Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
That's actually not saying a whole lot, as Canada is a small market. Canadian writers trying to make a living at it can't do so on book sales. Their goal is to qualify for government grants to writers. A few folks like Margaret Atwood have achieved market success outside of Canada, but for most, the goal is to attach to the government sugar tit.
Dennis
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I disagree. Canadian writers can make a living, and quite a few of them do. However, they tend to sell to the same New York publishers as American writers do. The ones who go for grants tend to be writing literary rather than commercial fiction and sending it to Canadian publishers. That's a very small market. The majority of the Canadian market (which is about 10% the size of the US market -- in line with the population) is served by the same US publishers as the US market. There's a reason that I can buy exactly the same book in the US as I can in Canada, and that the Canadian price is printed on a book I bought in Virginia.
Don't tar all Canadian writers with the CanLit brush. Many of them (Robert Sawyer and Dave Duncan for example) have no problem making a living from book sales.