Evidence of meeting #28 for Canadian Heritage in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was book.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
Go ahead. I was asking how much time I had left.
I have about a minute left, that's all.
3:45 p.m.
Director, University of Ottawa Press, Association of Canadian Publishers
We're conducting an experiment with e-books, paper books and open access books. This is typical of university presses. The idea is to determine whether having e-books with open access would have negative, positive or neutral consequences for the sale of e-books in another format, let's say epub or paper books. That isn't clear; that's the problem. We're in this transition period. To tell you the truth, I myself am not—
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
Pardon me for interrupting you, but the Chair will soon be cutting me off. I simply want to know what the future of paper books is. Is there a future for paper books or is it over and we'll be moving on to something else?
3:45 p.m.
Director, University of Ottawa Press, Association of Canadian Publishers
I hope there's a future. There's definitely a future for the moment. It's hard to say because, how do you say—
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
3:45 p.m.
Director, University of Ottawa Press, Association of Canadian Publishers
Perfecto. Hablo español.
3:45 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
3:45 p.m.
Director, University of Ottawa Press, Association of Canadian Publishers
It would seem to me that the future for paper books is in very fine, beautiful, hardcover books. That will continue. Whether the paperback will continue is another question, because certainly one can produce those in a much more interesting format electronically.
3:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you very much, Mr. O'Hearn and Monsieur Rodriguez.
Go ahead, Monsieur Pomerleau.
3:45 p.m.
Bloc
Roger Pomerleau Bloc Drummond, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks as well to the three witnesses, including Ms. Kopak, for meeting with us today, if only by videoconference.
Here's my first question. You said we wanted to avoid lagging behind in the digitization of books. Where do you think Canada stands internationally in that regard? In previous testimony, people have said that we originally had a head start but that we're now lagging behind. Is that the case for the digitization of books?
3:50 p.m.
Director, Business Development and Operations, Great Northern Way Campus
We're lagging behind, especially compared to where we were.
If you're in a big urban centre in Canada, you have access to high-speed Internet. You need to be able to push that out so that everybody has access to high-speed data lines.
We're not lagging behind in innovation by the young people who are coming out of our school system. Whenever I get a bit worried about the country, I spend 10 minutes with some high school students, who have a ton of ideas about where to take us. I think we're lagging behind in that we have to enable education systems to let them develop new ideas.
As an example, if you go to any high school or any elementary school, they'll all have SMART Boards in their rooms. If they get money, they can buy a SMART Board, which is an interactive whiteboard that they can do cool things on. Although the school boards will buy them for them, the teachers don't get trained on how to use them and there's no content to put on them, but at least we're trying to get them out there. Where we're lagging behind is in allowing that education system to catch up to the students.
I don't know if that makes sense, but Canadian young people are very eager to make new things and new content and to tell their stories and tell their parents' stories; we just have to enable that. In terms of technology, we're there. Where we're lagging behind, I think, is in education, and I think we're lagging behind in rolling out the high-speed Internet. We really need high speed.
3:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you, Madam Kopak.
Mr. O'Hearn, would you like to respond to Monsieur Pomerleau?
3:50 p.m.
Director, University of Ottawa Press, Association of Canadian Publishers
Yes, thank you.
I recently went to the Frankfurt book fair. I was surprised at the Europeans' attitude toward e-books. I was there specifically to sell rights and to find books for co-publishing ventures. On a number of occasions, when we started the negotiations, I mentioned e-books and digital rights. Every time, that elicited absolutely no interest. It was surprising.
I think it's a bit hard to answer your question. Perhaps it depends on the publishing sector. With regard to university presses, for example, Canada is quite advanced in the preparation of e-books. In other areas, it may not be as clear.
This may be surprising, but I discovered that the most advanced publishing firm in this field in Canada is Harlequin Romance. That's very interesting.
3:50 p.m.
Director, University of Ottawa Press, Association of Canadian Publishers
We can also use e-readers. That's a bit like a video where you can see trailers. We can do exactly the same thing with a book. The book can end in various ways. There are also interviews with characters in the novel. It's extraordinary.
3:50 p.m.
Bloc
Roger Pomerleau Bloc Drummond, QC
What's your view, for example, of Google's attempts to compete with you by digitizing books and perhaps not paying what should be paid in order to do so? What's your view on that as a competitor?
3:50 p.m.
Director, University of Ottawa Press, Association of Canadian Publishers
Those are very complicated questions.
3:50 p.m.
Director, University of Ottawa Press, Association of Canadian Publishers
Thank you.
I was going to say that if you have any important, technical or difficult questions, you can put them to Ms. Ross.
3:50 p.m.
Bloc
Roger Pomerleau Bloc Drummond, QC
It's always the youngest people who have the answers when we talk about these subjects.
3:55 p.m.
Director, University of Ottawa Press, Association of Canadian Publishers
I have to admit that our company is working with Google.
With regard to e-books, we often have access to only one or a few chapters, or to a table of contents, for example, simply to encourage someone to buy the paper book.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you, Mr. O'Hearn.
Thank you, Mr. Pomerleau.
Mr. Angus, go ahead, please.
3:55 p.m.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Thank you.
I find this conversation fascinating, because I started a magazine in 1995 when people were doing cut and paste. We used to have to get the light tables. We had a little Mac with a screen that big, and with PageMaker and QuarkXPress we suddenly were competing. Our stuff was as good as anything coming out of big professional houses. Now any kid on the block can put out stuff that looks fancier than what I could produce with my $1,000 programs. There is a dramatic change.
What doesn't change, though, is the need for content and the value of content. I found it interesting that you said the jury is out on digital and books and whether the book is going to disappear. It would seem to me that we always look at digital in terms of one factor in a market that's changing dramatically on a number of fronts. Many small Canadian publishers used to feed a number of small suppliers then. They were only supplying one or two large chains, and those large chains told them they had to supply a massive amount of books, so they did; then, of course, all those remainders would go back, which would put them out of business. The small publishers couldn't feed one or two giants the way Random House could.
With regard to e-books and Google, do you not think that the issue--and you mentioned quality--is that at the end of the day, people still want to have something they can hold and something they can read? We blow through it on our BlackBerrys and we read all kinds of content, but to read a book is an experience. Don't you think that's why people fork out the dollars?
3:55 p.m.
Director, University of Ottawa Press, Association of Canadian Publishers
I would have to agree. I think that's what I was saying, though: that beautiful books, the hard-bound books with a lot of craftsmanship in them, will continue. I have no doubt about that.
I was thinking more in terms of two situations. One might be the easy read, in a sense. If you're on a plane trip or a vacation or something like that, you can bring along 100 novels or more, if you want to, on one of those e-readers. I don't know how many you could actually get in there.
I did an experiment the other day. My mother is 81, and I went trundling in with one very large book and an e-reader. I said, “Mom, what do you think?” She spent some time flipping through both, and her answer was, “Well, dear, I like the book. This thing is interesting and it has its place, but it doesn't bend.”
Some of us are wedded. It's a cultural thing. The book is a cultural item. The way it works is as a cultural item. Many of us of a certain age are certainly wedded to it. I have also seen statistics, which unfortunately I don't have here, saying that for doing a lot of their research, university students still prefer paper books, but I don't know where that came from.
3:55 p.m.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I have five books published, and two of them are on Google Books. I probably should check the others out. I would say that the value of the remaindered book is basically what you can sell it for out of the back of your car. Remaindered books are trashed by the hundreds, but now I find that with my books on Google, people are contacting me because they accidentally stumbled on a book they never would have read otherwise and are taking these out-of-print books. I actually am selling books, and I find my wife is always racking up bills for books she's found online because they were on Google Books.
You say you work with Google. Do you think there's a way of building a market there for people who would never check out a subject or an issue in a bookstore, but when they do random searches, the books are starting to appear? Whether it's part of an article or a full article, they're going to want to track down that original book. Is that where that market is going to go?