Daniel Morin
Jessica Clark, Marie Clausén and Eric Nelson
After going through periods of uncertainty, restructuring and transition over the past 18 months, the staff of the University of Ottawa Press (UOP) is decidedly optimistic about the prospects of the 70-year-old academic publishing house.
In the past year alone, the UOP has published some 25 books and made considerable headway in strengthening existing collections, while venturing into unexplored territory, says acquisitions editor Eric Nelson. With 70 manuscripts in various states of readiness in hand, Nelson is looking at an “ambitious target” of 40 books being published in the next year, but adds that the overriding concern remains “quality over quantity.”
Much of this work has been possible because of a commitment of $1 million over a five-year period by the University in fall 2006. Nelson says the biggest improvement is the financial administration of the Press, which the University now oversees after ending an arrangement with the University of Toronto Press. “We have a lot more independence and control than we did under the management of UTP.”
The resources and the support from the University have also helped the Press to take the books to a whole different level in terms of aesthetics, says managing editor Marie Clausén. “We are getting good feedback from collection directors and authors.”
The winds of positive change are blowing in other areas, not least of which is the visibility of the Press where it counts—in the marketplace. “We now have a professionally designed Web site which includes our complete catalogue,” says Jessica Clark, who handles marketing for the Press. That web content is also fed to major online booksellers, such as Indigo-Chapters and Amazon.
The Press has distribution deals with Prologue for its French titles and with the University of Toronto for its English catalogue. As well, the publishing house now has a sales force that tours bookstores to promote its offerings.
All this has had a positive impact on sales: the calendar year 2007 showed a 10 per cent increase over 2006, and the 2007-2008 fiscal year is on track for a 25 per cent increase over 2006-2007.
Nelson is also looking to have a more proactive role in exploiting international markets, which he sees as key to the growth of the Press. “The competition is intense in Canada,” he says. “Statistics consistently show that there are far more books than readers in Canada.”
Clausén is particularly excited about new forays in the world of Canadian literature. “We have just published Waste Heritage [by Irene Baird]”, a novel that tells the story of disenfranchised workers on the West Coast in the late 1930s and which has been described as the “Canadian Grapes of Wrath.”
“It’s the first novel ever published by the University of Ottawa Press,” says Jessica Clark. It also marks the first of a series of critical editions of Canadian novels which did not gather much attention when they were first published, but deserve to be better-known.
The Press has even launched a “science-based” fiction series under the direction of Professor William Leiss.
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