Rowland Lorimer Rowland Lorimer ...... 1 Central publishing and West Coast publishing ...... 1 The Simon Fraser University Publishing Programme ...... 2 ONIX and PEXOD ...... 3 The Literary Press Group qq ...... 4 Automating the Creation of Catalogue Content ...... 5 Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a journal management and publishing system that has been developed by the Public Knowledge Project through its federally funded efforts to expand and improve access to research. According to the SFU website, the OJS Features are the following : ...... 6 Developing Software for the Small Sector ...... 6 Providing the Next Generation of Publishers to Canada ...... 7 Trafford Publishing ...... 8 “What I see our role to be is to help the industry transform” ...... 9 The Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing (CCPS) ...... 9

Central Canada publishing and West Coast publishing

C.E.: Is there a major difference between central Canada publishing and West Coast publishing?

R.L.: In philosophy, I would say that there was, although West Coast publishers probably don’t see themselves as philosophically any different from Ontario publishers. Having said that, I think they are much more grounded in West Coast reality. It is a really a distinct area of the country. Previous to the 1970s, there was virtually nobody writing and publishing very much on the West Coast, except anthropological studies. There were a couple of people. Gray Campbell published local history. In fact, there is material on that – there is a journalist named Alan Twigg who wrote about the early publishing that went on in British Columbia. It was mostly describing the geography and the native people – the regular type of settlement society authoring, you know stories from around the place and so on, so there was a little bit of that. But only here and there as opposed to everywhere. There’s a website called abcbookworld1, where you will find author biography – as many as Alan Twigg was able to collect. Certainly his company was based in the region but they are trying to be national. Douglas and McIntyre is arguably the biggest Canadian publisher now, M&S being on the wane. You know, M&S has been partly taken over by . It’s hard to know whether they will survive well or whether they will just gradually get integrated into Random House.

C.E.: Is there the same sort of fighting spirit against American domination on the West Coast?

R.L.: Yes, I think it’s the same – although maybe it’s a little different. The publishers out here are certainly part of that fight against American domination – they’ve played their part in all

1 The site is a subsidiary of B.C. BookWorld, the quarterly newspaper about and authors of British Columbia, established in 1987 (distribution to 700 outlets, see www.bcbookworld.com). We don't publish on the internet. www.abcbookworld.com is a public service project to help spread awareness of the literary activity in BC. The site gives authors the opportunity to submit information.

1 the government policy developments and played their part as the president of the ACP etc. Karl Seigler, who is based here in Powell River, is a drama and literary publisher and he played a big part in the evolution of publishing policy. His publishing house is called Talon Books – he published Michel Tremblay and so on… Actually, if you look at his list you could say: this publisher could be anywhere in Canada. Because he’s published a lot of plays wherever they are and literary books all over Canada.

C.E.: And not much BC-based material?

R.L.: Well, there are a fair number of books that he’s done that are BC-based. But the other element is that publishers outside of Ontario have 3% of the Ontario market. 97% of the Ontario market is served by Ontario publishers – foreign and domestically-owned. So there is that reality everyone knows about. And so there is a different kind of attitude in BC – much more collaborative. If you ask anybody in Canada, there is much more collaboration amongst BC publishers. They are all at the edge of the frontier trying to make it in the market. So it’s a different aspect although equally Canadian and nationalistic.

The Simon Fraser University Publishing Programme

C.E.: Now tell me about the Simon Fraser University (SFU) publishing programme that you have here in Vancouver. It’s a rather unique programme in Canada, isn’t it?

R.L.: We’re the only people doing actual research. There are a couple of colleges in Toronto – Ryerson, Humber, and Centennial. They are staffed by members of the profession teaching how to be publishers – they’re not doing research. But they are professionals teaching young people how to enter the industry.

C.E.: The SFU programme does both: research on the industry and teach young students how to enter the industry?

R.L.: That’s right. And our programme is the only full graduate programme. The other programmes are diploma programme either before or after a BA.

C.E.: What sort of job opportunities do your graduate students go to after having finished your graduate programme?

R.L.: They go into publishing, magazine publishing and web publishing: somewhat less than two thirds in the book publishing, somewhat less than one third in the magazine publishing and a few in web publishing etc. When we started out we had immediate employment for everybody. I’d say that, now, about 80% of the students within the first year of graduation are into one of these areas. We’ve had people also who’ve gone into policy. We have one person now in the government at Ottawa, in the book publishing development programme, one person in the Canada Council, at least one person in the Ontario government and in national libraries – so allied institutions to the industry.

C.E.: You mentioned web publishing. Does that include ?

R.L.: No. Mainly website developments. For a while we had someone setting up a bibliographic data system… Do you know ONIX?

2 ONIX and PEXOD

C.E.: Yes, I’ve read about it.

R.L.: Well, we developed some software called PEXOD (Publishers’ Extensible Online Database) that is based on ONIX (Online Information Exchange) to allow small publishers to communicate with Chapters-Indigo, Ingram etc. Originally we started out developing it as a database for a dynamic website so that publishers could put all their title information. Let’s say they wanted to change the price of a book. They would change it in the database and then all the other instances of the price on the website are changed as opposed to changing this information over and over again. That’s what we started with. But before we finished, people had become less admiring of websites – it’s growing again but it’s in a downturn. That said, what we knew when we started was that if publishers entered data into a database, then they could do all manner of things: communicate with purchasers, run a website, be a central authoritative source for everybody in the firm. We have a programmer who’s setting that up in firms around the country and we’re quite strong on technology. We’re also in the process of developing another software package for a cultural magazine publisher that is going to make their life a lot easier.

C.E.: Do you have any training in computer science in order to deal with PEXOD or did you hire somebody to deal with the technical aspects?

R.L.: We hired somebody. When I was editor of the Canadian Journal of Communication we took the journal online. I had a colleague, Richard Smith, who was very keen to undertake the online management. I don’t know about the ins and outs of technology I learned what you can and can’t do. As a result of working on the online journal and after we hired John Maxwell, we started on the ONIX project. It was John Maxwell who was the technological brain for PEXOD and I’m the one who brings in partners. My job was to persuade the publishers and government that our project was worthwhile.

C.E.: And how do you promote PEXOD?

R.L.: PEXOD is now in a sort of sunset mode. We don’t go out and market it because we don’t see ourselves as marketers or vendors of software packages. What happened actually was that after we developed the software a certain number of commercial software developers saw the opportunity, and we could have fought for market share but instead we thought: Well we’ve done the research, we’ve shown everybody that this is important, we’ve done a lot of going-out-and-talking about it to groups. And the publishers that wanted our software came knocking and now about twelve publishers across the country are using it. But there are no industry standards for this type of software. Everybody went off in their own direction. That’s the case with every piece of software. So it’s a bit tricky. Anyway, we didn’t go out and market our product. We didn’t hire a sales force. We just did a lot of talking about it.

C.E.: So now private businesses are getting involved and your experience has led the way for them to take over and help publishers get their act together in terms of database?

R.L.: Yes. It led to a raise of awareness on the part of publishers that they could be using databases. It’s really astonishing that they don’t because databases are perfect for publishing.

3 But they are just not there yet, which is a problem in the industry because there are people about my age who started in publishing houses in the late sixties or seventies and for whom databases and computer-based operations are non-intuitive. Besides they don’t have the financial resources to be able to hire technical help, to hire technically savvy new employees such as our students. And if they do have a database system, they often can’t pay somebody to keep it up, so it’s all a bit unstable.

C.E.: And perhaps they don’t have the time to worry about databases?

R.L.: Their main object in life is to publish the next book that might be a really good seller. A database is house-keeping. It’s almost like the three little pigs: you want to build a house so you don’t get eaten by the wolf! But if you’ve been in a business for years and you’ve been doing it with straws, you feel that you don’t need bricks. I see it as a looming problem. There is a lot more to the story: should the database be internal to the firm or should the distributors create it for them to communicate with retailers such as Chapters and Amazon? Should databases be organisations of publishers across the country? Or other external service providers?

C.E.: such as the Literary Press Group?

R.L.: Yes. (…) It all depends on the nature of the activity that publishers see as appropriate to take place inside a publishing firm. To me it’s clear that publishers should have a database, because a properly constructed database would serve as the foundation of all the activity of a publishing firm, from manuscript acquisition, to development, to editing, marketing, sales, publication, relations with business partners, and so on. To many publishers a database represents merely the provision of title information to large customers such as Chapters and Amazon. Another point is that if you organize a firm around a central database, how much software do you really want? In a small firm, key employees carry around all the information they need in their heads. They do not really need a computer to tell them who the author of each of their current titles is? In small firms, do you really need a database to tell you the price of the books? Do you really need a database to tell you where all your files are? The point is, at what point do you need technology to take care of things. It’s certainly not the case in a large firm where it is dealing with hundreds and hundreds of titles that all the necessary information can reside in the heads of key employees. So, of course, you have a database. Nobody can remember enough and besides, he or she quit last week!

C.E.: The main incentive for smaller firms to have a database is to communicate more effectively with distributors? Most distributors require certain formats…?

R.L.: Yes, …except the small publishing firms are relying on the distributors to do it.

The Literary Press Group qq

C.E.: What exactly is the Literary Press Group’s group role in giving database help to smaller publishers?

R.L.: The Literary Press Group set up a database using Filemaker Pro. It’s problematic: you can’t program it because it’s a commercial system and it’s not open source. What we

4 developed in PEXOD is something were you can hire a programmer who can say: oh, well that’s what the code is doing, and I can change the code so we can make it do exactly what we want to do. The Literary Press Group’s product is unprogrammable. They collected all the data from all the presses that they serve then they acted as a distributor of bibliographic information to Ingram, Chapters and all the retailers. So instead of book retailers getting really dirty data from the National Library, or Books in Print, they were in a position to provide clean data which, in turn would maximize book orders.

C.E.: Does your organization collaborate with the Literary Press Group for the PEXOD project?

R.L.: We did spend a lot time talking with them about it. But then the LPG decided it was better to continue to use their system. It did look at one point that as though they were going to use PEXOD. But you know, there is always resistance when you’re using something and somebody comes along with a better product. You think: first I don’t know how to transfer all my data and then I’ve got to use a whole new set of procedures… So we kept talking about it and talking about it, but it never happened. Now, there is more all-encompassing software than PEXOD. It’s easier to use and it does more. That’s why I said we were in sunset mode. Some publishers are still using PEXOD but if you were starting now on a database project, you wouldn’t use it.

C.E.: So now the Literary Press Group may now work with other private businesses which have developed software similar to PEXOD?

R.L.: I haven’t followed it up lately, so I don’t know (…).

Automating the Creation of Catalogue Content

R.L.: In the last technical meeting we had in Toronto, we explained that one of the things we do with our students is figure out to automate the creation of catalogue content from a database. Basically, you create a template with such elements as title, abstract, author bio, and picture and so on. You lay out the fields and then you import the content from the title file and, with some fine-tuning, you have your catalogue page. Our work with the students in doing this was the first time that anybody that we know (but we don’t know about Random House or other bigger houses) has ever been able to do that. And you just use off-the-shelf Adobe Creative Suite for creating a pdf file. We tested the technology in the previous years – twice – and the capacity just wasn’t there. And this year we have finally been able to accomplish our goal. So we still have a lot to do to perfect the system and we’re always looking at technology developments.

C.E.: What is the next goal that you are going to set yourselves?

R.L.: Well, technologically – and we shouldn’t just be talking about technology because that’s not all that we do -- we have applied for funds to develop something called Online Management Module for Magazines. It’s a derivation of other software called Open Journal

5 Systems2 (OJS) which was initially developed at UBC. We, the CCSP added on a module to make OJS appropriate for subscription. We’re working with a magazine to see if the software can be adapted to that milieu. Open Journal System assists with every stage of the publishing process: an article comes in from an author online. It’s uploaded to the database. The editor is notified that it has been received and the article is sent out for peer review. The peer reviewers download the article, review it and send it back with comments, and so on. OJS handles manuscript submission all the way through to publication. Each publishing professional along the way is given access to the article when they need it. And it has a set of thirty or so pre-written but customizable emails: “Thank you for your article…” and so on.

Scholarly journal publishing it’s a linear process. But in magazines, it’s a much more complicated process. What you need is software to facilitate collaborative editing.

Developing Software for the Small Sector

C.E.: Coming back to the mission of your organization, I get the impression that your goal is to identify whatever projects need to be carried out for the overall benefit of the industry and then you have the flexibility to move on to new projects as soon as private businesses get in there and catch on to whatever you were doing. Then you can leave things to private businesses and you can carry on being a pioneer for other things.

R.L.: Yes, exactly. Our primary goal is to develop software for small publishers (large firms can take care of themselves), so that’s where we start. The dynamics of the adoption of technology are not straight-forward. They have a lot to do with change in social systems and the kinds of people involved. A technology may exist that answers all their problems and they still say “No thanks”, I find it really stunning. But, in part, it’s because they can’t envision exactly what the technology does and doesn’t do. Even when it’s easy technology, some

2 Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a journal management and publishing system that has been developed by the Public Knowledge Project through its federally funded efforts to expand and improve access to research. According to the SFU website, the OJS Features are the following :

1. OJS is installed locally and locally controlled. 2. Editors configure requirements, sections, review process, etc. 3. Online submission and management of all content. 4. Subscription module with delayed open access options. 5. Comprehensive indexing of content part of global system. 6. Reading Tools for content, based on field and editors' choice. 7. Email notification and commenting ability for readers. 8. Complete context-sensitive online Help support.

OJS assists with every stage of the refereed publishing process, from submissions through to online publication and indexing. Through its management systems, its finely grained indexing of research, and the context it provides for research, OJS seeks to improve both the scholarly and public quality of referred research.

OJS is open source software made freely available to journals worldwide for the purpose of making open access publishing a viable option for more journals, as open access can increase a journal's readership as well as its contribution to the public good on a global scale (see PKP Publications). http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs

6 people don’t trust computers. They don’t know how computers operate, therefore they don’t trust them. The next generation is going to be entirely different.

C.E.: You said earlier on that the goal of your organization is not only technical. What are your other orientations?

Providing the Next Generation of Publishers to Canada

R.L.: Our first goal is to provide the next generation of publishers to Canada. I’m not sure we’re entirely succeeding in that, in the sense that the people who come to take our courses are not very entrepreneurial. And that’s a disappointment to us.

C.E.: They are more literary?

R.L.: Yes. Over half are English Department students who want to be editors. We persuade two-thirds of these students that they don’t have to be editors at this point. And many don’t know too much about editing. When they say they want to be editors they are thinking about line editing – you know, helping correct mistakes – and most of them have done that as they were going through their university years. We give our students an generalist education, an understanding of all the elements of publishing so that they know about design, that they know layouts, they know about production, they know about editing, they know about the structure of the industry… So that’s a big part of our mission.

C.E.: They’re professionals and they are capable of taking initiatives in this industry and may be coming up with new ways of doing new things and moving ahead.

R.L.: Yes, exactly. We give them the technological tools to work within the industry. And as, I’ve said earlier on, some of our graduates have actually put into place operations within firms that immediately save thousands of dollars. So education is a big part of our job.

We also do a lot of industry research. I have done a number of contract studies on the effectiveness of support programmes – looking at the structure and nature of the industry as a result of the support programmes, how policies should be changed – that sort of thing.

C.E.: Looking into where the money should be going and how it should be reaching the most promising?

R.L.: Yes, exactly. I’ve also done some work for the Federal Government on the distribution system. They had new people coming into the bureaucracy and it seemed they didn’t really know about distribution. At the time they were changing legislation and they wanted to have the security of knowing that they understood what was going on.

C.E.: So your role is to clarify things but you don’t do any lobbying?

R.L.: No. we don’t. I write policy papers. I’m just writing something for Canadian Culture Online. They asked me for 5000 words about how things are changing in the industry and therefore what policies which should be looking at. And I am writing a book that is an assessment of the publishing industry in Canada and where I see difficulties emerging. It steps back after thirty years: this is where it came from, these

7 were the issues, why the industry has evolved in the particular way it has,. I also look at, what’s going on – especially with Chapters etc. The evolution of books into products has always been there but it is now becoming stronger and stronger. Even though people don’t know when they buy a book, often it’s in a category, it’s a predictable product. In the book I’ll be talking about the commodification of all the book industry, and the role of independent bookstores and how they’ve pretty much disappeared. And then, I’ll be review technology and how it’s going to make a major difference, and how the industry has to get on board because they are going to be out-of-existence if they don’t. There’s a real a chance that much of what we are accustomed to since the seventies will disappear in the next ten or twenty years. I don’t see the next generation of publishers emerging. Actually, I don’t see books as a key medium in the lives of people in their twenties. Will that change as they get older? It’s difficult to say.

Trafford Publishing

C.E.: That’s a possibility… they may come to it later (…). What you do think of publishing structures such as Trafford Publishing? Would you say they follow the same business model as Manuscrit.com or Publibook.com, in France? You know these companies have also moved into the areas of acting as agents for scriptwriters. These companies don’t make money publishing scripts – because there’s hardly a market for scripts – but they make money when they sell the script to producers.

R.L.: Companies like Trafford (now owned by Amazon) are providing a printing service and a distribution service. They’re not tying their services into anything else. To a degree it’s a vanity publishing company. But they address clients such as experts on financial management. These experts are speakers who travel across the country and they want somebody else to handle the logistics of getting their book printed and shipped to the various venues where they are going to be giving a talk. When they arrive somewhere, they want a box of books to be there so that they can sell them after their presentation.

Trafford doesn’t take any copyright ownership, nor does it invest in a title. It’s a printing and distribution service only. To be actually publishing books with the explicit aim of selling them to the movie industry hasn’t occurred to anybody.

C.E.: Maybe it’s because the agents in North America are doing so well and authors obviously prefer to turn to agents.

R.L.: Yes, maybe. One of my students wrote about what’s happening in China which parallels what you’re saying. There was a very active literary website in China promoting new writers and it sold out to . It’s the same phenomenon: clever people capable of writing, engaged in something involving a new media, have publishers knocking at their door because they can see a lot of potential.

C.E.: Yes, these are new ways of recruiting potential book authors or, in the case Manuscrit.com or Publibook.com recruiting scriptwriters …

8 R.L.: We don’t have anything like Manuscrit.com or Publibook.com that I know of. We have a script development programme here at the university. It’s called Praxis3. It’s mainly a script- writing development program that liaises with members of the film industry (…).

“What I see our role to be is to help the industry transform”

R.L.: The motto we adopted last year is: Inventing publishing for the XXI st century. So we’re always trying to look at the edge of publishing. I see our role to be to help the industry transform. Training people who go into the industry to make change happen understanding the need for change, and not to be afraid of it – people who will know that there are designers, technology experts, and editors that you can always bring in, all the force that such people represent can be brought to bear – people who have contact with what is happening in other media. The job of the publisher is to bring these new forces all together because the book industry is not going to be the same when all the other industries are changing.

C.E.: That’s a very pragmatic approach. Getting all the up and coming dynamics worked out.

The Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing (CCPS)

R.L.: And that is where the CCSP Press is useful. There are two strands of CCSP Press: one is trade books in the niche area of book publishing. The strand I’m interested in is being inventive in the form. We published a volume entitled Book Publishing 1. We’d hope to sell about 600 copies in three years. We’re about a quarter of the way through that now and I thought we would be half way. The next book we’re doing is on process management in publishing. We’re going to print 50 copies and then go to print on demand. We’re not going to be risking a lot of money. All we’re doing is saying: we’ve developed a manuscript for educational purposes and it’s available for use. We’re really following a model of O’Reilly – a technical publisher. O’Reilly is experimenting with various forms – putting things online for free that are also available for purchase.

C.E.: You can download it for free and still, people buy the book?

R.L.: Yes, people think it’s better to have it in the book form. Now whether or not that will work for us… we’ll see. So, we have a chance to experience with a number of things. And the O’Reilly model is useful.

C.E.: Are you looking to set up partnerships with other publishers for your print-on-demand projects?

R.L.: Part of what we’re doing is exploring the form of publishing when we undertake publishing ourselves. So we have now Book Publishing 1 on Amazon. One of our students’ assignment was do figure out all the methods we could use to promote the book online and they came up with about twelve ideas for promotion that weren’t just pie-in-the-sky ideas. They combed the Internet to find out how publishers promote on the internet and we immediately sold five copies through Amazon.

3 Founded in 1986, Praxis is a part of the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University http://www.praxisfilm.com/en/default.aspx.

9 C.E.: When you get something started, it takes a while for the project to gain visibility.

R.L.: Absolutely. And so, would we partner? Yes, we would partner. Any possibility that comes along gives us experience. It parallels our approach to software exploration. We’re not so technologically-oriented that the technology is the beginning and the end. Technology exploration gives us and our students an incredible education on what actually goes on inside publishing firms, where people’s heads are at. The grist for the mill of the book I’m writing leans a lot on projecting the technology forward that we have been implementing. Our modus operandus for research seems to be: Why-not- do-something-good-while-you’re-at-it, instead of just sitting back and just watching.

C.E.: Yes!

R.L.: You engage in a whole different level of involvement and that’s what we want.

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