I Was Warned There’s Little Money to Be Made in Publishing. I Built a Career in It Anyway
While it could provide a decent living, there was never any serious money to be made in book publishing. The shadow of insufficient cash flow constantly hung over the passions of acquiring the next book. Geoff Feilding, then executive editor at McClelland & Stewart, cautioned me about this early in my career. I wasn’t listening very intently.
In 1970, James Douglas and I founded the Vancouver-based Douglas & McIntyre. It was considered the poster child for a successful Canadian independent publishing house for a long time. But for any book publisher dependent on the market, quarterly fiscal results are deeply discouraging.
The first quarter absorbs bookseller returns from the previous fall season. The second quarter is neutral, which is disappointing because new spring books never enjoy the sales success of fall books, and backlist sales seldom make up the difference. The third quarter is full of promise as fall books are being shipped and beginning to sell. The fourth promises redemption as lead fall titles are beginning to sell and are reordered. The Christmas season makes or breaks most booksellers and publishers. Prayers to the gift-giving gods are frequent.
As a business strategy, it is pathetic. As a cultural strategy, it is essential to civilized nations. The great English publisher Geoffrey Faber had the emphasis right: “Books are not mere merchandise. Books are a nation thinking out loud.” That cornerstone aspiration is what drives the model.
My own abiding passion for Canadian culture always blunted my enthusiasm for pursuing the American market, however beneficial I understood that neighbouring pot of gold to be. I’d learned that fighting to preserve Canadian cultural space was always problematic. The issue was deeply resented in the American corporate world. Canadian ideas—expressed in the country’s books, magazines, television, movies, and music—are usually squeezed to the margins. The mechanisms of their distribution were, and remain, primarily controlled by American corporations. Profit is the primary concern. Nation building is of little consequence. Americans feel that Canada is their turf and they have the commercial weapons to prevail.
In the 1980s, then prime minister Brian Mulroney launched negotiations with the United States for a new free trade agreement of unprecedented scale. Everything, potentially including culture, was on the table. Political debates soon exploded. Everything we held dear was going to be trampled by the American elephant.
To defuse the panic, and ensure effective business input, Mulroney struck fifteen sectoral advisory groups on international trade (SAGITs) to offer advice. Each was to be made up of business leaders, with regular, detailed, and confidential briefings covering the progress of negotiations. One of the designated groups was to deal with culture and the arts. I was asked to join it, a rare opportunity for a cultural emissary from Western Canada to join an important national debate. From my first meeting in fall 1986 through to the dismantlement of the system almost twenty years later, including one term as chair, this gave me a front-row seat during the country’s, and the world’s, evolving trade wars. A side benefit was the high-powered access to much of the Ottawa bureaucracy, including ministers and deputy ministers.
“Books are not mere merchandise. Books are a nation thinking out loud.”
My colleagues on the first SAGIT included an impressive group of luminaries from the Canadian art, book, film, and sports worlds. The initial meeting began calmly enough. Soon, conflicting emotions flared. Paranoia was in the air. The group’s prevailing mood softened as briefings became more frequent and more transparent. Simon Reisman had been appointed Canada’s lead negotiator, and there was little doubt he could successfully keep the Americans at bay. Apparently, and encouragingly, marching orders from the cabinet to Canadian negotiators had specifically emphasized that the final agreement had to protect Canadian culture.
For Canadians, the heart of the agreement was not tariffs but market opportunity. Canada sought broader access to the flourishing American economy. The US wanted access to Canada’s energy, water, and cultural industries. When the end was in sight, Canadian negotiators dug in their heels and insisted on a “cultural exemption,” a world first within a trade agreement. The exemption meant that Canada’s fragile cultural industries were off the table. The ability of Canadians to hear, see, and read their own voices—enabled by subsidies, quotas, ownership requirements, or any of the other measures in the cultural toolbox, without reprisal—was protected. In practice, this meant without fear of American reprisal. Canadian ideas were judged so essential to Canada’s national interest that measures to strengthen their reach had to be liberated from the normal commercial imperatives of trade agreements.
It later emerged that then cabinet minister Flora MacDonald had been the quiet champion of the fight to retain the cultural exemption. Initially, both Reisman and our then Canadian ambassador to Washington, Allan Gotlieb, had been firmly opposed. MacDonald’s ferocious defence of both the idea and the necessity was genuinely heroic and may have saved the exemption. It has since been included in every recent trade agreement. Such political courage is rare.
In 1994, when the Free Trade Agreement was expanded to include Mexico—now inheriting a new acronym, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—cultural issues once again became an irritant, equally frustrating to the Mexicans and the Americans.
During one of the toughest moments, then Conservative minister of finance Michael Wilson weighed in, playing the constitutional crisis card, given events then unfolding in Quebec. “This is not a question of protecting an industry. It is a matter of preserving the soul of a nation at a crucial time in our history. We are defending a culture. . . . The US will not get through NAFTA what it failed to achieve in the FTA.”
Pragmatism, and probably ennui, prevailed. The US finally acknowledged that “Canada was a special case.” Better, our negotiators persuaded the Europeans not to seize upon the precedent. So far, they never have. A “cultural exemption,” one of Canada’s quiet, unacknowledged victories, remains enshrined in every trade treaty Canada negotiates.
But the Americans remained poised to attack. When Canada attempted to protect its magazine publishers, claiming that such magazines as Time and Reader’s Digest were “dumping” their American editions into Canada, siphoning off scarce advertising dollars, the Americans took the case to a World Trade Organization tribunal. In 1997, Canada lost, a profound shock.
That year, Art Eggleton, then minister of international trade, rather wistfully asked the SAGIT if we couldn’t offer the government something better than the offensive “protectionist” rhetoric, which his international colleagues viewed as out of sync with the progressive world. In response, Peter Grant, senior cultural lawyer at McCarthy Tétrault, and a member of the SAGIT, suggested a new approach: What about a new international instrument dealing specifically with cultural issues, framed as protecting “cultural diversity”?
It was obvious that the business-driven WTO would never accept such a measure. Rather than bashing our heads against a stone wall, perhaps we could draft the bones of such an instrument in order to clarify the issues. It might have to be parked in legal limbo, outside any formal trade agreement, but it could exert moral suasion on public, perhaps even government, opinion. Grant himself took a crack at drafting an initial version of how such an instrument might work. It wasn’t simple. He once confessed to me sheepishly, “This is brain science.”
The Cultural Industries SAGIT embraced the strategy, an audacious dance around conventional wisdom. Critically, it might offer then Canadian cabinet ministers Sheila Copps and Pierre Pettigrew some useful ammunition to bolster their Sisyphean efforts.
In February 1999, the SAGIT delivered its report, unglamorously titled “New Strategies for Culture and Trade: Canadian Culture in a Global World.” It advocated the creation of a new international treaty with a refined focus, acknowledging the unique nature of cultural goods and services and suggesting how responsible trade disciplines might coexist with cultural measures. Its clear purpose was to blunt growing pressure to have culture ensnared within the dictates of WTO policy. To our surprise and delight, the government accepted the idea.
International colleagues viewed the idea as something between unnecessary and loathsome. The French, however, felt otherwise. With their advocacy, it was eventually agreed that the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was the best place for such an instrument to find a sympathetic home. While not our first choice, we needed allies and pragmatically endorsed the prospect.
At the same time, civil society had energized itself to work in parallel with the government. The initiative became particularly well organized in Canada, led by strong Quebec voices. It resulted in the establishment of the Coalition for Cultural Diversity, or la coalition pour la diversité culturelle (CCD), in 1998. The initial chair was Pierre Curzi, an accomplished Québécois actor and a man of great personal charm, with the rhetorical skills of someone accustomed to the stage. But the coalition needed an English Canadian voice. Because of my publishing association work, I was nominated to be co-chair, another voluntary tilt at a windmill.
As the idea for a new treaty inched its way through the international system, my involvement intensified. But UNESCO is a large, structurally unwieldy, sclerotic organization. Sometimes it makes progress. More often, it succumbs to the dictates of geopolitical reality. The draft convention’s stumbling steps up the procedural ladder stretched out over two years. Its convoluted language was refined at a leisurely pace.
UNESCO Canada had been involved from the beginning, adding this country’s clout to those emphasizing the importance of the cultural file. Max Wyman, another Vancouverite, was president of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO during those years. He ensured that Canada’s voice remained influential throughout the highly charged negotiations, dragging deeply skeptical countries to support the convention.
There was much lobbying to win the support of UNESCO’s General Conference for the proposed new convention on culture. But the US remained a troublesome outlier. In October 2005, when a finished draft of the convention reached the UNESCO General Conference agenda and was to be voted on, the Americans realized they had been outfoxed. Then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice played a last card. A personal letter under her signature was sent to ambassadors of all UNESCO members, darkly hinting that, should the draft agreement be accepted, the US might reconsider its recently renewed membership in the organization. That proved too little, too late.
Canada was the first country to ratify the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. In Montreal, November 23, 2005, from left to right: Scott McIntyre, co-chair, Coalition for Cultural Diversity; Liza Frulla, then minister of Canadian heritage; Line Beauchamp, then Quebec minister of culture and communications; Pierre Curzi, co-chair, Coalition for Cultural Diversity; and then prime minister Paul MartinThe convention, clumsily named the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, was adopted on October 20, 2005, with 148 countries in favour, four abstentions, and two opposed: the US and Israel. As of summer 2024, it had been signed by 153 nations. The speed with which it had jumped all necessary hurdles was unprecedented, and Canada had been influential, stepping out from its all-too-frequent hiding place in the shadows.
A new trade agreement had survived, one that allowed nation-states to set their own cultural priorities with impunity while allowing any nation-state to opt out of any new, restrictive measures that might arise in the future. From Canada’s perspective, it was a successful end run on American belligerence.
On the business front, Douglas & McIntyre’s fiscal agonies never showed in the books or in our programs. Revenue held steady in the $10 million range. We survived because of the publishing—editorially high-quality projects resonant with our self-imposed mandate and blessed by frequent national bestsellers. But D&M’s fragile finances were increasingly being undermined.
I’d turned sixty in 2004 with no pension, our house still at risk, no prospect of dividends, and even the equity in my life insurance policy, theoretically a retirement fund, tied up in the company. My rose-coloured glasses had finally fallen off. Canadian investors were not lined up to invest in book publishing, particularly given that the business community had chosen to notice the uncertainties of the industry’s financial track record. One solution was to take the path that so many companies had chosen in the past: dramatically reducing both overhead and publishing programs.
From left to right: Greg Gatenby, founding artistic director of Toronto’s International Festival of Authors; Scott McIntyre; author Margaret Atwood; and William “Bill” French, then book editor of the Globe and Mail, in 1991That meant destroying the team in place and the model. I wasn’t ready for that, even though it would have been the pragmatic business move. Operating in Canada, with a constrained number of large houses, ownership restrictions still on the government books, and neither merchant banks nor private equity tempted, options were scarce.
I was increasingly ground down by the constant drama, and the paucity of working capital. It was also beginning to cost us authors who were moving to larger houses for more generous royalty advances. There was nothing surprising about authors of achievement asking for more money. In a world of literary agents, it is inevitable. The ironic curse of small publishing houses is always that the better they are at launching and nurturing talent, the more such risk taking pushes them into the wilderness of lost authors.
It was abundantly clear, to me at least, that the comfortable world of traditional publishing was quickly evolving. Publishing houses could be small or large. There was little room left in the middle ground. Acquire deep pockets and play the game at a serious level, or return to the historical path of publishing, as it had been when scale was small or family wealth determined possibilities. Canadian-owned publishing, and those idealistic dreams some of us had for so long espoused, was roadkill in this new world.
Things began to unravel in 2010. Quarterly financial results suggested we were falling into a hole. Climbing out was not going to be easy. Then one last miracle unfolded.
A first novel, The Sentimentalists, from a Gaspereau Press author, Johanna Skibsrud, unexpectedly appeared on the shortlist for that year’s Giller fiction prize. Gaspereau was a tiny literary house based in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, dedicated to creating beautiful books printed in letterpress in very small print runs.
The prize was to be awarded on November 9. I was invited to be there, as I had been for several years. The Giller is the crown jewel of Canadian literary awards. Everything about its arrangements is stylish: highly coveted hand-delivered invitations accompanied by a fresh red rose, an elegant dinner in the old Toronto Four Seasons Hotel preceded and followed by an open bar. The announcement of the winner of the juried prize marks the evening’s culmination following dinner, when the buzz of expectation in the room builds, fuelled by adrenalin and alcohol.
The Giller was established and funded by Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife, Doris Giller, a former literary editor at the Toronto Star. Jack was a gentle, respectful man, deeply touched and, I suspect, utterly taken aback by what his extraordinary gesture had unleashed. He remains one of the great unsung heroes of Canadian literature.
Launched in 2004, its $50,000 prize was then the richest in the Canadian literary world. In its early years, it retained the feel of a community celebration. When Scotiabank signed on as lead sponsor in 2006 and CTV, then CBC, began broadcasting the event live, it grew in scale, exclusivity, and impact. But the early spontaneity and collegiality amongst the invited guests had diminished. It remained the highest-profile, most-anticipated event of the fall publishing season.
The evening was in full flower, and token bets over who would win were being bandied about. Just to be devil’s advocate, an impulse I can seldom resist, I put my money on Johanna Skibsrud. Then, from the stage, her name was announced.
We would be blessed by the Giller effect. There was an explosion of noise in the room. The win was about to unleash a tsunami of orders, vastly more than Gaspereau could possibly handle.
I had been blasé during the first blush of euphoria following the announcement of the winner. But when editors from several houses, large and small, began boasting about how they had spoken with the author and were confident they had lured her to sign with them, I hatched a plan to get in touch quickly, and directly, with the two owners of Gaspereau.
We would be blessed by the Giller effect. The win was about to unleash a tsunami of orders.
My wife, Corky, and I had spent a wonderful few days with Andrew Steeves and Gary Dunfield in their print shop in Kentville, Nova Scotia, a few years earlier. As a great admirer of their publishing, and their dedication to craft, we had stayed in touch. My thought was that Douglas & McIntyre might immediately license paperback rights. We could manage the imminent flood of orders. Early the next morning, I tracked Andrew down, and we talked on the phone. The deal was done.
The critical piece was finding a printer that could print a great many books very quickly. Printer David Friesen and I talked, and he was in. We needed to crank up our machine quickly. As I was still in Toronto, Chris Labonte, my Vancouver-based assistant, took charge. Our sales team convened in our Vancouver office at 7 a.m. on the morning following verbal agreement with Gaspereau. Phones were worked. By the end of the day, we had advance orders of 100,000 copies. The book trade was desperate, starved of a book that customers were demanding.
I called Jack Rabinovitch at home to tell him we had solved the problem. All would be well within a week, when all the orders could be filled. I couldn’t be certain, but he might have had tears in his eyes. Given what a gracious man he was, and what an extraordinary gift he had given Canada, making that call was very special.
By Christmas, we had shipped 130,000 copies, adding almost $1.5 million to our revenue for the year. That single book had rescued soft sales and solved D&M’s financial issues for another year. Luck, decisive behaviour, and perfect timing had won again.
Defying the odds for so long became a matter of obstinate pride. From a standing start, we reached a peak amongst Canadian independent publishing houses. It was a deliberate, determined, and successful dare. For almost fifty years—with Howard White of Harbour Publishing purchasing Douglas & McIntyre in 2013—we contributed to Canada’s national dialogue, ensuring that voices from beyond the shining mountains were heard.
For all the raw edges, it was an extraordinary way to make a life.
Adapted and excerpted, with permission, from A Precarious Enterprise: Making a Life in Canadian Publishing by Scott McIntyre, published by ECW Press, 2025. All rights reserved. All photos courtesy of Scott McIntyre and ECW Press.
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