I never asked for travel grant, says Gwynne Dyer

There’s a new twist on the saga of the Conservatives axing the Department of Foreign Affairs’ arts travel grants. The leaked document advocating the cuts singled out, among others, author Gwynne Dyer, who got $3,000 to give a series of lectures at a conference in Cuba. Dyer is a “left-leaning columnist and author who has plenty of money to travel on his own,” wrote the anonymous Tory insider.

The Globe and Mail would seem to agree: in an editorial that was generally critical of the cuts, the paper conceded that the Tories had some valid concerns, saying Dyer’s grant “never should have been approved, and the criteria should be tightened to prevent such abuses.”

That prompted a letter to the editor from the author, who understandably objects to being viewed as a “freeloader”:

But, in fact, I was asked to go to Cuba in early 2007 by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Some embassies in Havana were bringing in experts to talk to groups of influential Cubans about how things work in free societies. Fidel Castro was on the way out, and the embassies were being creatively subversive. I talked about the media to young journalists, and about civil-military ties in a democracy to senior military people.

I didn’t get paid for the work, but the Canadian embassy gave me $3,000 in cash to cover my travel costs. I never applied for a grant, and I never heard of PromArt until last week, but obviously some wily accountant at Foreign Affairs took the money for the Cuban project out of the wrong pocket. Stephen Harper’s ministers just can’t keep control of their departments.

The Globe, to its credit, did a follow-up news piece on the twist, and also delved a bit more into the political strategy at work:

Conservatives say the Prime Minister’s Office, not the Foreign Affairs Department, leaked the axing of PromArt, in an effort to seize the initiative before the news got out. The Conservatives focus much of their election message on the less affluent middle-class, and like to portray themselves as favouring NASCAR and curling over cocktails and galleries.

This time, the party highlighted a handful of projects that might raise public ire for funding lefty, artsy or controversial projects, and steered clear of the far larger sums that go to bringing foreign buyers to Canadian film festivals, for example, or Quebec-based dance troupes or theatre production companies. And they focused their message mostly on news outlets in the West.

A cabinet committee had already secretly decided to cut the programs under a process called strategic review, aimed at finding money to create other programs.

Tories cancel cultural travel grants

From the Toronto Star:

The federal government has scrapped a travel assistance program to promote Canadian culture abroad, suggesting it catered to fringe groups, the well-off and left-wingers.

The decision yesterday to cancel the $4.7 million program offered by Department of Foreign Affairs effective March 31, 2009, drew sharp rebuke from critics, with one calling it yet another example of censorship by the government.

[...]

Gwynne Dyer, who received $3,000 to give lectures in Canadian foreign policy and defence issues in Cuba in March 2007, was described as a “left-leaning columnist and author who has plenty of money to travel on his own.”

In another case, the North-South Institute received $18,000 to help co-ordinate a Caribbean-Cuban conference in Havana in December 2006. The institute was described as a “left-wing anti-globalization think tank.

“Why are we paying for these people to attend anti-western conferences in Cuba?” the anonymous author asked.

Former CBC journalist Avi Lewis, now a reporter with Al Jazeera, was described a “general radical” who could easily afford to travel on his own dime.

A production company, Klein Lewis Productions, co-owned by him and his wife, Naomi Klein, an author and social activist, received a grant of $3,500 to promote the film The Take at films festivals in New Zealand and Australia.

“Klein has sold millions of books, and certainly does not need $3,500 from the government of Canada,” the note stated.

The issue of whether Dyer or Lewis could have paid their own way is irrelevant – although, okay, they probably could have – this is just more pettiness and narrow-minded ideological puritanism from a government that seems to be staffed entirely with cranky AM radio hosts.

Event photos: Thomas King and Stuart McLean at the Hillside Festival

The 25th annual Hillside Festival took place in Guelph at the end of July. Though most of the outdoor festival was dedicated to live music, a few authors took the stage, and Flickr photographer Chris Iwanowski was there taking pics.

Author – and current federal NDP candidate – Thomas King lets his hat do the talking.

“Hmm, needs a little more quirk….” Stuart McLean does some last-minute tweaks before taking the stage.

London bookies

The second annual London Literature Festival is in full swing this week, and to celebrate, the Guardian created an online quiz to test readers knowledge of literary London. Guardian calls it “a stroll through the fictional nooks and crannies of the capital.” (Apparently this Quillblogger is more the romping type, as her score was embarrassingly low).

Test your knowledge here.

The London Literature Festival is in its second year. Its mandate is to showcase the “dynamism and globalism” of the city by featuring writers and performers from myriad backgrounds working in a variety of mediums. The LLF is doing a series called “Tales of the City” and Toronto is featured this Thursday, July 10. Rawi Hage, Priscilla Uppal, Vincent Lam, and indie electro-breakbeat artists LAL will be on hand to represent.

Screaming the summer away

A reminder to Toronto readers that this year’s Scream Literary Festival is now in full swing. It culminates with a dozen authors reading at High Park on July 14 (with a lineup that includes What Happened Later author Ray Robertson and Stunt author Claudia Dey), and there are smaller readings and receptions along the way. The full lineup is here.

Sellers in a dangerous time

Given the doldrums of the current bookselling market, Saturday morning’s BEC panel on creative ways to increase bookstore traffic proved timely. The owners of three successful independent bookstores – Doug Minett of Guelph, Ontario’s the Book Shelf, Joanne Saul from Toronto mini-chain Type Books, and Christopher Smith from Ottawa’s Collected Works – discussed the ways they have managed to broaden the role of their stores in their communities and increase sales by generating increased traffic.

Minett, whose store has been an innovator in the industry for 35 years, talked about how the Book Shelf has evolved over the years. “We opened in an area where there were no big-box stores or shopping malls at the time,” he noted. “But now we’re in an era of competition.” Early on in the store’s development, Minett envisioned the Book Shelf as a “hybrid” of bookshop and community hub, and the store has grown over the years to include a cinema, bar/café, and small art gallery space. An adjacent restaurant that once brought in $1-million a year in revenue was recently sold off to a private owner, though Minett now expresses some regret about that decision.

Expanding the store to include these other attractions and hosting high-profile events (such as a recent reading with novelist Salman Rushdie at a local church that drew a sold-out crowd of 700) helps draw additional traffic and sets the Book Shelf apart from its competitors, Minett said. “Right now, we’re in an industry that is declining… Maybe the way to halt the decline is to go back to those very fundamental ideas of excitement and engagement – not just [focusing on] the blockbuster [titles] or the big technology,” he told Q&Q following the talk.

Type Books’ Joanne Saul also stressed the need for adding value to a bookstore, noting that showcasing local artists at Type’s original Queen St. West location has proved popular with both area residents and other visitors dropping by the store. The art installations have also created an opportunity to drum up some press, which is crucial in spreading the word about new independent stores, Saul pointed out. “It gives us the chance for a press release and a launch,” she said, noting that Type has been featured on local and national radio, television, and newspapers regularly since it opened its first store two years ago. “The media coverage has been invaluable – the onus doesn’t fall on us [to advertise or promote the store]… Who’s kidding who? We can’t do it. Do we make money from the gallery? Not much. It’s not a highly profitable venture… but it raises our profile in the media and the community.”

Originally, at their Queen West location, Type had hoped to run children’s programming, but it didn’t seem to fit well with the neighbourhood, Saul said. Instead, Type will now carry that idea over to their new location on the Danforth (an extremely family-friendly neighbourhood).

Christopher Smith of Ottawa’s Collected Works discussed his store’s two key innovations – a move toward “virtual” author appearances and the creation of a coffee bar. He noted that it’s an increasing challenge for smaller independent stores to score high-profile author appearances, given that the big chains or literary festivals often scoop up the big names – and even then, many publishers are cutting back on author tours these days. So Collected Works decided if they couldn’t bring the authors to them, they’d bring the authors to their customers, via online technology.

Using the free video-conferencing software Skype, the bookstore held two events with Random House authors Julian Barnes and Peter Carey where the writers appeared via webcam from their respective homes in London and New York and were projected onto a screen in the store. Customers who purchased the authors’ new books at the events received copies with customized signed bookplates. While the turnout, about 50 people for each event, was “on the disappointing side,” the events did attract a noticeably younger crowd than the usual middle-aged customers who normally attend readings, Smith pointed out.

“You tell an author, ‘You can appear in a bookstore, and you don’t have to travel to go there,’ and they’re all for it,” Smith said. “Except for them being physically present, it’s exactly like any other event. And it’s pretty low-tech – no Margaret Atwood LongPen. Someone who’s about eight years old could set up the technology.” Aside from a computer, all a bookstore needs to set up such an event is a webcam, projector, and screen – an investment of about $500, Smith said.

Far more expensive is adding a coffee bar to a small bookstore, which only works if there’s no competition in the vicinity, Smith said. “If you have a Starbucks around the corner, it’s probably not such a great idea.” Set-up costs can be high – automated espresso machines cost in the range of $20,000 – so bookstore owners have to consider whether a coffee bar or similar café is going to add to their bottom line. Smith noted that the enterprise is working well for Collected Works, bringing in 13% of the store’s gross revenue annually.

“It’s a way to engage regular customers,” Smith said. “You’re like a barman, in some ways. And in our area, that’s made for an amazing sense of community… How often are you going to have customers coming in two, three times a day? We turn these coffee drinkers into book buyers.”

As bookselling becomes an increasingly difficult venture, finding new ways to survive becomes imperative, all three booksellers told the seminar’s packed crowd of booksellers and publishers.

“[When we started], we hoped that we could just sell books and be a happy camper,” the Book Shelf’s Minett said, laughing. “But these days, we have to not only keep traffic building or try to simply maintain it, but also try to fend off competition from all sorts of digital media. So independents are probably going to have try some unique things that haven’t been done before.”

Inside the November Q&Q

The November 2007 issue of Quill & Quire is now in stores coast to coast. Inside is a profile of mystery novelist Louise Penny, complemented by closeups of 10 other Canadian mystery writers. Other features include a survey of literary festivals across the country and a report on the pros and cons of freelance vs. in-house publicity. In the Scholarly and College Publishing Special Report, we ask whether scholarly presses should embrace the Open Access movement (i.e., give books away free online) and we also investigate how little gadgets called “classroom clickers” are transforming the college textbook market. All this plus more than 40 reviews, including looks at new titles by D.R. MacDonald, Christie Blatchford, Frances Itani, Kit Pearson, Deborah Ellis and Eric Walters, Stephen Henighan, and more. The full table of contents is after the jump.

(more…)

Once more, with feeling

Our BookExpo Canada preview, from the June issue of Q&Q.

Tentative optimism seems to be the general mood going into BookExpo Canada this year. After some exhibitor grumbling last year about high costs and low returns associated with the annual trade show, Reed Exhibitions is adding BOOKED!, a consumer book festival running alongside the convention. Hopes are high that the move will reinvigorate BookExpo, but as of late April (Q&Q’s press time), few details about the consumer event had been made public, leaving some publishers anxious to solidify plans.

BOOKED will run from June 7 through 9 (the BookExpo trade show will follow on June 10 and 11), and is being overseen by Geoffrey Taylor, director of International Readings at Harbourfront. The festival will be made up of two dozen events, half of them free and the others ranging in ticket price from $10 to $25, in locations across Toronto. BookExpo attendees will have to pay just like everyone else. Taylor says the aim is to have the festival pay for itself through ticket sales, and he was planning to put out a call for volunteers in May. “The whole thing’s supposed to be revenue-neutral,” says Taylor. “There are people out trying to find corporate partners, but from a planning point of view we’re trying to make it pay for itself.”

As for the lineup, Taylor says exhibiting publishers put forth 250 author names, which a selection committee (made up of reps from publishing and bookselling associations, as well as Taylor and BookExpo event director Dahlia de Rushe) has narrowed to around 50 for the inaugural year. But while publishers have been informed which of their authors made the cut – the list reportedly includes Naomi Klein, Jeannette Walls, David Bezmozgis, and Michael Redhill – no one has yet seen a detailed program. “You’re sort of presenting your authors blind,” says Lindsey Lowy, marketing manager for HarperCollins Canada. “You don’t really know what they’re getting into…. It’s difficult to put forth your best authors.” Still, Lowy has Richard B. Wright, Barbara Haworth-Attard, Susan Juby, and Kenneth Oppel all attending BOOKED.

And Taylor now says some BOOKED events will spill over the June 7-9 parameters. For example, H.B. Fenn and Company is bringing author James Patterson to both BOOKED and BookExpo, as part of his first Canadian tour in many years. Patterson’s BOOKED event is to take place on June 10, the first day of the trade show, but publicity manager Janis Ackroyd says she still doesn’t have a specific time, and the delays are holding back Fenn’s plans for the trade show as well: “We want to have Patterson in our booth, but we can’t determine the time of his booth appearance until we know all the details for BOOKED, which throws off the whole schedule because other authors don’t know their time,” says Ackroyd.

Taylor, for his part, concedes that the BOOKED committee is behind on the original schedule, but not, he says, “dangerously behind.” One major event has been booked for the John Bassett Theatre, while a children’s program has been scheduled for Fort York on the Friday. Taylor says most paid events have locations lined up, with only the free events still unsecured. And as part of an agreement with Toronto’s Luminato arts festival, also in its first year and running over the first week of June, the two festivals will share a space in a Luminato tent for at least one event.

BOOKED aside, it also remains to be seen how this year’s BookExpo convention and trade show will shake out. Last year’s trade show actually saw a noticeable increase in attendance, with 6,013 people attending, up 33% from the previous year. Bookseller numbers also rebounded, with a 15% increase, as 2,517 booksellers attended the show. But that still came against a backdrop of publisher concerns about high costs and few on-site orders. For years, BookExpo has been more of a networking event than a sales-generating one, but last year there was a renewed questioning of the status quo.

And this year, some exhibitors are slightly shrinking their presence. Simon & Schuster Canada, Random House of Canada, and the Literary Press Group are all reducing the size of their booths. LPG executive director Ronda Kellington says their booth will still feature author events, with an emphasis on first-time authors, but she expects that even fewer publishers than the 22 from last year will be represented. Heidi Winter, vice-president of marketing at H.B. Fenn, says the firm is producing fewer displays for its booth. And Whitecap Books, a perennial best-booth winner, won’t have its own booth at all this year, but will be exhibiting within the booth of its North American distributor, Firefly Books. Vice-president Nick Rundall says Whitecap will still have authors at the booth and blow-ups of the covers, and that the changes are for the ease of the booksellers – “assuming there are any.”

Still, most publishers are both returning and sticking to their booth size. “I remember last year there was that hooha about, ‘Oh, we should cancel BookExpo,’” says McArthur & Company president Kim McArthur. “I was never of the opinion that we should cancel BookExpo Canada.… I really always thought that it was extremely important to retain our own Canadian trade show for our own booksellers and our own authors and own companies.”

BOOKED isn’t the only addition to this year’s fest – Reed has also developed a new program for the trade show floor to spotlight children’s books, in an effort to attract more teachers and librarians. “Our Choice Best Bets” will feature 20 children’s authors and illustrators; each will speak for five minutes about a topic of their choice related to their new title. The Canadian Children’s Book Centre organized the event, which will take place on the presentation stage on both days of the trade show. The artists taking part in the program represent a cross-section of genres and target ages and include author team Jane Drake and Ann Love (whose Sweet! is reviewed on page 47 of this issue), creative non-fiction writer Barbara Greenwood, and author/illustrator Veronika Martenova Charles. But the list is also heavily Ontario-based, with only six participants coming from other provinces, including B.C. author kc dyer, Monique Polak from Quebec, and Nova Scotian illustrator Susan Tooke.

Young adult author Don Aker, one writer on the bill, says the time he gets with the audience will be worth the expense of coming from Nova Scotia. (Aker is mostly covering his own travel expenses, though his publisher, HarperCollins Canada, is footing his hotel bill.) He says his decision to come is spurred by the great reception Ontario teachers and librarians have given him in the past; the Ontario department of education approved his novel First Stone years before Nova Scotia tagged the work for classroom use.

Another addition to the trade show is a mystery event organized by Bloody Words, the annual Canadian mystery-writing conference of the same name. In the same vein as Best Bets, mystery authors will give readings on the presentation stage over the two days of the trade show. Cheryl Freedman, an organizer of the Bloody Words conference, says the final number of authors appearing is still undecided, but there will be fewer than at the Best Bets presentation, to allow the writers more time to read; some authors expected to appear include Linwood Barclay, Lyn Hamilton, Louise Penny, and Mary Jane Maffini.

Susan Dayus, the Canadian Booksellers Association’s executive director, says the author breakfasts and lunches, for both adult and children’s authors, will continue this year, with four in total. At press time the CBA was still contemplating opening up Saturday’s adult fiction lunch ­– which features Elizabeth Hay, Frances Itani, and Richard B. Wright – to the public. (The full breakfast and lunch lineups appear on pages 30-31.)

•••

As usual, the convention will kick off with two full days of professional development programming. Humber College and the Book and Periodical Council organized Friday’s publishing-focused lineup, “Devices and Desires,” while the CBA is running its annual “Super Saturday” programming for booksellers.

Friday’s lineup will address how new technology, especially the Internet, affects the publishing industry, and how publishers can reach online communities of readers. Cynthia Good, director of Humber’s Creative Book Publishing program, says the presentations and seminars look at how the future of book publishing can be seen now. “I believe that it’s no longer talking about a future – what will be the future of the book business and books and writing and bookselling and the whole book world,” says Good. “Everything is happening right now and we need to find a way to both learn and adjust creatively.”

The keynote speaker is Bob Young, founder of the print-on-demand website Lulu.com, who will argue that self-publishing is changing the publishing business. To balance Young’s viewpoint, former CBC Radio personality Mary Lou Finlay will be the responder, speaking for more traditional publishing models and touching on the issue of maintaining quality and standards. Attendees also have a choice of two workshops from a list of six that address new methods in marketing and promotion. Good says seminars are available both for the technologically savvy and for publishers new to online possibilities. (The cost of the day is up slightly to $125, though a reduced fee of $75 is available to students and members of The Writers’ Union of Canada; a full list of the day’s programming appears on pages 30-31.)

On the “Super Saturday” front, the CBA is expanding its members’ forum this year, after a strong response last year. “They kept bringing in chairs,” says Susan Dayus. “We had people up the aisles, up the front, down the back standing.” This year, the forum is being opened up to include non-CBA members – though attendance is still restricted to booksellers – and accordingly, it’s being renamed the Booksellers’ Industry Forum. Booksellers will also have more time to discuss ideas, as the roundtables following the forum are longer.

At the forum, the CBA will also unveil the results of an industry survey commissioned last year to measure Canadian booksellers’ profitability. And in its trade show booth, the association will be selling a manual for training new staff who have no previous experience in the book industry. Various CBA board directors helped write the manual, which will cost just under $20.

As organizers and exhibitors pull together the final details of this year’s show, they do so while facing the usual complaints about BookExpo, such as its seemingly permanent location in Toronto. Somewhat surprisingly, last year’s main complaint – the lack of firm orders – appears almost forgotten in the advent of BOOKED. The LPG’s Ronda Kellington, for example, refers to the expectation of order-taking at the trade show as “old-fashioned.” Says Kellington: “We thought there was good energy in our booth [last year]. We just want to create some energy, we want to get people into the booth, have a lot of traffic … and get LPG and our publishers into their brains for the fall.”

According to Reed’s Dahlia de Rushe, attendees will have an opportunity to express any concerns with the show, as Reed will once again solicit a cross-section of industry representatives for feedback. An advisory board will be set up following the close of this year’s show to “give direction on major strategic changes and major objectives,” says de Rushe.

For now, most publishers say they’re still committed to the trade show and are going in with a positive attitude. “All the publishers big and small have kind of come together to really try and reinvigorate BEC this year,” says Simon & Schuster’s vice-president of marketing and publicity, Rosslyn Junke, who was on BOOKED’s author selection committee. “People have put their best foot forward this year.”

Still, BOOKED may add more pressure for this year’s show to perform well. Random House director of marketing Linda Scott, who is co-chair of the marketing team behind the readers’ festival, is hoping that attendees will not be overly critical of the new venture. “Realistically, with change there are growing pains,” says Scott. “I would hope … people aren’t looking so critically at the initial changes that if it wasn’t perfect they would throw up their hands and say it didn’t work.”

THIS STORY HAS BEEN CORRECTED: A passage mistakenly stating that the McArthur & Company booth will have a new layout this year has been deleted.

The Word on the Street

Word on the Street festivals brought readers and writers together in cities across the country.

In Toronto, Patrick Boyer gets his book signed by Kate Mosse during the world’s first trans-Atlantic LongPen signing.

Photo by: Michel Boucher Photography

A Toronto crowd gathered to witness the first trans-Atlantic use of Margaret Atwood’s invention, the LongPen.

Photo by: Michel Boucher Photography

Hoisting the Jolly Roger at the Nimbus Publishing booth in Halifax.

Photo by: Peggy Walt

In Halifax, the annual “Pitch the Publisher” event is in full swing.

Photo by: Peggy Walt

Roch Carrier reads from The Hockey Sweater and The Flying Canoe in Vancouver.

Photo by: Bryan Pike / Courtesy Vancouver Word on the Street

Vancouver fans line up to ask Roch Carrier to sign their books.

Photo by: Bryan Pike / Courtesy Vancouver Word on the Street

Crowds mill about at the Halifax fest.

Photo by: Courtesy Word on the Street Halifax

Halifax’s Word on the Street was held in the Cunard Event Centre.

Photo by: Courtesy Word on the Street Halifax

Meet the public

Flak Magazine features an interesting opinion piece by Robert Francis on the popularity of the literary festival in our book-challenged times. Francis argues that literary festivals and readings continue to grow in popularity because of the allure of the contemporary author and his or her willingness to mingle with and answer the questions of the common reader. “The golden age of secluded, priest-like author-heroes” is over, Francis claims. Today’s readers, saturated with celebrity culture and increasingly abstract media, want to feel a personal and intellectual attachment to another person. This, according to Francis, explains the allure of author readings, signings, and onstage interviews: “they bring readers and writers together in an atmosphere that is much more democratic and egalitarian than it was in the past.”

Related links:
Read the Flak Magazine article