Martha Sharpe, left, and Emily M. Keeler, of Flying Books publishing.Tijana Martin/The Globe and Mail
For many, it is the worst of times to be a Canadian publisher. But for Flying Books, a tiny, portable Toronto bookstore founded by Martha Sharpe in 2015, it is the best of times to be starting up shop as Canada’s newest independent publisher.
Its list, Sharpe says, will be as “choosily chosen” as the bookstore’s inventory. The business places “flights” – as in, a series of small samples offered at one time – of a dozen or so books in local businesses, such as cafés, where they aren’t usually sold. After previous expansions to include a reading and writing school and a mentorship program, this new endeavour takes the company national in its outreach, and welcomes aboard editor Emily Keeler as a business partner.
“My memory is that Martha’s been asking me to join her in this for four years,” Keeler explains over lunch, where the two women visibly fizz with excitement to discuss the plans they’ve held as a shared secret since February of this year. “Eventually, I said yes.”
Key among Sharpe’s tools of persuasion is her formidable résumé. A former publisher at House of Anansi, Sharpe was instrumental in the management buy-out that saved the press from the bankruptcy of its then owner, Stoddart Publishing, in 2002. At Anansi, Sharpe nurtured early work by authors including Sheila Heti and Michael Winter, and famously plucked Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game from the slush pile. Keeler is similarly credentialled: At 25, she launched literary journal Little Brother, which, like Flying Books, nurtured a community of writers and readers within its orbit. Keeler folded the National Magazine Award-winning publication to take on various high-profile editorial positions in book, newspaper and magazine publishing.
Still, launching a new press is not for the faint of heart. Canadian publishing is a $1.1-billion industry, according to print sales tracked in the Canadian, English-language trade market by BNC SalesData. BookNet chief executive officer Noah Genner says that print sales in the Canadian, English-language trade market “have been flat or slightly down over the past seven years.” Of the 54 million English-language trade books sold in Canada in 2018, the market share by volume sold for Canadian-owned publishers was just 5.6 per cent. Two of Canada’s newer independent houses, Stonehouse Publishing in Edmonton and Latitude 46 in Sudbury, Ont., formed in 2014 and 2015 respectively, are still not able to pay their founders. Montreal’s QC Fiction, an imprint of Baraka Books, landed a title on the Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist in 2018, but has no salaried staff.
But Flying Books remains undeterred by these grim numbers. “I figure the key quality of a publisher is persuasiveness,” Keeler says. “And I thought, if Martha can persuade me to do this wild, fun, risky thing, I have faith that we can persuade a lot of people to join us in it.”
While bookstore-publishers such as San Francisco’s City Lights and Windsor, Ont.’s Biblioasis provided some inspiration, Keeler likens the Flying Books business model more to Netflix, with its move to original content: through their bookstores and writing school, they are now able to fund the publication of original Flying Books manuscripts.
“I talked myself out of it for so long because of money,” Sharpe says, “and then I realized, starting Flying Books had made me realize it’s possible to start something really small and grow it.” For now, Flying Books is a two-woman team that will publish just two or three books a year. “The choosily chosen part is key here,” Sharpe says. “We’ll do the books we think we can do a really good job with.”
“People get behind good things and we both have proven track records of making good things,” Keeler adds. “However – and please put this in the story,” she adds with a laugh, “if any qualified publicist would like to volunteer their time …”
Flying Books’s launch titles are both debut adult novels by young Canadian women. Keeler describes Good Girl by Anna Fitzpatrick as a “comic kink novel … a real knee-slapper,” and Marlowe Granados’s Happy Hour as How to Marry a Millionaire updated for the millennial age in postrecession New York.” Granados’s novel had initially been submitted to publishers by her U.K. agent in 2017. The author credits the “moxie and fearlessness” with which Flying Books approached her work for allowing it to finally find a home.
Canadian sales and distribution contracts are already in place with Canadian Manda Group and the University of Toronto respectively, and although Flying Books’s first two acquisitions are novels by Canadian authors, they have already bid on non-fiction and international authors. “It was out of our mouths and then manuscripts were coming in and they were the right kind of manuscripts,” Sharpe says. “So that for me was the most interesting and telling sign, that there was room and this is something we can and should do.”
While the press will operate, like many start-ups, from the homes and laptops of the two founders for now, Keeler says their ambition is to grow the company quickly. “Nothing about the way Flying Books has operated is hobbyish,” she says. “Some of the audiences for some of the things are small – you can only take so many people in a class, for example – but the idea is that we’re building something.”
“When you do our 10-year anniversary story you can come to our very nice office,” she laughs, “but for now, let’s just start the car!”
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