS

• Fishing for Bacon by Michael Davie
• The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels
• The Colour of Lightning by Paulette Jiles
• Kaspar by Diane Obomsawin
• Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and poetry

BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

• The Imaginary Garden by Andrew Larsen and Irene Luxbacher
• Whispers from the Ghettos by Kathy Kacer and Sharon McKay
• Children of War by Deborah Ellis
• Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and picture books

THE Q&Q/BOOKNET CANADA BESTSELLERS

THE LAST WORD
Shaun Smith on fights, snowstorms, no-shows, and other hazards of book launches gone wild