The elephant in the literary room

In all the ink that is being spilled over the idea of Amazon wanting to service their Canadian customers from a Canadian warehouse, the booksellers lobby is conveniently ignoring one of the big reasons for the demise of Canadian publishing business.  Chapters/Indigo!

As a Canadian writer I make money when the public buys my work.  How much money I make largely depends on two things I do not control.  How much my publisher claims it costs to publish my work and the price that the retailer sells the work for.

I have a couple of titles on the Chapters web site.  They are not in the store because, since my name is not Atwood, I do not deserve shelf-space.  It is better to give the space to some American writer even if she is lesser known than I.

But on the Chapters web site the book is offered at a 30% discount from the recommended price.  Since Chapters has no stock of my book there is no real cost to them.  The cost is all mine.  The publisher sells the book to Chapters at a 40-50% discount from list (sometimes even more) and still makes a profit.  Chapters sells it at a discount and still makes a profit of 10-20%.  But these discounts are at my expense.

If Chapters sold the book at list price and needed only a 10-20% discount from the publisher and the publisher needed only 40% to cover costs then there would be more money for me - the person who wrote the book.

The issue is not who ships what from where.  If you want to preserve Canadian heritage help the creators and preservers of that heritage make a decent living.