Books back better

Sometimes a crisis presents an opportunity to rethink and become better

by Chris Benjamin

Naomi Klein argued in her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, that free-market opportunists are handy at every disaster with market-liberalization policies to further their way of seeing the world. She said it’s high time the other side of the political spectrum make their own ideas more persuasively and forcefully available during times of crisis. It is when everything goes wrong that our minds open to new ways of seeing things.

The left of the political spectrum is not really ignorant of this concept. Peter Beinart, writing for The Atlantic’s December 2018 issue, notes that economic crisis pushed President Roosevelt to the left: “What transformed Roosevelt’s agenda was pressure from populist movements making leftist economic demands.”

“Populist movements” that were bolstered by starving Americans. Their pressure led to the New Deal, which lifted millions from poverty and built a social safety net. Crisis created the conditions to build a better society.

Wherever your political leanings, you can’t look around your home (let alone the internet) without seeing signs of failure in our society: downtown vacancies or overcrowding, lines at food banks and employment offices, abandoned or crumbling houses, plastic- littered beaches (don’t dare look in the water), abuses of political or judicial or policing power, sick people without access to healthcare, overcrowded classrooms—the list is endless. COVID-19 didn’t create crisis in our world, it exacerbated and exposed it.

Now here’s a chance to change things. But how? How do we make it better? Scroll any given Twitter feed and you’re likely to stumble away dazed and confused by the vitriol on all sides of any given political issue.

Might I humbly suggest you find solace in books, where analysis runs hundreds of pages deeper? It is incredible, perusing any season’s catalogues from Atlantic Canadian publishers alone, how many of their books tackle these same issues the COVID-19 era has spotlighted.

These books, many of them written by Black and Indigenous authors, based on meticulous, probing research as well as lived experiences, offer perhaps the sagest guidance on how the world can build back better from COVID. From them we can better understand our systems of healthcare, education, economics and justice. And we can surely build back better after COVID: stronger, more equitable, healthier and more sustainable.

How the Atlantic Canadian book industry is building back

All of this raises the question of how the book industry, which has suffered major economic setbacks from COVID, can itself build back better. “What’s been reinforced by COVID, and amplified, is the power and importance of all things local,” says Alex Liot, chief marketing officer of Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association, the professional association of Atlantic Canadian publishers (which publishes this magazine). “Buy local campaigns are not new, but they gained importance in a time when international supply chains were disrupted.

“With books, we had the products, the expertise, the talent, everything we needed to keep producing great books locally.”

Liot calls the global economic impact of COVID-19 a “frog in the pot” moment, meaning it is the time we gain awareness of problems that have long been escalating, but slowly—like a frog in a pot of slowly warming water.

“Consider the loss of local bookstores over the years. It was significant, and it reduced the clear availability of local books in retail. Suddenly, when you couldn’t get anything anywhere, the demand for local books went back up.”

But the desire for those books, he believes, already existed, it just wasn’t recognized. “People have a special relationship with local books; there’s a long tradition of revering local writers in this region. But we’ve learned that even traditional businesses need to be adaptive to change to survive.”

The biggest single change the industry has made is to focus more on the digital side of the business, e-books as well as online marketing strategies, where some authors have found large audiences via social media. The APMA had already begun new online campaigns before COVID hit, working to better catalogue Atlantic publishers’ collections, taking advantage of unique local knowledge to gain an advantage over multinational publishers.

The association’s efforts in this regard have ramped up since March. “The community brand has taken prominence,” Liot says. “It’s about Atlantic books.”

The prime example is the Time To #ReadAtlantic campaign, which was a two-year plan that became compressed into an intensive two-month period. The atlanticbooks.ca Shopify website was to create 13 thematic mini-collections of new and recent books,

156 books in all, branded with a teal lighthouse logo. The APMA made a video advertisement and purchased space in various media to promote the site and its books. “We welcomed over 25,000 website visitors, sent thousands directly to bookstores and libraries, and made 7.5 million impressions of the #ReadAtlantic brand,” Liot says.

The importance of partnerships between different players in the book world was also amplified. The APMA worked closely with library systems in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador to feature their collections. The level of publisher participation impressed Liot. “It makes for a great selection of books, with everything from boutique publishers in specific genre categories, poetry, French books, kids books, guidebooks, novels, et cetera. Guidebooks are selling off the shelves right now.” One of the most interesting new partnerships to develop was between the APMA and the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) Foundation on the Bound for Good book gifting program, which resulted from an existing understanding of the value of Atlantic books for businesses to use as gifts and rewards. NSCC is the first corporate partner to participate.

“We had just launched the program when the pandemic hit,” Liot says. “Local books became more valuable for partners as international supply chains weren’t active. As gifts, local books curated to thematic needs of the client, it beats imported swag any day.”

NSCC’s participation came as the result of a chance encounter between Liot and Don Bureaux, the president of NSCC, who both happened to be eating breakfast at Kempsters, a family restaurant in Halifax. “I gave him my business card and said I have a crazy project idea I wanted to tell him about.”

Bureaux is a big supporter of local community, and a big reader.

As Atlantic publishers develop their technological sophistication, it enhances their power to do good things for local communities. “We’re going from manually curated lists that involved hundreds of spreadsheets, to the point where they can be curated with a couple of clicks,” Liot says.

This fall, the APMA ran its Voices campaign to amplify Black authors of Atlantic Canada. “That means more books of substance being exposed to more people, and that means better things happen. It’s part of an informal education process that I think can really improve the world.”

The next phase of targeted, curated reading lists is The Gift of #ReadAtlantic, which will use online tech to help consumers locate the book they want, for sale at the nearest possible location. It’s also a great tool for authors when friends ask them, “Where should I buy your book?”

Crisis creates opportunity. It can also force the hand of book-industry traditionalists. Suddenly online tools are essential. Well, they always were. Crisis simply exposed that necessity. ■ CHRIS BENJAMIN is the managing editor of Atlantic Books Today and the author of Boy With A Problem.

Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides

Beautiful books to enthrall the child in us all

Footsteps in Bay de Verde

Charis Cotter/Jenny Dwyer 978-1-927917282 $21.95

Barefoot Helen and the Giants

Andy Jones/Katie Brosnan 978-1-927917299 $14.95

Mr. Beagle Goes to Rabbittown

Lori Doody 978-1-927917312 $11.95

The Wall and the Wind

Veselina Tomova 978-1-927917329 $12.95