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Blog of Adam Daifallah -- author, journalist, law student. Lover of politics, writing, golf, curling, fitness, fashion, bacon and maple products -- not necessarily (but probably) in that order. Partisan of the Anglosphere. Contact me via email at adam@daifallah.com. This summer I am joined by Keir Wilmut and Omar Soliman.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Nope, never heard of that book. Try Amazon.ca
The irrepressible Barbara Kay beat me to the punch with a column today on a topic on which I had written a post that has sat for a week on the blogger.com server, marked "draft". But here it is anyway:
Many of you have probably heard (or know from experience) that Mark Steyn's new bestseller, America Alone, was unavailable in Chapters/Indigo bookstores for about the first two weeks after its release. Steyn lays out the shocking details in a recent Macleans column. The National Post also reported on the book snub, which prompted this response from the chain's rep in the paper. More recently, Paul Wells has reported chronic understocking of his new book in the stores, but it has apparently been corrected.
(As a side note, I am a bit surprised and happy that both Macleans and the Post are allowing this anti-Reisman/Chapters/Indigo stuff in their papers, as they could be jeopardizing future advertising dollars. Although maybe they don't have any now or just don't care.)
Although Rescuing Canada's Right wasn't nearly as big as Wells' and Steyn's books, I can report similar disappointments. A full-page excerpt from our book was published in the National Post in early November last year, just after the book had been published. Yet, actual copies of our book didn't make it onto Chapters/Indigo shelves until about two weeks later. (They were apparently sitting in the warehouse.) Also, our publisher had been told by the Reisman reps that our book would be getting prime "placement" in their stores, yet as far as we know, it was relegated to the standard Canadian politics shelves in all stores except the Bay/Bloor flagship, where it was -- at least for a few days -- prominently displayed.
Barbara Kay is right, but there's another point to be made here: this kind of bias, miscalculation, stupidity -- whatever is -- against conservative books (or books that are of interest to conservatives, as I suppose is the case with Wells) causes real economic damage to authors and book publishers. Writing a Canadian political book is already un-lucrative enough. Having the country's monopolistic book chain working against you makes things even worse.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 2:11 PM
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