The pace of change in the book world may be accelerating, but Canada currently lags well behind the US, where – as the Globe’s Marina Strauss reported last week – e-book sales currently represent about 9% of total book sales. The figure for Canada is about 3% -- and in Quebec less than 1%.
When NY publishing guru Mike Shatzkin was in Montreal last week (see April 5 post), he made a point of mentioning the opportunity he sees for Canada’s French-language e-book publishers in allowing them access to the global francophone market.
Quebecers themselves are less excited. Archambault’s Jelis [I read] platform, which has more than 20,000 French-language titles available, has had some success with e-books priced in the $15-$23 range. An article by Jean-Marc Gilbert after the Salon du livre de Montréal last November, however, argued that the e-book is not appealing to Quebecers : Le livre numérique ne séduit pas les Québécois. Gilbert quotes blogger and E-PaperWorld founder Éric Le Ray as saying that one reason for Quebecers’ comparative lack of interest is that e-books are largely ignored by the media here.
Philippe Sauvageau, president of the Salon international du livre de Québec, has told Le Devoir that “people are not ready to abandon the printed book.” He
will be introducing the digital book to his Quebec City public this week “par la petite porte” or through the back
door and without a lot of fuss. The Salon programme will include a 3 p.m. Friday
panel organized by
the publishers’ association ANEL on How Digitalization can Add Value to Quebec Literature. Participants include university press publisher Bianca Drapeau, Author Valérie Harvey, and independent bookseller Dominique Lemieux of www.livresquebecois.com.
[This post appeared in The Globe & Mail's "In Other Words" section on Wednesday, April 13, 2011.]
Linda Leith
.ll.
When French author Annie Ernaux was ten years old, she overheard her mother conversing with a customer outside the family-run small grocery. The mother confided that there was a daughter before Annie, a six-year old girl who contracted diphtheria and who “died like a little saint.” L’Autre fille (The Other Daughter) is Annie Ernaux’s letter to the departed.
Annie Ernaux [Photo: Catherine Hélie, Gallimard]
Writers are always complaining they don’t have enough time to write, even those who are “full-time” writers. I used to find that puzzling, but now that I have joined the ranks of full-time writers, I understand better. The question, “When do you write?” is not a silly question. This is why writers are careful to broach it only with close friends. The answer has something to do with what I write – and a lot to do with whether I write at all.
"Shakespeare is – let us put it this way – the least English of English writers. The typical quality of the English is understatement, saying a little less than what you see. In contrast, Shakespeare tended toward the hyperbolic metaphor, and it would come to us as no surprise to learn that Shakespeare had been Italian, or Jewish, for instance." -- Jorge Luis Borges 1979
The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Kenneth Radu dives into the layers of memory and displacement that is the story of Alina Dumitrescu's childhood in Communist Romania.
