Publishers and Agencies: Info

Our primary interest is news items, especially if they relate to things Canadian, either in terms of the what you want us to mention, or the how things get to stores in Canada. There isn’t space here for a lot of reviews, but if you have a title that is unique, different, and therefore worthy of attention, I’d be happy to describe it to our readers.

Note to independents:  We’re only interested in books available to retailers through regular trade sources at trade discounts; books in mainstream distribution by — at the very least — Ingram or Anchor (or in Canada, Parasource, WordAlive and HarperCollins.) Also, Please don’t tell us about books where every third page is written in CAPITAL LETTERS. We’re looking to promote books which have gone through a proper editing process by people who know what they’re doing.

Information about other media is welcome also; provided it’s something that could be sold in a Christian bookstore. This could include giftware, greeting cards, CDs, DVDs, etc.

There is an axiom that we use when speaking with new authors: Get your U.S. deal first and the Canadian deal will automatically fall into place. This assumes that publishers have set up those deals ahead of time. We’re a much smaller market than the U.S. I figure about 5% potential sales here. (We’re only 10% in terms of population, and then you need to halve that again in terms of religious pluralism and cultural differences in Canada.)

And please, don’t print completely uninformed Canadian prices on the back cover. If you think that “$15.99 US/$16.99 CAN” makes sense, you really don’t know anything about our market. 

Finally, if you have a book with The White House, The Capitol Building, or the American Flag on the cover then, “Sorry we’re closed.” The book is unwanted here. This also goes for titles and subtitles using phrases like: the constitution, the founding fathers, the bill of rights. or the name of any President, past, current or future. We are a distinct nation.

If you’re wanting to send a review copy, and we already said we’re interested, here’s an address you can use:

Paul Wilkinson
Christian Book Shop Talk
Five Vaughan Avenue
Port Hope, Ontario, CANADA
L1A 3Y8

If we’re really excited about the title in question, we’re run a review trade mention here; a review at Thinking Out Loud, and an excerpt at Christianity 201.

Either way, we do love permission to run excerpts at Christianity 201. See that page and click on the “Submissions” link for guidelines of what we’re looking for.

Re. bribery to get something mentioned: Gift cards should be valid in Canada, we prefer restaurants, though international hotels will be considered. There’s always cash, too. Obviously, the current review disclosure rules in the U.S. don’t apply here, though I suspect anyone taking this page too literally could land us both in a lot of trouble. In other words, we’re kidding about gift cards. But if you like what we do, consider a donation to Welcome Home Children’s Centre or Mustard Seed International.