The book publishing industry has gone through a number of changes over the last 40 years and while some readers or people in that industry may feel that there is a decline in revenues, there is one stat that says otherwise.
Ontario Creates, which if you may not know, is an Ontario institution that promotes economic activity for various industries like music, film, and publishing said in a report in 2023 that “book publishing in Canada is a $1.4 billion industry, with Ontario contributing almost two-thirds of total national operating revenue at $980 million. The Ontario publishing ecosystem includes large, foreign-owned publishing firms as well as smaller, Canadian-owned publishers.”
Much of the information in the report appears on the surface to be an industry in decline but it is complex. The numbers don’t always show what is there. But I guess you could say that about what I am writing here as well.
If you go back to a report done in 1984, you can see a bigger picture.
It was called “The Study of the Viability of the Canadian Book Publishing Industry” and it was prepared in June 1984 by Dr. Kenneth F. Watson.
The study looked at the industry between 1978 and 1981 and although one of its main findings, and a large reason for doing it was: “the overall viability of the industry was not significantly affected for better or for worse by increasing grants,” (page 9) there was something that stuck out for me.
The one small stat in the document that was meant as a backgrounder, showed me how much larger the industry has grown.
When the report was started in 1978, the book publishing industry accounted for around $600-million in revenue. By the time the study was done in 1981, the industry had already grown to almost $1-billion.
Today we are talking about almost one and a half billion dollars. So if the book publishing industry grew 40% or more since 1981, that’s something to be happy about.
