Q&Q Omni Category: Special feature
The most recent 250 items in this category are below. To find something specific, please use the search box.
Long time coming: long-form non-fiction on the Internet
Last October, around the time Joan Didion’s Blue Nights hit bookstores, it was difficult to pick up any magazine or newspaper without coming across a... Read the rest »
Q&A with Keith Clayton, director of publishing and creative development, Random House Publishing Group
As part of Book Summit 2011 on June 17 in Toronto, Keith Clayton, director of publishing and creative development for Random House Publishing Group in... Read the rest »
Playing in the Pop Sandbox: Following the surprise success of last year’s Kenk, Toronto’s Pop Sandbox is confident there’s an audience for its unique multimedia productions
As a teenager, Alex Jansen, founder of the boutique publisher and multimedia company Pop Sandbox, had one goal: to produce a feature film before turning... Read the rest »
The long-distance library: In a wired world, libraries are offering more downloadable content
Imagine a typical Canadian library user – let’s call her Jennifer. Home from a long day at the office, Jennifer wants nothing more than to... Read the rest »
Libraries and the cool factor: Teens are coming to libraries for the Wii – but will they stay for the books?
Once a month, dozens of teenage boys stream through the doors of the Toronto Public Library’s Albion branch, but they haven’t come for the books... Read the rest »
Reviving an inner-city library: How a Regina librarian rejuvenated a neglected branch
A few years ago, armed with a modest provincial grant, the Albert Library branch of the Regina Public Library set about rejuvenating its drab, forbidding... Read the rest »
The CanLit 30: People of influence
There’s nothing like a list to get people talking. At least, that’s what we’re hoping. Here at Q&Q, we’ve come up with one of our... Read the rest »
The CanLit history five
Q&Q asked author Roy MacSkimming to look at the history of the Canadian book-biz, and to name five people who changed everything. CanLit... Read the rest »
Surviving Survival
It’s been 35 years since Margaret Atwood published Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. Her mission was primarily to uncover the patterns that defined... Read the rest »
Rising stars: Canadian sci-fi authors to watch
While there may not be a lot of domestic science fiction publishing in Canada (see story, p. 26), there’s no shortage of talented authors, from... Read the rest »
The great SF brain drain: Why do Canada’s science fiction authors have to go south to get published?
If all you had to go on were the catalogues of Canadian publishing houses, you would probably get the impression that there aren’t many science... Read the rest »
Getting mighty crowded: Are series titles pushing out standalone kids’ fiction?
As a boy growing up in Newfoundland in the 1950s, children’s author Kevin Major was crazy about the Hardy Boys series. Whenever he got his... Read the rest »
Nelson for sale: Canada’s textbook market waits for the shoe to drop
Thomson Corp., owned by Canada’s richest family, is trying to strike what could be one of the largest publishing deals in recent memory – the... Read the rest »
Sex and the teenage reader: School librarians may have to tread carefully, but teens are hungry for books about sex
At an uptown branch of the Toronto Public Library one morning last October, a boy who looked to be about 15 nudged his friend. “I... Read the rest »
Meet the Kidcritters: How a small online writers’ group became a miniature publishing phenomenon
In 2002, a 35-year-old Ontario grade-school teacher named Marina Cohen completed a manuscript for a children’s fantasy novel called Shadow of the Moon, about a... Read the rest »
The fate of Captain Copyright: Should Access Copyright be arguing its case to six-year-olds?
It was supposed to be a fun way of teaching schoolchildren about copyright and intellectual property issues. Instead, Access Copyright’s “Captain Copyright” website ignited such... Read the rest »
Glen Huser’s lesson plan: How teaching led to a string of successful YA novels
Last October, the Edmonton children’s writer Glen Huser travelled the length and breadth of Alberta during the province’s month-long Chrysalis Festival. The annual literary fest... Read the rest »
The shrinking book section: Why campus stores are rethinking or replacing their trade inventory
After 16 largely happy years, Kathryn Wardropper, the trade book manager at the Laurier Bookstore at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, left the store... Read the rest »
Escape from the beige people: Teresa Toten brings some colour to Canadian kidlit
Teresa Toten is as colourful as the lipstick that stars in her picture book, Bright Red Kisses. Sitting in my living room in... Read the rest »
How to reach a teacher-librarian: Publishers and authors are finding creative methods to get their books into school libraries
Early this year, Kids Can Press will launch a new website called The Resource Room, which the company is promoting as a “free online library... Read the rest »
The latest literacy cure-all: Are levelled books crowding out a fuller range of reading for kids?
Teacher’s crutch or door opener? Publishing fad or silver bullet? Inauthentic or accessible? Levelled books, or supplementary readers written specifically to correspond to... Read the rest »
YA for everybody: Could adult readers save YA literature?
In the ever-embattled arena of book publishing, no market is considered a tougher sell than the young-adult genre. Teen readers are a notoriously hard-to-please demographic,... Read the rest »
Lobster fights for BPIDP money
The Montreal children’s publisher Lobster Press has filed suit against the Department of Canadian Heritage after being denied funding last fall. In an application filed... Read the rest »
Youth movement: A Toronto teen’s ambitious YA fantasy trilogy
Last fall Wingate Press, a small Ontario press, launched a projected trilogy of fantasy novels for young adults with The Book of Broken Hours, the... Read the rest »
Best books of 2003: Q&Q's top 5 Canadian fiction, non-fiction, and children's titles
In what was either a further sign of out-of-touch award juries or an ever-broadening spectrum of critical opinion, two of the most popular and critically acclaimed novels of the year failed to crack the Governor General’s Award or Giller Prize shortlists. Read the rest »
Who reads?: 40% of Canadians don't buy books. No wonder publishing is tough
Survey after survey in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. indicate that people are reading less and buying fewer books than they were even five years ago. The book-buying market could, if not carefully cultivated, slip away. Read the rest »
The state of book reviewing: CanWest’s coverage of Canadian titles has declined sharply since 1997, survey shows
A Quill & Quire survey of book review coverage in eight major Canadian newspapers confirms the fears of many small presses in this country: the mainstream print media are paying less attention to their books. Read the rest »
Best books of 2002
Perhaps the biggest surprise in a stellar year for Canadian fiction was that the most celebrated novel was actually released in 2001. Read the rest »
2002 salary survey: The publishing life: The pay’s getting better, the hours a little shorter, but a promotion? Forget it.
A lot has changed in the book industry in the past five years, but apparently not the enthusiasm of the people who work in it. Read the rest »
Building a better distributor: Other industries adopted just-in-time ordering more than a decade ago. It’s about time publishing took notice
Michael Neill has too many books in his store. The owner of Mosaic Books in Kelowna, B.C., recently tracked the sales of 5,000 frontlist titles over three months and found that he had vastly overordered for most of them – in fact, only 20 titles had sold more than 25 copies in the period. Read the rest »
Judging jackets: Incredibly derivative? Getting better all the time? What is the state of Canadian book design?
Canadian designer and typographer Dean Allen once described book design as a performance. Like an actor who starts with a script or a musician who starts with a score, a book designer begins with a sum of text. “Each is called upon to interpret the material in a way that works. Each is subject to the whims of taste and fashion, and each runs the risk of shouldering the blame if no one applauds.” Read the rest »
The crisis in school libraries: How did we fall so far so fast?
Last year, two of the five finalists in a national essay-writing competition were students from St. Andrew’s High School, in Victoria, B.C., and perhaps it’s... Read the rest »
Best books of 2001: Q&Q picks the top 5 of the year in Canadian fiction, non-fiction, and children’s books
Younger writers make a strong showing on our year-end list. Along with veterans Alice Munro and Richard B. Wright, who released some of their best... Read the rest »
Culture vs. commerce: Has Ottawa’s publishing policy lost sight of its cultural goals?
“The Government will assist the book publishing industry…make the transition to the new economy.” Speech from the Throne, February 2001, hinting at a $28-million budgetary... Read the rest »
The disappearing canon: What happened to CanLit’s classics?
Robert Lecker knows that Lynn Crosbie’s novel Paul’s Case is a controversial book. He understands why, because it deals starkly and sometimes brutally with murderers... Read the rest »
The grant game: Is it time to change the rules?
Ask writers about the granting system in Canada, which last year dished out more than $5-million to Canada’s English-language authors, and in all likelihood you’ll get an earful. Grants are supposed to support writers and foster the development of new talent in this country, but there’s never enough money to go around – and that’s where the grumbling begins. Read the rest »
Minorities in publishing: Where is everyone?
After touring his class through some publishing houses last year, Don Sedgwick was confronted by a couple of “politically minded” publishing students who had noticed that most of the faces they’d encountered in the industry – from instructors to guest speakers to staff at the companies they’d visited – had been white. “Why is that?” Sedgwick recalls them asking. “Is anything being done about it?” Read the rest »
The future of Canadian publishing: Eleven industry leaders describe the road ahead
E-books, the Internet, new publishing formats. However they see the future, Canadian book professionals agree that digital technology will bring major changes to the trade.... Read the rest »
Best books of 1999
Whether it was the post-millennial letdown – expectations for a literary blockbuster in the century’s final year ran high – or merely a year of... Read the rest »
They must be giants: The Canadian book industry goes global
Size really did matter in the 1990s. Never mind the talk that smaller meant nimbler, more more adaptable, or more customer-oriented. At decade’s end, it was the companies that thought big or got big, the ones that looked to the international market, expanded or merged, that had the greatest impact on the Canadian book industry this decade. Read the rest »
Making ends meet: Few writers can live off their craft. Fortunately, most don’t have to
You can make a living as a writer in Canada, but you’d better be prepared to sharpen your negotiating skills, or accept poverty wages with... Read the rest »
Forty great works of Canadian fiction: A Q&Q panel selects the century’s literary “best”
Quill & Quire panelists placed Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel at the top of a list of the 40 best Canadian novels of the 20th century. But the selections may say as much about the panelists and current critical thinking as they do about the books Read the rest »
There’s no life like it: The pay is erratic and benefits few, but freelance editors enjoy their freedom
When Ruth Wilson announced she would leave her position as managing editor at Self-Counsel Press in June 1997 to embark on a career as a... Read the rest »
A fine balance: Can women juggling work and family make it to the top?
Marie Campbell had been in the publishing business for almost 10 years and never had second thoughts about her career choice. Her job was creative and challenging, the industry was full of intelligent, highly motivated women, and the glamour of working with books and their creators compensated for the chronically low salaries. And then she had a baby. Read the rest »
Best books of 1998
When it comes to picking year-end “best of” lists, people’s memories tend to be short, and Q&Q’s fiction panelists were no exception – four of... Read the rest »
Best Books of 1997
There’s no doubt about it: 1996 was a hard act to follow. After a bounty of stellar titles that, more than a year later, are... Read the rest »
The best Canadian kids books of all time: L.M. Montgomery, Kevin Major ranked highest by Q&Q panelists
The canonization of literature has never been a democracy, especially when it comes to children’s books, where the arbiters of the good, the bad, and... Read the rest »
Best books of 1996
Was 1996 the year, in Canadian fiction, of Not Enough Prizes? It’s not that this country’s Big Two awards, the Giller and the Governor General’s,... Read the rest »
The complete personal library: Q&Q panelists put a contemporary spin on a 225-year-old collection
This issue of Quill & Quire lists the absolute, definitive collection of books that every Canadian should have in his or her home. No questions,... Read the rest »
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