The recent floods in British Columbia have disrupted the cross-country transportation of goods and further highlighted the fragility of the book supply chain. 

Vancouver-based book wholesaler and distributor Raincoast Books had more books on shelves this year than any other fall that executive vice president Peter MacDougall can remember, but the flow of orders was disrupted on Nov. 15 when B.C. was hit by an atmospheric river that caused mudslides that wiped out highways and bridges and forced entire towns to evacuate. 

Orders that Raincoast Books had invoiced up to Nov. 15 got out onto the road and where they needed to go, for the most part, but from Nov. 16–25, with the highways out of the province closed, the only orders that were delivered were those destined for B.C.’s Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, MacDougall says. 

After the highways opened up over Nov. 27–28, orders began to move out – slowly – and MacDougall says retailers are reporting this week that books from Raincoast are arriving.

“What’s really challenging, and will be the biggest challenge between now and the holiday, which is not a big window, is the breakout titles that you’re not prepared for,” MacDougall says, pointing to Scarlett St. Clair’s King of Battle and Blood, a Sourcebooks title with a publication date of Dec. 7, as a book that will get to market later than anticipated.

The situation could have been worse. Because of existing slowdowns in the supply chain this year, caused by everything from congestion at global ports to delays in shipping and an increase in demand for limited print capacity, distributors and publishers were encouraging booksellers to place their orders earlier and to order in larger quantities than they would in a typical year. 

“We started communicating this to our retail partners in the Canadian bookselling industry at all levels in the summer, and quite loudly at that,” MacDougall says. 

It is a warning that many booksellers heeded. Jessica Walker, managing partner at Munro’s Books in Victoria, says they made use of the vast overstock space in the former bank building that is home to the store to prepare for the holiday shopping season. 

“We were kind of prepared in that we had extra stock,” Walker says. “The big thing was the uncertainty of the last few weeks, and trying to find orders that had been shipped two weeks ago.”

With the major highways that connect British Columbia to the rest of the country closed and rail travel suspended, publishers and distributors scrambled to determine the location of shipments that had already been sent out. 

University of Toronto Press hasn’t had to withhold any shipments to B.C. because of the weather, but the hyper-localized circumstances have made obtaining detailed information a challenge, says Jason Farrell, vice president of distribution at UTP.

“We’ve shipped every day, but we’re four days out from B.C., and I can’t tell you what’s going to happen four days from now,” he says.

Farrell says the fragile supply chain has led to a greater demand for domestic printing, an idea that has gained traction as shipping costs to and from Asia has increased.

“The cost of transportation from Asia had risen dramatically over the last four years, before the floods and the fires, and now [with] the floods and the fires it’s just an extra risk, making it even more unpalatable to import,” he says. 

Andrew Wooldridge, publisher at Orca Book Publishers, says the Victoria-based publisher has committed to doing as much printing in Canada as possible as a result of the pandemic, but that the recent weather has underlined the importance of digital content.

“The one thing it makes me think even more about is the importance of being able to deliver content digitally, because that is one way to do it, but it’s never going to replace the need to get books places,” he says.

The situation on the ground is dynamic, with more rain on the horizon, but MacDougall and others are optimistic that things will begin to settle down at some point next year. In the meantime, the confluence of factors that have disrupted the supply chain in 2021 has brought considerations about business operations to the forefront.

“I think people are going to have to look for ways to shorten their supply chain, not so much domestically, but certainly internationally,” Farrell says. “There’s increased risk now and increased cost to the business of items coming in from a long transit time versus where we were 20 years ago, 30 years ago.”

MacDougall agrees: “I think we’re all going to have to look at this a lot more closely, and look at changing the way we do business because the current model clearly is not durable enough,” he says.

Ultimately, the impact of the recent flooding on communities such as Merritt, which was evacuated last month, is a sobering reminder that the third state of emergency in B.C. this year has far greater ramifications than the slowed movement of books. 

“We often say that there’s no such thing as a book emergency, which can feel a little bit hollow when you’re in the midst of a book emergency, but it’s the truth,” MacDougall says. “It is just getting books to shelves. There are much more pressing issues here at hand than getting the last of our holiday shipments out.”