Canada-UK Symposium 2011

Join Livres Canada Books on Tuesday October 11, 2011 from 1-6 pm at the Frankfurt Book Fair to find out how two of the world’s largest and most sophisticated book markets compare, and discover the latest trends in sales, rights, and digital publishing in Canada and the UK. Our fourth annual symposium at the Frankfurt Book Fair is a half day conference and networking event that will highlight key publishers in both markets and show you how to develop partnerships, encourage rights sales and build strategic alliances in distribution, co-production, and digital marketing.

Tickets, program, and confirmed speakers are available on our website.

Nicolas Levesque | 05/06/2011 | Digital, Events, Export, Rights

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Success stories

Guy Saint-Jean Éditeur is pleased to announce that agreements have been signed with several international publishers. Histoires à faire rougir davantage by Marie Gray will be published in Spanish by Editions Cossetania in the spring of 2011. Nouvelles histoires à faire rougir by the same author will be published by French publisher Pocket in 2011, along with the latest erotic novel by Élise Bourque, Un été chaud et humide. This novel will also be included in the 2012 France Loisirs catalogue. The first two novels in the Oseras-tu? series by Marie Gray, La première fois de Sarah-Jeanne and Le coeur perdu d’Élysabeth will appear in the Pocket Jeunesse catalogue. The latter title will also be published soon by Italian publisher Sonda, who acquired the rights last Fall.

Tradewind Books has sold the US rights to two picture books to the Interlink Publishing Group: The Mouse that Saved Egypt by Vancouver author Karim Alrawi, and Jewish Fairy Tale Feasts, illustrated by BC illustrator Elizabeth Shefrin.

Les Éditions de l’Isatis has sold two picture books to Mexico as part of the BAULA program: 77,000 copies of Los ninos del agua (Children of the water) and 22,300 copies of Mi isla herida (My wounded island). Los ninos del agua was also sold to Brazil.

Finally, New Star Books has been named the 2011 winner of the Jim Douglas Award, given annually by the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia to the province’s publisher of the year.

Nicolas Levesque | 04/21/2011 | Export, Rights, Success Story

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Exploratory trade mission to the Nordic countries

Livres Canada Books will conduct a scouting mission this summer to the Nordic countries to help Canadian publishers diversify their export base by gaining enhanced knowledge of these markets. A four-member delegation will travel to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark June 6-10, 2011 to meet with key industry players.

The scouting mission will produce a detailed report of this market’s potential for Canadian publishers’ rights and distribution sales. The delegation will also make recommendations regarding how Canadian publishers can best connect with business partners in this market. The delegates, selected from the ACUP, ACP and ANEL membership to represent scholarly, trade, and children’s publishers, respectively, and the Canadian publishing industry as a whole, will be named in the next issue of LCB News.

Nicolas Levesque | 04/15/2011 | Export, Rights

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New market guides published

Livres Canada Books  newest market guide, Exporting Digital Books: A Guide to Best Practices for Canadian Publishers, is now available. The 68-page guide covers eBook consumption on major and emerging markets and offers tips on how to capitalize on eBook growth and maximize digital income from rights, as well as practical guidance on eBook formats and workflows. The guide also includes a list of resources to help publishers stay current in this rapidly evolving market.

Exporting Digital Books is available in PDF at a cost of $30.

New editions of two of our most popular market guides – Sales and Distribution Options for Canadian Publishers in the United States and Exporter le livre canadien en France – have also just been published.

The updated guides are available in PDF at a cost of $20 each.

Nicolas Levesque | 04/08/2011 | Digital, Export

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Québec Édition and the 2011 Salon du livre de Paris

Leaving for the City of Lights in mid-March, fleeing the late winter gray of our supposedly temperate climate for the patios of Paris, sporting a scarf and working on your accent, what a great program! That is, unless you catch a bug on the plane on the way, forget the obligatory scarf on the first night and put in four consecutive days of standing on a carpet that absorbs nothing but dust, shaking every hand offered and abusing your vocal chords ... well, some people are always complaining. But despite these inconveniences, the 31st edition of the Salon du livre de Paris was a very rewarding experience for publishers from Quebec and French-speaking Canada on the Québec Édition stand.

First, QÉ inaugurated a new booth for the occasion. Gone are the IKEA-style furnishings of recent years, the log cabin look that evoked pioneer days, the wobbly bookcases and the blue carpet.

Designed by Expositions TCD of Montreal, the new stand combines noble and strong materials such as wood and steel, favours open space and allows a smooth flow of visitors while maintaining a degree of freedom for presentations. Designed with the assistance of the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles du Québec (SODEC), the new Québec Édition stand was unveiled in Paris under the honorary patronage of québecois author Dany Laferrière, winner of the 2009 Prix Médicis. In addition to participating in numerous meeting sessions with his readers and visitors to the stand, the author of L’Énigme du retour also took part in a presentation with authors Mélanie Vincelette and Michèle Plomer. Among the many novelists and poets on the stand throughout the four day event, let us also note the presence of Marie-Claire Blais, Jacques Côté, Lise Gauvin, Francine Allard, Claude Beausoleil, Joël Des Rosiers, Madeleine Monette, Élise Turcotte, and Louise Warren. To host events, Québec Édition relied on Quebec bookseller Manon Trépanier a commentator on La librairie francophone, which is hosted by Emmanuel Kherad and broadcast by Radio Canada, RTBF, Radio Suisse Romande, and France Inter. Several Quebec booksellers were also called in to help advise visitors on the stand.

But giving credit where credit is due, there were nearly sixty publishers from back home on the stand using it as a hub for meetings with French, European, and other business partners.
Although the Salon du livre de Paris is first and foremost a consumer show (180,000 visitors in four days this year), it remains a key event for meetings with foreign agents and publishers, conducive to negotiating rights and other agreements. For Canadian visitors, it serves primarily to raise awareness of the importance of Canadian literature and books to our French cousins and readers. Beyond the clichés of acres of snow, great adventure in wide open spaces, and harsh climate, French readers and men of letters are becoming increasingly aware that Quebec and French Canada offer an undeniably modern, mixed, hybrid, and innovative literature, always captivating and resolutely outward-looking. No wonder the Québec Édition booth feels increasingly at home at the Salon du livre de Paris and that lovers of French books feel at home on the stand too!

Québec Édition will return to Paris in 2012, scarf in hand, with an even bigger contingent of publishers, authors, and booksellers from home. Québec Édition is a committee of the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres dedicated to the promotion of French-language publishing from Quebec and Canada internationally. It supports the export activities of publishers by organizing collective stands at nearly a dozen fairs worldwide. The committee also focuses on the development of a network of contacts to help publishing professionals advertise their products on international markets by, for example, participating in trade missions abroad and hosting partners from various countries. Québec Édition has a close working relationship with Livres Canada Books.

Richard Prieur | 03/31/2011 | Export

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Best Practices Guide to Exporting Digital Books

Livres Canada Books’ Best Practices Guide to Exporting Digital Books will be available on our website later this month. It will serve as a ‘one-stop’ resource and allow Canadian publishers to maximize their opportunity for digital book sales in international markets.

As a teaser, we are pleased to present the primary findings of our research.

Primary findings

The eBook market is both robust and evolving, but certain core findings apply across the markets of greatest interest to Canadian publishers:

The success of Amazon’s Kindle and its competitors has made the United States the world’s largest eBook market.  In 2010, between 7.2% and 8.0% of trade books were sold in a digital format.

Demand for eBooks in both core and emerging markets is expected to continue to expand rapidly.  Between 2011 and 2013, compounded annual growth rates for eBook sales in the United States, the United Kingdom and France are projected to be between 41% and 51%.  At these growth rates, the number of eBooks sold will double every 18 to 24 months across all core markets.

Content forms are evolving.  Across many markets, the dominant form of digital content has been the PDF.  In the U.S. market, however, Kindle-format titles now match the share of eBooks read as PDFs.  In early 2011, updates coming to EPUB, the de facto open eBook standard, are expected to strengthen its share as a format as well.

The market is served by both dedicated ereaders (Kindle, Nook, Kobo and others) and multi-function devices.  The latter range from smart phones (iPhone, various Android devices) to tablets, most notably the iPad.  The increasing number and complexity of eBook reading platforms is a challenge that any publisher looking to deliver digital content must address.

Sales of tablets like Apple’s iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy may take share away from multi-function smart phones.  Although the tablets introduced to date do not offer wireless cell phone coverage, they can support Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology using 3G and wi-fi connections, and their functionality is expected to improve.  Tablets offer publishers a better reading experience than smart phones, they also offer many other distractions for potential eBook consumers.

Opportunities in emerging markets almost certainly exist for publishers who can work with partners (device manufacturers, content aggregators and in some cases local or regional publishers).  In Europe, available data points to Spain, Germany and Netherlands as markets are expected to reach critical mass in the next three to five years.  Other, perhaps longer-term opportunities include Australia and India.

Growth in the supply of and demand for eBooks is challenging traditional models for regional rights sales.  Aggregators like Kobo, Google and increasingly Amazon and Apple can distribute digital content globally.  This provides opportunities to distribute content cost-effectively to multiple markets.  Publishers who have relied on local partners may need to develop new schemes for rights.

Tricia McCraney | 03/09/2011 | Digital, Export, Rights

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