TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

E-book drought among top Canada titles? And, Martin, how about New Zealand and elsewhere?

By Ficbot

Editor’s note: Martin Taylor’s latest thoughts are here and here. – D.R.

The recent posts from Martin Taylor, and my dialogue with him about the non-existent state of New Zealand e-book publishing, had me thinking about my own country.

Not enough Canadian titles are buyable as e-books.

Canada may not be the United States, but it’s hardly the jungle hinterlands, and many of our best authors are popular both here and in the U.S,. and elsewhere. Three of the authors I discuss below are winners of the Man Booker Prize, such as Margaret Atwood (photo); one is a Pulitzer winner; and two have been featured in Oprah’s Book Club. If you think that should make the books popular enough to merit e-book versions, though, you would be sadly mistaken.

I made a list of twenty Canadian authors whose works I have enjoyed and who I felt were reasonably popular enough to have at least some name recognition, certainly in Canada and in most cases, abroad as well. And then I went to Fictionwise to see what was available. My results were mixed.

One author has nearly all her catalogue up there—Kelley Armstrong, a sci-fi/romance author. A few others had a handful of recent titles, but nothing from their back catalogues, and not the books for which they were best known and/or for which they had won major awards. Quite a few authors had nothing at all available.

I know e-books are still considered a bit of a niche market. It didn’t surprise me that the genre author had all her stuff up there, and the literary authors were less represented. But here is a thought I would dearly like the publishers to consider. Will you sell a lot of e-books by literary authors? Maybe not. But will you sell any if you fail to make them even available? Absolutely not! You have to play the game if you want to score a point or two!

I’ll post my prescription for ‘domestic’ publishers, be they from New Zealand or from Canada or from wherever, in a separate post. But to start things off in this important dialogue, here are my Canadian top twenty, and the results of my search for their work in ebook form.

Twenty Canadian authors and their e-offerings

• Kelley Armstrong – This popular fantasy writer known for her ‘Women of the Underworld’ series seems fairly well-represented. She has 14 e-titles listed at Fictionwise.
• Margaret Atwood – A Canadian legend, a seven-time finalist for the Governor-General’s Award and a Booker winner. How many e-books? Only four.
• George Elliott Clarke- Another multi-talented award-winner. Another zero-e-book author. Sigh.
• Douglas Coupland – Only one e-book, and it isn’t even one of his popular ones. No ‘Generation X’? No ‘Microserfs’? Really?
• Robertson Davies – Mo e-books for him either
• Cory Doctorow – That rarest of rare things, a Canadian pioneer. Only four ebooks at Fictionwise, all of them saddled with DRM. But he puts everything on the Web for free.
• Will Ferguson – Why I Hate Canadians is perhaps a little too niche, but he did write a Dummies book too. Alas, it is not available, nor is anything else by this guy.
• Timothy Findley – Two of his recent ones are available, but none of his older stuff (including ‘Not Wanted on the Voyage, my personal favorite).
• Wayne Johnston – Two e-books available. Not the two historical novels that made him famous, but oh well. At least we’re starting somewhere…
• Joy Kogawa – Obasan is a Canadian classic, widely read in schools. No e-version though…
• Anne-Marie McDonald- Nothing. Not even the one Oprah picked.
• Stuart McLean – This guy has a large collection of books based on his radio show. None are available as e-books. I did find one item at Fictionwise by “Stuart Mclean.” but I can’t be sure it’s
  the same guy
• Yann Martel – Nothing. Not even Life of Pi, which won the Booker Prize.
• Rohinton Mistry – He’s won the Booker, and like McDonald, been recommended by Oprah. You’d think that would make him popular enough to merit an e-version or two. Apparently not. Nothing at Fictionwise…
• Alice Munro – Four books available. She’s written 16. And she’s also won the Booker, among other things…
• Michael Ondaatje – Four books. Like others here, they seem to be starting with the most recent, so good luck getting ‘The English Patient’ which is not among the offerings…
• Nino Ricci – Nothing in e-book by this Governer General’s Award two-time winner. And just for fun, I looked up his wife, who is also a novelist and from whom I took a creative writing course once. Nothing by her either.
• David Adams Richards – None of his dozen-odd novels have made it to e-book yet. Not even the ones which won prizes.
• Mordecai Richler – Nothing by this Canadian legend, but I did find his daughter Emma’s debut novel—not its sequel, mind you. Just the first one. But we have to start somewhere, right?
• Carol Shields- Nothing. Not even ‘The Stone Diaries’ which won the Pulitzer.