“ The cultural universe, for federal Liberals, begins and ends in Quebec.” Really? A subjective, disappointing comment in an otherwise interesting discussion.
Quebec has had a more publisher friendly world for at least the last thirty years, since I've been following it. A strong and protected retail sector is important and Quebec bookstores benefit from this. Have a look at the Netherlands which publishes profitably in Dutch. Go figure. I look forward to the next segment.
It makes sense and I'm not sure if anything can be done.
French readers read Quebec authors but I bet they read a ton of translated US authors (funded by the gov). The article does not indicate how much of the funding is used for US author translation, but my guess is that it's a lot. I'm not sure if the scale of translated books would survive w/o gov money.
If the rest of Canada spoke Swedish, then the ratio of US author translated to Swedish Canada would be similar (if gov funded). All to say that English Canada competes with US w/o any funding needed for translation (and the resulting local publishing/printing/distribution).
Canadian English authors struggle somewhat to compete on scale with US published authors and their printing/distribution. Despite this, Canadian's read quite a bit from Canadian authors, so it's not a failure. It would be interesting to know the ratio of Quebec author sales relative to all Quebec book sales (regardless of language origin).
Canadian writing and publishing deserve far better. It's a very long shot but perhaps it will help the situation that Marc Miller's father, Carmen is a (former McGill) historian.
“ The cultural universe, for federal Liberals, begins and ends in Quebec.” Really? A subjective, disappointing comment in an otherwise interesting discussion.
Quebec has had a more publisher friendly world for at least the last thirty years, since I've been following it. A strong and protected retail sector is important and Quebec bookstores benefit from this. Have a look at the Netherlands which publishes profitably in Dutch. Go figure. I look forward to the next segment.
Fantastic context. Thank you!
It makes sense and I'm not sure if anything can be done.
French readers read Quebec authors but I bet they read a ton of translated US authors (funded by the gov). The article does not indicate how much of the funding is used for US author translation, but my guess is that it's a lot. I'm not sure if the scale of translated books would survive w/o gov money.
If the rest of Canada spoke Swedish, then the ratio of US author translated to Swedish Canada would be similar (if gov funded). All to say that English Canada competes with US w/o any funding needed for translation (and the resulting local publishing/printing/distribution).
Canadian English authors struggle somewhat to compete on scale with US published authors and their printing/distribution. Despite this, Canadian's read quite a bit from Canadian authors, so it's not a failure. It would be interesting to know the ratio of Quebec author sales relative to all Quebec book sales (regardless of language origin).
Canadian writing and publishing deserve far better. It's a very long shot but perhaps it will help the situation that Marc Miller's father, Carmen is a (former McGill) historian.
I love your newsletter, and appreciate all the research that you put into it, but damn does it leave me frustrated, if not furious.
To see these stats in action, come to the Salon du livre de Montréal 2026 at the end of November.