Canada's publishers are poised
to capitalize on the global success of our fin-de-siècle authors, who
have won major literary prizes throughout the world such as the Booker,
the Orange and the Commonwealth, in both fiction and non-fiction. Sales
of books published in Canada
and sold abroad grew to $154.8 million in 2000/01, a 16% increase over
1998/99. The large majority of these export sales, $133 million,
was generated from sales of publishers' own titles. The United
States continues to be Canada's
biggest foreign market.
Turning to the domestic story, book sales by publishers in Canada
grew 18% from 1997/98 to 2000/01. In 2000/01, 15,700 titles in all genres
were published in Canada.
The publishing world is also becoming caught in the Internet. With the
electronic palm reader, the page has become a hand-held screen. Multiple
books and articles can be stored within the device's memory, and new titles
can be downloaded directly from a publisher's website. The palm reader
may have an effect on the industry as dramatic as the introduction of
the mass-market paperback.
