The Robertson Building

It is generally accepted that the publishing business in Canada is tenuous at best. It sits at the crossroads of art and commerce, not finding adequate support from either the consumer or the government. Bringing an inspired piece of writing to light has tremendous rewards but the struggle to just keep the presses running is always lurking in the shadows. Cormorant Books’ (Suite 230) Publisher Marc Côté has some ideas about why Canadians, who happen to form the only currently growing market of book buyers, don’t buy more Canadian-authored and -published books. But before we get to that, let’s travel into the past briefly to have a look at where Cormorant Books came from, its "foreword" if you will.

Cormorant Books’ past is filled with peaks and valleys that are probably not unfamiliar to other independent Canadian publishers. Marc has weathered Cormorant’s dips, including running the company from his home with no salary for the better part of two years to keep it alive, and in Marc’s words literally "rebuilding the company from the ground up." It all began in 1986 when the publishing house was founded by Jan and Gary Geddes. Their idea was to focus their publishing efforts on poetry and works from traditionally voiceless groups. They did this for a few years until the manuscript for Lives of the Saints by Nino Ricci came across their desks and changed the direction of the company. The book sold 75,000 copies (unheard of at the time), won countless awards, and moved fiction to centre stage for Cormorant forming the driving force behind the company’s success.

There are also a few other ingredients that contribute to the publisher’s sustainability. Marc says that "there is a certain amount of luck involved, a hell of a lot of hard work, and stick-to-itiveness. If we had thrown the towel in 2002 we wouldn’t have had all the wonderful things that happened afterward. You also have to have a good eye and be genuinely interested in the writing itself." Cormorant Books does scout for talent. Marc attends as many readings as he can possibly fit into his busy schedule and scours literary journals for strong voices. Cormorant has "discovered" many writers, including Joseph Boyden and Zoe Whittall, whose careers have blossomed as a result of having Cormorant backing them up and getting them into bookstores and libraries.

Close to one thousand manuscripts a year spend varying amounts of time on Marc’s desk. Marc explains that "five hundred manuscripts go back on the day they arrive. A lot of people will submit work that is completely inappropriate - we don’t do tax guides or self-help books. There’s a long list of books we don’t do and people just don’t bother to do their research." This is, fairly, one of Marc’s professional pet peeves and to any aspiring author reading this take note: "do your homework and find out who you are writing to." "The other three hundred that go back quickly are just generally not very well-written or they may write well but don’t have anything to say. The last two hundred are people with something to say. Even then, because we only publish twenty books a year, there are a lot of rejections." The list of awards collected by Cormorant authors, and by the publisher in its own right, attests to the accuracy of Marc’s well-trained eye.

Last year the Canadian Bookseller’s Association granted Cormorant a Libris Award as Small Publisher of the Year and Cormorant authors gathered three nominations and three wins from various major awards. Despite these successes, Marc feels that things could still be considerably better. He believes that our disregard for Canadian literature starts early. Most of the books that are part of our school curriculum are from non-Canadian writers and as Marc explains, "the problem is we teach people to read books that come from elsewhere in school so when they grow up they buy books that are British and American. We don’t have access to our own market in Canadian publishing. And we also don’t have a government that has ever wanted to set up a clear protected market. If our government is going to allow foreign-owned publishers to dump product into Canada in violation of provincial laws then they have to do something to ensure that Canadian publishing industry survives. In this scenario grants become a necessity. We have very enlightened granting officers but they’ve got their finger in a dyke that has many cracks."

The good news is that Cormorant continues to maintain a firm footing in the industry. They are growing, not just in size, but in scope. They have made the plunge into non-fiction getting things rolling with Inside Toronto by Sally Gibson a beautiful photographic tour of our City’s historic interiors that won the Award of Excellence from Heritage Toronto in 2007. And into children’s fiction with Charles Pachter’s M is for Moose, which has just won the I.O.D.E. Book Award and is shortlisted for the Ruth & Sylvia Schwartz Book Award. In both cases, Cormorant’s forays into these new genres have paid off with critical acclaim. This shift is an attempt to distribute Cormorant’s eggs a little better so they don’t get caught with them all in one basket. Marc is fueled by the belief that "everybody will always want to curl up with a book, its human nature, it’s been ingrained" and as long as Marc has a say in it, Cormorant will continue to give us stories to spend a Sunday afternoon with.

www.cormorantbooks.com

Photo caption: Cormorant Books staff (from left to right) Emma Minsky, Bryan J. Ibeas, Matthew Baker, Laura Houlihan, Marc Côté, and Coralee Leroux.