Abstract
A significant portion of books on Amazon are self-published using Kindle Direct Publishing. Self-publishers are given an opportunity to share their work with the world with a few clicks of their mouse. However, traditional publishing infrastructures are not as welcoming to the self-publisher. This paper undertakes to perform a policy analysis of government funding frameworks available to workers of the Canadian publishing industry. Through performing a discourse analysis, the study finds that the self-publisher is ineligible to apply for funds and grants from the government both on the provincial and the federal levels. The self-publishing business model is not recognized as a legitimate one and is often equated with vanity publishing, which comes with a stigma. Furthermore, traditional publishing industry workers act as gatekeepers who also exclude the self-publisher from the conversation around the changing landscape of the Canadian publishing industry. Even though the self-publisher should be recognized as a legitimate worker of the cultural industries, they are not acknowledged as such both by government officials who distribute grants and traditional publishers. This study adds to the limited scope of research conducted on self-publishing in order to break the boundaries that self-publishers encounter. The study concludes with recommendations to assess the process of the distribution of government funds and grants in order to incorporate the changing practices of the cultural industries and incorporate new business models such as self-publishing.
Highlights
A significant portion of books on Amazon are self-published using Kindle Direct Publishing
The following section of the research draws on data collected from the Canada Book Fund (CBF) Application Guidelines from 2013-2019, in addition to the Cultural Industries Cluster Evaluation Report (Department of Canadian Heritage, 2014) in order to highlight some issues in the wording of the funding frameworks, which exclude new business models
This study investigates a report issued by the Association of Canadian publisher (ACP), which represents around 115 presses and is a major association for traditional publishers in Canada (Association of Canadian Publishers, 2019)
Summary
The Canadian government has had an active role in the function of the Canadian cultural industries since 1957 with the founding of the Canada Council for the Arts; in 1972 the federal government started providing funds and loans to publishers directly (Dewar, 2017). No active research is being conducted on the government’s role in the Canadian publishing sector and how new business models such as selfpublishing can be successfully incorporated into the Canadian book trade. This study aims to open future discussions on the role of the self-publisher in the changing landscape of the Canadian publishing industry and highlight some issues present in government funding frameworks. The current government funding available has mostly helped the already established actors of the traditional publishing industry This is an issue because the corporate world of book production (the gatekeepers) often limits the entrance of new business models into the system. There are very few contemporary studies conducted on the Canadian self-publishing sector in general (Olson, 2014; Thomlison and Belanger, 2015); and there are no studies outlining how new business models, such as digital selfpublishing, are being incorporated into the Canadian book trade. This study aims to fill this void in order to bring self-publishing into the conversation around the changing practices in the publishing industry
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