Harry Potter and the Newly Orphaned

Raincoast books, distributors of Harry Potter and publisher of some Canadian well...other stuff, are no longer in the business of publishing quality homegrown books, but not to worry there will always be room for Harry.

"The Canadian co-publisher and distributor of the phenomenally popular Harry Potter series of novels is scrapping its domestic publishing program and blaming the appreciation of the Canadian dollar for that decision.
Vancouver-based Raincoast Books announced Monday that it will cease publishing Canadian-written titles by the middle of this year in addition to shedding as many as a dozen client publishers whose books it was distributing across Canada, closing the Toronto warehouse it opened in 2001 and laying off 10 to 15 per cent of its total staff – 20 employees, in fact, including its five-member domestic publishing division."

Yeah right, whose going to believe that an impenetrable fortress like the Canadian publishing industry is going to sweat a meteoric rise in the country's currency?
Still, if anyone could spare a dime for what was a damn fine Canadian imprint, it's Raincoast.
The money made on Harry was such that the value of the single malt squeezed out of the place mats at the last few Raincoast staff Christmas parties could have kept the domestic publishing program going.
As to the links above, Anne Fleming wrote one of my favourite novels in Anomaly a couple years ago and Alison Pick is a favourite of much of the staff.
Here's hoping that the writers get new homes in Canada somewhere.

Posted by Dave