Publishers decry changes to provincial grant system
Sask. book industry now facing an uncertain future, critics say
Deana Driver worries about the future of the province’s vibrant book publishing industry after Creative Saskatchewan (CS) announced changes to publishing grants on Monday.
She and other Saskatchewan publishers were shocked when CS, the provincial funding agency for creative industries, announced that books produced with author-paid contributions are now ineligible for grant funds.
With the Creative Industries Production Grant, Driver’s company, DriverWorks Ink, received funding assistance with production costs for books she traditionally published using only company money and for books she published in a hybrid model using some author funds.
Now she can’t apply at all for grants for author-funded books and can only apply for books that she traditionally publishes if she traditionally published two such books in the previous year.
“It’s not that there was a guarantee of funding anyway to help with the production costs, but it means that we can’t even apply now because we accept some investment from our authors,” Driver said. “It’s very frustrating.”
The new Book Publishing Grant will invest in eligible Saskatchewan publishing companies and covers half of the eligible costs of producing a book. A portion of the grant can be used to cover marketing expenses.
“If we don’t have any new products to market, what’s the point?” Driver said.
The hybrid book publisher has obtained CS funding to publish a number of books about Prairie people written by Saskatchewan and other Prairie authors.
Now she fears many wonderful books will go unpublished in Saskatchewan. She added that writers, printers, artists and designers will also be affected by the decision.
SaskBooks — the provincial creative industry association for book publishers — has more than 40 members that range from selfpublishers, hybrid presses and standard literary publishers to university presses.
The new eligibility criteria for the CS Book Publishing Grant means only five or six of the book publishers in Saskatchewan will have eligible book projects.
“It pretty much eliminates any of the new emerging publishers,” said Brenda Niskala, executive director of SaskBooks. “It certainly eliminates all of the self-publishers, many of them are award-winning people like Parkland Publishing who have won the Tourism Award for many years.”
Nor will long-standing hybrid presses be eligible for support from Creative Saskatchewan for print, ebook and audiobook production.
Niskala called the substantial changes “harsh.”
“Creative Saskatchewan has done so much good,” she said. “They are our main funder as an association ... We were just starting to see the industry start to flourish.”
More than 100 commercially viable books are published by Saskatchewan businesses every year, contributing approximately $8 million to the provincial economy.
SaskBooks maintains that the restriction of eligibility means fewer books will be published by Saskatchewan businesses, which will result in a drop in revenues in the province and fewer opportunities for Saskatchewan stories to be told.
“It will continue to support the very important presses who al- ready receive support from the federal government and from Canada Council — those folks will continue to thrive,” Niskala said. “It really hits the small and emerging presses.”
SaskBooks would like the eligibility requirements for the Book Publishing Grant to include all commercial publishing business models operating in the province, including but not limited to selfpublishers, hybrid publishers, literary presses, art book publishers, university presses, scholarly and academic publishers and trade publishers.
Heather Nickel, owner and operator of Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing in Regina, said the new eligibility requirements will mean she’ll be producing fewer books that are critical to Saskatchewan storytelling.
Among the titles she’s published in the past few years are full-colour picture books such as Honouring the Buffalo: A Plains Cree Legend by Ray Lavallee and Judith Silverthorne.
“It’s a book that was shortlisted in the Saskatchewan Book Awards,” Nickel said. “The funding was critical for that book to be produced. Without funding, books like that just won’t exist.”
Saskatchewan is very much a grassroots entrepreneurial province, and that should be encouraged wherever and however possible, she said.
“That’s always been my experience with SaskBooks, and my understanding is that is the intended purpose of Creative Saskatchewan — to grow the creative industries — but this effectively shuts it down for all but a handful,” Nickel said.
There’s been no decrease in funding to CS, but the new grant has changed to align with best practices across the country, said Greg Magirescu, CEO of Creative Saskatchewan.
If an author is contributing to the production of a book, then the publisher isn’t eligible because they’re already being paid by the author — regardless of what the publisher is putting into the project, Magirescu said.
“The grant we’re talking about actually helps publishers cover the costs of actually printing a book,” he said. “If a publisher requires authors to pay for those printing costs, they can no longer receive funds to cover those same costs.”
As a Crown agency created by government, Creative Saskatchewan’s mandate is to support growth in commercial sectors of the creative industry, Magirescu said.
“We’re looking at which sectors create employment, contribute to GDP and are looking at expanding their markets,” he said. “That’s our role. When you look at arts councils or the Canada Council or the Saskatchewan Arts Board, we’re very different from them. We’re not here to support artists just for creating art or writers who are writing literary works. That is not our mandate.”
Since CS started in 2013, it has invested in fewer than 10 hybrid publishers and self-publishers combined, he said.
“Most of those projects were self-published or one-offs,” Magirescu said. “They were not repeats and they ’re low-volume, so they ’re able to publish a book that has very low sales-volume capability. Whereas where you look at a traditional publisher, which is what we’d say is the gold standard in the publishing business, is publishers pay authors. Authors don’t pay publishers.”
Saskatchewan is the only Canadian jurisdiction that has been funding hybrid publishers and self-published books.
“The hardest thing is when you’ve offered something and then you take it away,” Magirescu said. “In this case, that’s what happened.”
Annually CS receives $7.3 million in provincial funding to cover operations, and about 17 unique grants that support six sectors — screen-based media (film, television and interactive digital media); music; book publishing; fine craft; commercial galleries and live performing arts.
We were just starting to see the industry start to flourish.