Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Association of Canadian Publishers represents the interests of 125 Canadian-owned English language book publishers from across the country. It provides advocacy; promotes professional development; and fosters collaboration, most notably, over the past two years, in the production of digital content.
The transformation of publishing processes from traditional to digital is well advanced in editing, design, typesetting, printing, order processing, metadata management, and e-book production, but we are still at the early stages in developing e-book pricing models and in digital marketing of both printed books and e-books.
ACP has several goals in this digital environment, and I will enumerate and describe four of them here.
The first is to maximize the revenue potential of e-books.
Canadian publishers have eagerly embraced opportunities to convert their content into digital format, particularly with the growing popularity of e-readers for general interest and even academic reading. Dozens of Canadian publishers have already produced marketable works in the early stages of this e-book phenomenon, and many more are now engaged in this market. The challenge now is to move from the conversion of content into digital files to the creation of content in digital format. As this new revenue stream opens up for publishers around the world, it's vital that Canadian publishers be able to take full advantage of it.
The second goal is to maximize the potential of digital technology in raising awareness of Canadian books in print, digital, and all other formats. Traditional ways of selling books are becoming less effective, independent bookstores are closing down across the country, newspapers are dropping or sharply curtailing their book review sections, and our national book chain is further reducing the space it devotes to books relative to other merchandise categories. And also, e-books tend to cost much less than traditional paper books.
At the same time, technology is creating new ways of promoting and selling books. Online retailers such as Amazon carry a much wider inventory than traditional stores; blogging offers up all the critical opinion and debate of newspaper reviews; social networking functions as word-of-mouth publicity; publishers' and authors' websites can generate attention for Canadian books and facilitate sales; and a new portal currently in development, called Canadian Bookshelf, will make Canadian-authored titles from all publishers much more discoverable on the web, much easier for teachers to integrate into their libraries and course materials, and more accessible for any reader anywhere in the world.
This wholesale change in the way the public learns about books, seeks them out, and acquires them is transforming the business practices of the book industry, and Canadian publishers must be ready and able to exploit these opportunities.
The third goal is to participate in the development of new business models for book publishing and distribution. With the advent of the digital era, retailers and publishers are throwing out old pricing and discount structures, rewriting contracts, and inventing new ways of doing business. We wish to seize this opportunity to shape our market environment before larger, foreign-based companies do it for us. We must have the capacity to experiment with new structures that reflect Canadian realities and benefit Canadian authors, publishers, and readers.
A fourth objective for the ACP is to increase the presence of Canadian books in Canadian schools. In the past 15 years we've seen a decline of investment in school libraries as well as a decline in the proportion of Canadian-published books in these diminished collections. Our children need to hear Canadian stories, told in Canadian voices, to learn the history and culture of their own country and to understand the issues that shape their own communities. New technology is allowing us to promote Canadian books to this market, and we must make the most of this opportunity.
Looking at the role of government, we feel that we can see perhaps three strategies that we certainly would support. The first is to protect the value of intellectual property assets with solid copyright legislation. As many of you know, many Canadian publishers are worried about expanding the definition of “fair dealing” to include education, as is proposed in Bill C-32, and we look forward to working with government in the months ahead to ensure that Canadians--as consumers, as creators, and as producers--have a better understanding of the role of copyright in all aspects of their lives and in Canada's place in the digital world.
The second strategy or support that could come from government is the support of risk. I think the fast pace of change in the digital environment requires bold initiatives, willingness to experiment, and ability to learn from all outcomes, good or bad. The stakes are high, and the financial resources in a small business or small-margin industry are very limited. New solutions are required for the challenges of new formats and new business models. We believe that public investment programs must be flexible enough and strategic enough to support the risks that small businesses must take on in finding and building these new solutions.
Finally, we could certainly see government helping to facilitate access to capital, specifically through more broadly based funding programs, links to private investment, perhaps a loan guarantee program, and a federal tax credit for digital and print books.
