Thirty years into my career as an editor, publisher, and now also bookseller, here is what I know: publishing is not broken, publishing is not dying—even though friends, strangers, colleagues, the media, and practically everyone else continually tells me that it is.
I think some people say this out of worry—the way we worry about children’s safety, children’s futures: because of intense love. Or the way we worry about nature.
Publishing is not dying, nor is it, at heart, an industry or a sector or a vertical or anything linear. It is ancient and omnipresent. To me, it is a force of nature or a living thing. Maybe the best we can do as its practitioners is try to be in sync with it and not fret so hard over its ebbs and flows. The more elaborate we get with it, under the pretense of building and profiting, the more it shrugs and keeps going at its own pace.
In 1993, on my first day as an editorial assistant at a Canadian publishing house that no longer exists, a coworker walked me around the office, past the boardroom filled with frowning executives. “What’s the meeting about?” I asked. “CD-roms,” she said. “They’re going to destroy publishing.” Hm, daunting. And hilariously wrong. CD-roms? Publishing, she don’t care.
Now I own Flying Books, a bookstore and publisher in downtown Toronto. In between, I’ve led a management buyout of a small press, consulted for a massive digital audiobook company, and worked at a large multinational that recently sold to a private equity firm. In every gig, I’ve seen and heard a lot of these kinds of worries: “People don’t read. Especially not young people.” Yes, they do. “Those who do read only want blockbusters, which are formulaic and nudge out the new and different. Also Harry Potter was the last one. Okay maybe Twilight. All right, Colleen Hoover, but after that, no more.” There are always more. “Market concentration on the retail side will kill indie bookstores.” It hasn’t. “Market concentration on the publishing side will spawn a drab and boring monoculture.” Indie publishers to the rescue.
All of the above (and more) keep not being true. Or rather, they’re partly true, but in the long run, “Ha!,” says publishing. She don’t care. And this I find freeing. Publishing always opens up ways to prove the worriers wrong, and that’s where the fun is.
Here’s what I have learned during the past eight years running my own bookstore and publishing house:
• You can start absurdly small and grow slowly. Eight years ago, I placed a homemade shelf with a few copies of 10 different titles inside a friend’s store in downtown Toronto because I wanted to see what would happen. Concerned friends warned, “But bookstores are closing! Publishing is dying!” I kept expenses low, ordered judiciously, and talked with and listened to customers. I realized I had a model I could replicate, so I expanded a little and opened inside other locations—cafes, a boutique hotel, a Rose Apothecary-esque general store.
• You can survive big bumps. The store where I had my original location closed, but the other locations remained (for a while).
• You can do the thing you really want to do. The truth is, I started the bookstore to seed the publishing program. Four years in, I thought, what am I waiting for? I read a couple of manuscripts that clicked with me, and I signed them on.
• People will astound you with their love of books. The pandemic hit. My locations closed. But people needed books for distraction, comfort, escape, elucidation—all the reasons people always need books. So my family and I delivered them to customers who ordered online. We delivered so many books that there was enough momentum to sign a commercial lease and open a physical store.
My business is fairly new, but it’s growing. A lot of my customers are young—in their early 20s—and they buy everything from blockbusters to new literary releases to classics. The book business is old, but it’s also growing and has much more potential to grow.
I’m not saying there is nothing to worry about. There’s always something to worry about. But there’s also freedom to try new things and to grow within this very old, not broken, beloved living thing.
Martha Sharpe is the owner of Flying Books, a bookstore and publishing house in Toronto.
