May 19, 2010
BookCamp T.O. Wrap-Up Pt. II: “Online Communities”
BookCamp T.O. seemed to me to be peopled by three types of people: 1) representatives from publishing houses (often, publicists) 2) technology/new media geeks and 3) commenters and critics – i.e. bloggers. I certainly felt I was there in my capacity as the latter, and so the sessions I chose were those I thought would speak to me and my vocation best.
So I was disappointed, to say the least, in the final session of the day, “Building and Sustaining a Community of Readers Online”. Far from being concerned with community-building or readership, this session wound up being about leveraging existing community in order to generate sales. Tan Light of Random House pointed out to us that social media, while “free”, is extremely time consuming and thus requires a lot of man hours. So, by building (or finding) self-sustaining communities, you basically have an engine that will generate that labour for you.
Needless to say, from this “community as marketing tool” standpoint, most of the discussion focused around what to do when the community is saying bad things about your company or product; how to manage or minimize the things you don’t want the “community” to be saying. Customer service! Transparency! Smiley emoticons! Okay, that last bit is mine.
I’m sure the publicists in the room were thrilled.
But for my part, the session left a bad taste in my mouth. Is that what I am? An unpaid publicist? Is that what we’re building all these “communities” for? To sell books?
This has been an issue with “free knowledge” rhetoric all along. The “knowledge economy” is supposed to save us from economic collapse, but who along the knowledge production chain gets paid? If I am participating in a critical community which is hashing out important issues in, say, bookselling and then a media giant comes along, scoops up the buzz and the discourse and the leads we’ve worked up and prints it in their for-profit newspaper, we (the critical community) have produced the bulk of the knowledge to be sold by a third party. This is part of the problem with copyright in general: What right has anyone other than the content producer have to make money off of an intellectual property?
But someone should make money – I don’t advocate reducing people whose talent is for knowledge production to slaves or hobbyists. If what you do is write or make music or draw or think, you should have the right to make your living off of it. You don’t owe it to “society” to give away your product for free. And you certainly should be annoyed if you do give something away for free and someone else capitalizes off of it.
So I wonder how the blogger model fits into the new economy. Blogging is almost always done for free. The Quill & Quire profiles a number of “big” book bloggers in their latest issue and we learn that among them are only two who actually make money from it – BookNinja and GalleyCat. So what’s in it for the rest them? I hate to be so crass, but let’s be honest: sure, there’s an element of fun and community to it, but most bloggers have some back-of-the-brain idea that blogging will net them something in the long run. Money? Legitimacy? Popularity? A job?
“Hits” are a big deal. We let our stuff be quoted, linked and promoted elsewhere, often by companies who use our influence to promote a product of theirs that we’re lauding, because there’s an expectation we’ll get traffic in return. The Quill’s article suggests the legitimacy of blogs like BookNinja and Maud Newton comes from being cited by “real” news sources like the Washington Post or the New York Times. Great publicity for the bloggers, right? But Maud Newton isn’t underwritten by a media conglomerate and she doesn’t run ads. Major media sources use her work, and in return she gets…
On the one hand, it’s nice to imagine that most of us are blogging for the altruistic purpose of “contributing to public dialogue” or “making a difference”. Maybe we really love Canadian Literature and want to see it succeed, or we feel strongly that new transmedia projects will make the world a more equitable place. But fact is, this is a time-consuming practice. Blogging as a form of philanthropy is, like all philanthropy, the privilege of the already-underwritten-by-someone-else. As we move into a future where blogging is an increasingly legitimized form on journalism, and “real” newspapers are dropping like flies, there’s really nothing just about a blogging model that expects the new journalism to come from generously employed hobbyists with a bit of an obsessive compulsive streak. If we as a society value the knowledge production they’re engaged in, we’ll find a way to make this their full-time job.
I sort of wish I’d gone to mesh ’10 because I think there might have been more opportunity for me to learn about these issues. But then, I have a job I had to attend, and a toddler to take care of. My exploration of media issues isn’t being underwritten by anyone, so I’m left musing to myself in my “spare” time. Hopefully I haven’t fired way off the mark this time – what do y’all think? How do you reconcile your status as unpaid publicist; dharma bum?
May 17, 2010
Book Camp T.O. Wrap-Up Pt. I: Book as Object
Two of the six sessions I attended at BookCamp T.O. this weekend have given me real meat for thought – a pretty good ratio, I think. The other four, to give you a quick summary, went down like this:
The EBook in Academia was somewhat hijacked by someone who seemed to have no idea why we were there; meanwhile the “good” discussion mostly concerned open-source movements which, while academically exciting, wasn’t very useful to the thirty publishers in the room.
The Literary Grassroots session was alright, but the absence of Taddle Creek’s representative left a big gap in the discussion. Lots of handwringing, no real information on how a literary publication might stay viable in this environment.
CBC’s Canada Reads panel featuring JK, Kerry Clare and Steven Beattie was excellent, but there’s not much more to say about it. Good format, lots of community involvement, we look forward to continuing that involvement!
I also sat in on a discussion on bibliographical metadata, a subject about which I knew nothing. Well, now I know something! Not very useful to me as I am not in publishing, but nevertheless gave me something to think about about the costs/challenges small publishers face if they want to be part of this big globalized industry.
The 11:30 talk on “Book as Object”, on the other hand, was fascinating. What was fascinating was that the room was packed with people. They lined the walls and sat on the floor. Maybe word got around really quickly that Anstey president Neil Stewart had brought along a free handout, a beautifully bound blank notebook that reads “NICE BOOK CAMP BOOK” on the front cover (this may or may not beat the wine Michael Tamblyn fed his Kobo session). But more likely I think we were experiencing a bout of nostalgia. Few of us went into English Lit or Publishing or whatever with the intention of bringing about the obsolescence of the codex, but years of reality checks later that’s what we’re doing for a living. I think people wanted to hear there’s a future for the object, even if most of us won’t really be working with them.
Certainly, the book-objects Neil Stewart and his partner Aurélie Collings were not the sorts of things most of us could ever create. Stewart works on commission, producing limited edition fine letterpressed editions which are absolutely works of art. His bindery employs 18 people, among them printers, sewers, binders and designers. This is high-end craftwork in addition to publishing. Stewart told us of a limited run he did of Margaret Atwood’s The Door featuring a relief print “keepsake” done by Atwood “in her kitchen with a spoon”. Two were auctioned off for charity and fetched, according to Stewart, $1600 (Abebooks.com reports they went for $2000 and $1800).
Aliquando Press's The Convergence of the Twain by Thomas Hardy - $65 CDN.
But buying private press books needn’t be that expensive. Compared to buying art, Collings rightly points out, these books are downright cheap. Actually, they’re affordable even when compared to frontlist trade books. Many private presses have books in the $65-$90 range, including Barbarian Press’s Rumour of a Shark by John Carroll ($75), Aliquando Press’s The Quest for the Golden Ingots by Maureen Steuart ($65), or Frog Hollow Press’s The Book of Widows – Contemporary Canadian Poets: Volume 6. New poems by M.Travis Lane (Deluxe Edition) ($60). This is not appreciably higher than frontlist hardcovers have come to cost – consider that John English’s Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau is $39.95, while I bought the Modern Library’s Adventures of Amir Hamza for $57.00, or the new Library of America Collected Works of Flannery O’Connor at $50.
In fact, the print runs of both a private press book and a non-blockbuster trade book might not be that different. These days a new Canadian author can consider themselves lucky if they sell as many as 1000 or 1500 copies of their book. In reality, most Canadian fiction trade books sell 200-500 copies – well within the range of a limited edition run. This isn’t to say there’s no difference between publishing with a private or craft press and a commercial one – the differences between publishing with a small or large press were discussed at length at That Shakespearean Rag a couple months ago – but buyers who love the book and authors who love to be published in book form need not necessarily panic. The private press model is almost as accessible, available and affordable as the conventional one.
Of course this doesn’t mean all publishing can be replaced by small or private press work, but it does seem to support Stewart & Collings’ thesis that there is potential for a healthy fine publishing industry in the wake of the digital revolution. We all still love books. There are people out there who publish beautiful books (often 100% Canadian content I might add, right down to the paper and cloth). We don’t necessarily have to pay much more for these books, nor are they any more scarce than most new literature. All we need is to discover some of the book availability that exists out there beyond Amazon.
Most private presses are just that – private – and you need to make a little effort to seek out their work, but it’s not rocket science. Most have webpages, however basic. Trade organizations like the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild (CBBAG) keep lists of membership. And best of all, they go out to trade shows like next month’s Toronto Small Press Book Fair (June 19th 2010) where you can gawk and browse and even (*gasp*) buy to your heart’s content.
Neil Stewart repeated his assertion that he didn’t want to be “all things to all people”, and I think that’s fantastic. One of the best things about new reading technology is the diversification of work available: nowadays, there’s something out there for everyone, no matter what your taste. Private presses fit very well into this new personalized world. Next time you need to buy a gift, consider a book object that really is irreplaceable. Your gift-ee will probably just download the latest Ian McEwan or Peter Carey onto their iPhone anyway. Try something different.
May 14, 2010
The Other Thing I’ll Be Doing This Weekend
(Because, you know, BookCamp T.O. isn’t enough to keep me busy. I need another major book event the next day!)
The twice-yearly Toronto Book Fair and Paper Show will be this Sunday, May 16th and me, I have a mission: to find and acquire any of the works of George Taylor Denison III. Why him? Who’s he? He’s my great-great-great uncle (fun fact: he is also the great-grandfather of Oberon Press founder Michael Macklem, making Macklem my 3rd cousin, once removed – did you know they have calculators for this kind of thing?)
Uncle George (George Taylor Denison III)
The politics of George Taylor Denison stand in stark contrast to my own, but nevertheless he was in his time a fairly influential politician, military officer and writer. His works ranged from the polemical (Canada, is she prepared for war? or, a few remarks on the state of her defences, pamphlet, 1861) to the historical (Reminiscences of the Red River rebellion of 1869, Toronto, 1873) and contain a good amount of local Toronto flavour (Recollections of a police magistrate, Toronto, 1920). It’s this latter title that set me on my search.
The Toronto Book Fair and Paper Show can be, in a lot of ways, a sad little show, but there’s no question it’s a brilliant place to find works of local history. I have always known I had “writers in the family”, so to speak – family legend has it that the library of Rusholme (the old “family estate” which would have been bounded by what is today Dovercourt Road, St. Anne’s Road, Rusholme Street, and College Street) contained not just George Taylor’s works but those of my great-great grandfather, Frederick Charles Denison (Historical record of the Governor–General’s Body Guard, and its standing orders, Toronto, 1876). But by the time Rusholme was sold and bulldozed in 1953 the library had vaporized. Certainly my family retains some books as well as other keepsakes – I’m sure the same can be said of other descendants – but as for a comprehensive collection there is none.
At last year’s book fair I happened to stumble across a copy of Recollections of a police magistrate. It was inscribed by George to some unknown, and priced at $60. I was sure someone in the family had a copy so I let it pass, thinking I’d just track down whoever it was that inherited Uncle George’s books and take responsibility for them. Silly me. The family seems largely agreed that if any books had remained at Rusholme by the time Uncle Harold (Harold Edmund Denison, son of Frederick Charles) sold it, they were either sold or absconded with by some distant and unscrupulous relation. Nobody has any copies of anything. Suddenly that $60 Magistrate looks like one that got away.
But if collecting were easy, it wouldn’t be any fun. After a year’s reflection I’ve decided to get snapping and track the family books down in some shape or form. Any copies would be nice, but wouldn’t it be fine to find the family copies from Rusholme? I’m seized with the thrill of the hunt. In any case, I feel after my unfriendly review of the Book Fair last year I owe it a second go. It’s worth mentioning that Heritage Antique Shows has lowered the entrance price from $7 to $5 – maybe they read my post? Perhaps this indicates some thoughtful planning on the part of the show organizers. So off I go, in search of my bookish heritage.
May 11, 2010
My BookCamp T.O. Itinerary
This Saturday, May 15th, the University of Toronto’s iSchool will be hosting the 2nd annual Book Camp T.O., an “informal unconference” whose theme this year is “Book Publishing Is Going Digital, Now What?” At the time I signed up, only 10% of the sessions were booked, few sessions moderators had stepped forward and we weren’t quite sure what were were going to un-confer about; but nevertheless the event was sold out after only three days. Now the sessions are booked, the participants are listed and it looks like the event is going to live up to our expectations.
And yes, I will be there. Quote: “…participation and conversation is what we will strive for, rather than a more static event with formal presentations.” This suits my outspoken and eloquent (read: pushy) tastes very well. My itinerary, subject to change without notice, will probably be as follows:
9:30 eBooks in Education and Academia — the glacial revolution
This is my nod to participation. John Dupuis and Evan Leibovitch of York University will lead the session, but I will bring my three cents worth as an academic bookseller with pretty comprehensive knowledge of how academic eBooks are interfacing with their reading public.
10:30 Writing about Writing
I expect this session, led by Stuart Woods (Editor of the Quill & Quire), Amy Logan-Holmes (Executive Director of OpenBook Toronto) and Conan Tobias (of literary journal Taddle Creek) to be packed to the rafters with bloggers. Who’s with me???
11:30 Obscure Objects of Desire
Okay, I’ll be honest with you: this session is the primary reason I’m attending BookCamp. The blurb: “Before Gutenberg, books were fetish objects collected and hoarded by the elite. Are we headed back to the future? A session on all things paper, printed, bound and beautiful. A text is not a book, which is another way of saying that a book needs to be more than a “content delivery platform”. A book that is well made and sensitively designed satisfies the reader, pleases the author and reassures the archivist in ways that digital (so far) cannot.” Preach!
2:00 CBC’s Canada Reads
It’s not clear what Rosie Fernandez intends to do with this session, but I’m in. I think the bloggosphere’s contribution to Canada Reads has been singularly influential – the integration between web and radio content is likely to get even more blended. Let’s see where this goes!
3:00 The Onset of Exhaustion: Publishing in 2010
Led by Alana Wilcox of Coach House Press, I think this will address an aspect of the digital revolution that is being under examined so far: so, okay, technically we can address most aspect of the publishing trade with new media technologies, but how top-down is this model? Not every publishing house is funded by Bertelsmann. Is publishing in the global digital future feasible for everyone? Good damn question.
4:00 Building and sustaining a community of readers online
Of more interest to bloggers. Actually, neither this nor any of the other 4pm sessions excite me tremendously, so we’ll see if I even bother. Maybe this will be a good opportunity for a wind-down martini?
May 5, 2010
5 Things That Will Be Totally Amazing About TCAF 2010
TCAF! TCAF! It’s time for the 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival and I am SO EXCITED!
As I mentioned last year, TCAF is one of those events Toronto should be most proud of. It is one of the very best events of its kind on the planet: a free, vital, bustling celebration of the most important (in my opinion) literary revolution since Allen Lane branded a bird in 1935 – the graphic novel. There will be launches, parties, signings, debates, lectures, seminars, workshops and shenanigans starting now and running until May 9th. TCAF’s focus on the independent, the literary, and the revolutionary makes it totally unlike a conventional “comic book convention” and much more like the very best of what a book fair should be. Nowhere else, I will bet, will you find people travelling great distances and lining up for so much self-published product [1].
And me? Well, here are 5 things I am completely excited about.
Vess is hardly an indy darling: he has been a long-time collaborator of Neil Gaiman’s (they shared a World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story in 1991 for Sandman #19, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; collaborated on the original graphic novel Stardust, and more recently the wonderful children’s book Blueberry Girl, among other things), and has produced covers and art for Jeff Smith, Charles de Lint and George R. R. Martin. My favourite Vess work? The Book of Ballads (seen at left), a collection written by the crème de la crème of fantasy writers and illustrated by Vess. Most of these ballads are taken from Child (The English and Scottish Popular Ballads by Francis James Child, 1898; reissued by Dover in 2003) and are lovingly treated by both author and artist.
At TCAF he will be debuting his latest Gaiman collaboration, Instructions, as well as hosting a retrospective of his career Saturday morning (10am-11am) at The Pilot.
2) KENK
This has got to be the most Torontonian thing produced, possibly, ever. I don’t know a single person who bicycles in Toronto who has not had his or her bike stolen, and all indications are that most bike thefts in Toronto trace back to Igor Kenk. Between bike thefts, drugs, a musical phenom wife and a bizzarely charismatic anti-hero we have the makings of the best kind of “I couldn’t make this shit up” story, told here as a “documentary film, journalistic profile and comic book”. There’s something about the bike-courier/counter culture/eco-punk/altruistic criminal/scrap-art/anti-gentrification feel to this project that is just so Queen Street West, and so Toronto. I doubt there’s a single literary project on the go right now which is quite as local as this one.
I tried to find one or two of these seminars to feature (and attend) and just couldn’t pick. The Bram & Bluma Appel Salon on the 2nd floor of the Toronto Reference Library becomes, on Saturday, an un-school offering the most comprehensive curriculum on the history, present and future of graphic novel production that I’ve ever seen. From “Comics as Art Objects: Form vs Function” to “Tracers, Photoshoppers, Cut & Pasters: Cheaters or Revolutionaries”, a slew of TCAF guests will discuss the format from about every angle you can want. This is the sort of thing that will underpin future study and understanding of the genre.
4) Kagan Mcleod Drawing Live at Paupers
By all accounts, the Saturday night TCAF party at Paupers Pub is amazing, but what I look forwards to is the phenomenal Kagan Mcleod‘s archiving it all in pen-and-ink as it goes. Kagan’s style is totally his own, even if his own comic titles sometimes seem a bit derivative (my favourite, Infinite Kung Fu, was blacksploitation kung fu cinema – with zombies!), and he has the rare talent amongst illustrators to give every character he draws a unique, recognizable face. See his now-famous ‘History of Rap‘ print for proof. I bet you whatever is produced in the wee beer-soaked hours of this party will be epic.
5) FREE THINGS.
I have to make a list of what I’m “allowed” to buy at TCAF and set a strict budget – because seriously, things can get out of control in a hurry. But lucky for compulsive hoarders like me, there’s also plenty of FREE SWAG to be had. Okay, there’s sketches. Comic artists traditionally charge for sketches but the sort of fellow who exhibits at TCAF is less uptight about that kind of thing. If you buy something, you can GUARANTEE personalization. And a lot of the time, you don’t even have to buy something – artists are happy to do autographs or sketches just ’cause. Then there’s the usual promotional freebies – postcards, stickers, temporary tattoos, bookmarks, samplers. And then you get actual, creative attempts by the artists and presses to spread their word (and pictures). Last year I got CDs, fridge magnets, pens and buttons; I’ve seen paper dolls, matchbooks, and condoms. I’m not prepared to guess what these crazy people will think of next: but I will partake.
Oh, and need I mention? TCAF IS FREE. All of it. Even the award ceremony for the Doug Wright Awards offers free tickets. This is also unprecedented in convention & book fair history. Enjoy it!
Could I be more excited? No, I really couldn’t. Friday can’t come quickly enough for me – but until then, I invite you to join me in reading obsessively The Afterwords‘ almost overwhelming pre-TCAF coverage. They seem to be out to interview every one of the 200+ creators attending, and good on them. TCAF! Squee!
[1] Not all of TCAF’s exhibitors are self-published, but a large number of them are and they are not in any way the marginalized members of the club.
April 19, 2010
Toronto’s Best-Kept Book Secret?
Despite a childhood lived almost exclusively within the walls of public libraries across the country, I have grown into a woman who really likes to own books. Erasmus supposedly said “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.” – and if he didn’t say it, I will certainly take credit. Buying books is a great pleasure of mine.
So, of course, any[1] source of good, inexpensive books is a source I will haunt faithfully. One of the very best of these is the Sale Section at my home-away-from-home, the Bob Miller Book Room. I am not alone in this assertion – more than once I have run into local rare book dealers and book scouts scouring the section. These are people who Would Know. On the other hand, sometimes I think nobody knows except me and these few dealers.
The Bob Miller Book Room is hazily known to most English students at the University of Toronto and not many other people. Though it is not a university bookstore, it’s hidden location in the basement of a Bloor Street office building keeps it a virtual secret from anyone except those who have been sent there (i.e. the students) and those who are In The Know. We specialize in humanities and social sciences books with an unusually large stock of “academic” titles you won’t find elsewhere, which is wonderful in and of itself but what should make the store a beacon to book lovers everywhere is the sale books.
Unlike most bookstores, the Bob Miller Book Room has a sale section based on our regular stock, rather than on cheaply-acquired publisher’s overstock titles. As of this morning this amounts to eight jam-packed bookcases of assorted titles in no particular order all offered for 50-75% off the cover price. How the owners decide what gets tossed in this section is a mystery to me. The titles range from the canon to the obscure, from small presses to large ones, and often includes books which can also be found for full price elsewhere in the store. What’s not to love here?
New Canadian Library (NCL) titles were scattered all over both sections. I nearly cried when I found this: Margaret Ostenso’s Wild Geese for 75% off. That’s like $2.50! Where was this book when I was looking for it last month? Ah well, a prize for someone else to claim.
Small press titles abound, especially from Canadian presses, like Michael deBeyer’s Change in a Razor-backed Season from Gaspereau Press ($18.95-75% = $4.74)
The Bob Miller Book Room specializes in scholarly works, so you can find weird things like these:
Or Nobel and Booker winners like these:
Or “One of Charlotte’s Favourite Books Ever” like this one:
Needless to say I have gone nuts over the last month, blowing to smithereens my “read 5 off the shelf, buy 1 from the store” rule. Among my own buys? Alberto Manguel’s Library at Night, the new Penguin Classics translation of The Tain, Adrian John’s The Nature of the Book, Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God, Salman Rushdie’s Ground Beneath Her Feet… and I’m gonna stop listing now because if my husband reads this and sees how many books I’ve smuggled into our already-overflowing bookshelves, he’ll plotz. Suffice to say I have nearly filled an entire shelf. But it was cheap! And what’s a little shelf space? This is, after all, what I live for.
The Bob Miller Book Room’s sale section remains in place year-round, until the books are all gone. And if you drop by, be sure to say hi to yours truly!
[1] Any ethical, let me say – you could not pay me to shop at certain used bookstore chains who almost certainly traffic to a large extent in stolen books.
April 15, 2010
The Ecology of Ideas: An Interview with Of Swallow’s Jason Rovito
The media’s narrative goes like this: Toronto booksellers are dropping like flies, with venerable institutions like Pages and David Mirvish Books on Art as well as newer enterprises like McNally Robinson and TYPE on the Danforth shutting their doors. But not to worry, new bookstores are cropping up all over town; plucky startups like ReReading, Good Egg and Zoinks! are going to try their luck in the strange new world of the internet, ebook and big box retail.
Into this narrative enter Of Swallows, their deeds, & the winter below. Jason Rovito has become Of Swallow’s figurehead, the latest young entrepreneur to try his hand at redefining bookselling for the 21st century. But Rovito’s vision of a center for knowledge exchange and an experiment in community idea building is a far cry from the usual bookseller line, and indeed neither the man nor the space fit into the usual roles of proprietor and property. Traditional and innovative booksellers alike are trying to sell a product; Of Swallows is going to try to become a location of intellectual exchange.
But jargony idealism aside, Rovito’s collective seems to have a sound foundation: the bookstore sells second-hand scholarly books while the location at 283 College Street (at Spadina) is also home to the Toronto New School of Writingand a 3rd floor office and boardroom are available for rent on an hourly basis to interested parties. This helps pay the bills but more importantly, drives like-minded users into the space. For Rovito, whose academic background includes work on urban Marxism and the history of the medieval university, locality, community, and exchange are completely the point of bookselling. “If you take care of the cultural ecology,” he told me, “the political economy takes care of itself.” That is to say, if you have a healthy community of eager minds converging on a place, books are bound to sell.
I was intrigued by Of Swallows right off the bat for a number of reasons: For starters, it is a used, not a new, bookstore. If the current economy can be said to be unfriendly to independent new booksellers, it is certainly even more so to used sellers who don’t have the benefit of publishers’ marketing budgets and distributors’ returns policies. Of Swallows’ intellectual predecessor, Atticus Books formerly of Harbord St., recently “went digital”, leaving behind the question of if a second-hand scholarly bookstore is economically viable. And how could anyone compete with Amazon’s used-book subsidiary, Abebooks.com?
Rovito’s answer to the potential pitfalls of bookselling seems to be to focus on the space of bookselling, not the books themselves, a refocusing he described as getting away from the “fetishization of the object” and moving towards a “life cycle of ideas” instead. And he’s quite right to do so. Bookselling, unlike other forms of retail, has traditionally been as much about the bookseller as about the product. Customers come to browse, relying on a particular seller’s taste in acquiring stock. They come for advice as well, for recommendations and discussions. Readers will frequently ask a seller, “Have you read this?” where a clothing shopper will not ask “Have you worn this?” There is, as Rovito points out, a “ritualistic aspect to bookselling” which recognizes that the act of going into a bookshop is something many people engage in without, necessarily, a thought about the commodity within. They’ve come for ideas, the possibility of knowing.
Of Swallows is situated barely a block from the University of Toronto’s St. George campus, a location not chosen by accident. In fact, Rovito had originally planned to move into a space even closer to the heart of the university, a stone’s throw from the monumental Robart’s Library. That his customer base would be taken from the academic community is obvious, but Rovito is not trying to become “a University bookstore”. Rovito, a university lecturer and PhD candidate, has spent enough time within the ivory towers to recognize that the university experience, for many, has become commodified, especially for undergraduates. It isn’t about learning or edification anymore as much as it is about gaining a degree which (in theory) will get you a better job. But amongst the hordes of accreditation-seekers are still those people who would have, in the 15th century, flocked to Oxford or Bologna for nothing more than a chance to read books and talk to their peers. Knowledge doesn’t have to be the product or sole property of the ivory tower, he reasons. For those people who want to learn, and to explore ideas, and make use of the minds of others, there must be an outlet.
But what will they sell? Though Rovito is prepared to let the demands of his customers shape the stock, he has some foundational ideas. Much of his initial stock has been acquired from Atticus from amongst their non-rare books. Rovito has an interesting (though, he admits, perhaps not viable) idea of a store divided by the medieval divisions of knowledge: the trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). More esoteric subjects already emerge from amongst the interests of Rovito himself and his early customer base, such as the “Metropolis” (think Georg Simmel and Fritz Lang rather than Jane Jacobs and Richard Florida). In my two-second walk through the space long before the doors were to open, I spied Latin Classics and continental Philosophy amongst the paint cans and new lighting fixtures. Not your usual bookstore fare, for sure.
Of Swallows is slated to open their doors to the public Thursday April 22nd 2010, at noon. I will certainly be there, and wish the best of luck to a great idea!
November 9, 2009
Not Specifically About Books
Last weekend, early in the morning on Saturday, October 31st, the Children’s Storefront burnt down.
The Storefront was a community drop-in centre for children – mostly pre-schoolers – and their caregivers; a comfortable, welcoming and unparalleled space to play, read and create surrounded by friendly, like people. To put it like that makes it sound like an Ontario Early Year’s Centre, some government-funded space in a basement or a school gym for people who can’t afford daycare or a more elaborate for-profit indoor playground. What it was is impossible to describe. It was warm, tight-knit but welcoming to newcomers, flexible, accommodating, beautiful, comfortable, safe and peaceful. The kids were welcome to play with a huge range of high-quality, un-branded, well-selected toys in mini-environments that were built by volunteers and staff while parents and caregivers found comfy places to sit and hang out with free coffee, tea or leftovers from the previous day’s community dinner or brunch. The staff were omnipresent, ready to help you with your child or offer advice or just company.
Miss. Margaret in the playhouse at the Children's Storefront.
For us, the Children’s Storefront was a complete, unqualified life-saver. My husband and I are fairly reclusive people, anxious in social situations and more than a little awkward. Yet we have been gifted with a daughter who is friendly, generous and precociously social. Once we worked up the nerve to walk into the Storefront and introduce ourselves we never looked back – Maggie immediately bonded with the staff and the other parents, and tried at every opportunity to interact with and play with the other children (with great success, considering she is a mere 16 months old). The quiet and comfortable environment put me at ease; this was somewhere that I could set a good example for my daughter and let her learn the social skills that maybe I never quite picked up. It was a community I felt our family was welcomed into, something so essential to people like us who otherwise tend towards isolation.
Saturday, October 31st it burned. Over the course of the following week demolition crews moved in and tore it down. As of this Saturday morning nothing remains but an empty lot and a high fence. My husband and I have been struggling with a sense of loss that neither of us expected; not so much for the space as for the community we’d felt we’d lost. Our week was spent feeling trapped within the walls of our small apartment with a child who was clearly growing bored and impatient with us. We took tentative, shy trips to the park and another community drop-in to break up the tedium. But the spaces, complete as they may have been with toys, climbers and crayons were no substitute for the community. Even Maggie could tell this. She had no interest in swinging alone in a swing or sliding alone down the slide.
We are not the only ones to whom the Storefront meant a great deal – a Facebook group called The Children’s Storefront Needs a New Home has been set up and boasts already over 440 members. As you can see, the support of those community members is being mobilized already to get the Storefront up and running again, a huge task that will take a great deal of volunteer time and, most importantly, money. We are optimistic that the result will be a positive one, and someday we will take Maggie to the new Storefront which, for her, will be the only Storefront she will be able to remember. Twenty years from now that new, yet-unrealized space will be the institution in her fond memories.
If you should feel so inclined, please do visit the Children’s Storefront website and see if you can help us find a new home. You could attend a fundraising event, donate to the toy & book drive or just send money. Or simply join the Facebook group and let your presence lend strength to our efforts. It might not be a glamorous or life-saving charity but it is one which is very dear to our hearts. Strong urban communities are sometimes elusive; and I want desperately to keep this one running for generations to come.
September 30, 2009
A View From the Front Line
Ah, ebooks. The literary bloggosphere’s favourite subject. One of my favourites too, but today I have a little bit more to offer than hysterical doomsaying: today I would like to report the results of a case-study I have informally conducted over the last month.
Under the general header of “ebooks” we actually have a number of issues. Amazon selling popular hardcovers for $9.99 for their Kindle is a wildly different issue than Google scanning orphaned academic works, or textbooks converting to digital, expiring formats. It is the latter I have had a startling new experience with – the former, and other issues, can wait for another post.
I work in a bookstore, one which specializes in academic texts – that is to say, books on subjects of remote and specialized subjects, hard to find but invaluable to the very small audience. I challenge anybody in Toronto to find a better and more well-stocked selection of the works of Giorio Agamben or Jean Baudrillard. Of Anthony Giddens or Hannah Arendt. We have an African Literature section that, at this writing, exceeds five bookshelves. Our best-selling title of September 2009, so far, is Amartya Sen’s Theory of Justice. You get the idea.
In order to finance our indulgence in this very small, specialized field we also carry course books and, occasionally, text books for the Toronto universities. I am absolutely sympathetic to the plight of the textbook publisher. Textbooks take a lot of time and expertise to publish and then sell only to a limited audience; that audience is absolutely hell-bent against buying the product and do everything they can to buy the books used. Textbooks wind up expensive and publishers feel pressured to release “new” editions as frequently as they can in order to gain market share back from the used market. If anywhere in publishing there is an ideal place for an electronic book, this is it. Students get the books cheaper than they would the printed version, publishers have fewer overhead costs, and the limited licensing allows them to keep the product up to date and salable without the cost and nonsense of printing a whole new edition. And, there’s no textbook to move into the used market and become next year’s competitor.
Well, here is the front line reality.
First, a note on my research methodology.
We have the textbook for a large graduate program – roughly 1200 students. The book comes in two formats: a physical textbook just like we all remember from school, and a “code” which retails for $30 less than the book and which gives the student access to the book in an electronic format for 12 months after the code has been activated. (The physical book also includes the “code” for the e-version bundled with it.)
Every student needs this book in some format or another. The book they used is custom published for them, and we have the exclusive right to sell it. So if the students want the book, short of buying it directly from the publisher, they have to come to us. The book is a new publication this year, so not only are there no used versions available, the students would not have been able to inspect either the physical or the electronic versions before buying. Further, I am one of only three people who ring books through the cash register and I am nearby or present even when I am not physically doing the selling, so I can safely say I have seen the vast majority of those books actually sold.
How did 1200 students choose to purchase their textbook?
After one month we have sold approximately 900 physical books.
We have also sold approximately 8 “codes” for the ebook.
Two of those ebook purchasers later returned to buy the physical book.
Now, it is true that at first – for the first 100 books, let’s say – I was selling the hardcopy book pretty hard. I gave the students the full run down of all the ways that the e-version was lacking. But after it became clear that overwhelmingly they wanted the book in any case, our tactics switched – suddenly we were hard selling the ebook to absolutely no avail. We ran out of the hard copy book at one point and even though we still had hundreds of the ebook codes in stock, nobody wanted them. They all left their names for hard copies.
What can we say about this? Despite the usual caterwalling about the price of the textbook, it wasn’t, apparently, enough to persuade them to use the ebook even though it was $30 cheaper. The students were turned off by the look of the thing, a flimsy envelope of cardboard with a scratch-off number on it. They talked about how they couldn’t read on a screen. How they needed the book with them in class (despite having laptops with, presumably wireless connections). Some didn’t like the fact that after 12 months they would have nothing to show for their purchase, as the license to use would have expired. The two who bought the textbook after trying the ebook both didn’t appreciate that they couldn’t print it out – I guess they thought they could create their own textbook at home.
But first and foremost, they didn’t like the price.
Yes, it was $30 cheaper than the textbook. But it was also still over $50. Hundreds of times I heard the phrase “For that much money, I might as well get the book.” This one blindsided me, I’ll admit. I know students that will drive to downtown Toronto from Aurora to return a book because they found it for $3 cheaper on Amazon. I thought a $30 savings was a no-brainer. So, apparently, did the textbook publisher.
This is going to be a tricky one for the publisher to negotiate, because even an ebook of a textbook isn’t going to get much cheaper. Students have a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that the majority of the cost of a textbook isn’t the paper (and how often have I heard “wow, all that for such a small book?” or “But it isn’t even hardcover!” as if the book is a bag of almonds bought from the bulk store and priced by weight). A textbook is – or ought to be – a high-end work of scholarship requiring one or more highly educated people to devote several years of their career to write. The book needs to be peer reviewed and fact-checked by equally-qualified people, then marketed and distributed as usual to a very limited audience. In short, you need to pay for the intellectual property, not the paper. Eliminating the paper will yield some savings but will not reduce the book to a $9.99 blowout.
(It bears mentioning that this illusion that an ebook is etherial and costs nothing to produce is perpetuated by Amazon, who keep their ebook prices artificially low for some unknown but no doubt nefarious reason. Novels are also created at great cost of time and effort and should also cost something, regardless of dead tree content.)
So this year, at least, the book held its ground against the rising tide of electrons. Is this representative? Did the textbook publisher mess up in some other way? I am going to be satisfied saying that I no longer consider the battle for the textbook market cut, dried and determined. I suspect the publishers will cry themselves to sleep over this one. We’ll see what they come up with next year. ..
August 26, 2009
Not Dead Yet
Despite weeks of silence, I am still alive, kicking and book-ing. “Rush season” has arrived at my book shop (which deals in a lot of course books for Universities) and only rarely am I allowed to be untethered from the receiving area. I will be free-range again come mid-September.
In the meantime, the Toronto Centre for the Book has just announced their 2009-2010 lecture series. Although they are now the official “lecture series of the graduate Book History and Print Culture Program in collaboration with the undergraduate Book and Media Studies Program”, the series is in no way restricted to students and academics. Attendees of all kinds are welcome. I’ve listed the lectures on the Events Page, but I encourage you to mark them down on your very own calendar.