A Big Hand for Small Books

What I’m Reading

Some skinny books on my bookshelf.

Montreal author David Homel has just had a book of personal essays published. At 91 pages, I Made a Promise I Could Not Keep is skinny enough, he says, to slide under a door.

“You achieve a sense of completion or satisfaction in a shorter period of time with a skinny book and that’s why people do it,” he says.

That’s a writer’s point of view. From a publisher’s perspective, there are other reasons for going short, enough that the small book has become a trend among Canadian publishers, including a couple here in Montreal.

Leila Marshy is the editor at Baraka Books of a series called Traction. The books are about a hundred pages long and they focus on the hot-button issues of the moment: the challenge Canada faces in dealing with the threat from south of the border (Last Call for Canada, by Peter McFarlane) and a prescription for dealing with the anxiety that comes from living in our media-saturated times (Numb, by Mark Abley).

The books in Traction are actually a revival of how publishing worked in the past. During revolutionary times, 250 years ago, when the printing press was still young, engaged writers published tracts, writing that could be printed and distributed quickly. “You would go to the printer with a few pages that contained manifestos and warnings, ways for people to understand the injustices around them,” Marshy says.

Indeed, Quebec became a centre of this ferment during the American Revolution when the Swiss-born printer Fleury Mesplet hauled his press up Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River to Montreal to agitate in favour of joining the American uprising. His press went on to print what became The Montreal Gazette.

“I’ve always liked the idea of tracts, and I’ve seen social media functioning in that manner,” Marshy says.

Linda Leith, founder of Linda Leith Publishing, is also a believer in small books. In fact, she says she inspired the idea in Canada when she began the press in 2011. (She’s recently passed ownership of the company to co-publisher Felicia Mihali.) “At the time … there was nothing like that. But I had seen it from an Irish publisher, and I thought it was a great idea.” Within a year there were at least two other publishers who were offering very short non-fiction.

“I think it’s the perfect form,” Leith says. “The writer has enough room to make a good case on whatever the subject may be without all the padding you get in a 300 to 400-page book of non-fiction. It’s like the long-form essay. You can take it on a train ride, on a plane, a bus, and you come out a better-informed person.”

And it works in fiction as well, Leith says, which she has published in the short-book format. “I love the novella length in fiction. A short novel is wonderful.”

Of course, the economics of publishing are part of the motivation for going short. There are fewer magazines offering long-form essays – at least in Canada. It gave book publishers an opening to compete in this area.

There are also the costs of publishing bigger books. “The production cycle of a book is very long. It takes rounds of editing and then you are printing it. This takes a year and half,” Marshy says. We wanted a shorter production cycle – a really tight topic written by someone who knows that topic and won’t take a long time to write it. We can print it quicker, get it into the stores and people’s hands faster.”

The books are cheaper too. “The prices are from several years ago,” Marshy says. “You can acquire significant info and understanding in a digestible format.”

Small also means smaller format, the cost of paper being a factor. Baraka’s small books are typically are 4½” x 7”; Linda Leith Publishing’s are 5”x 8”. It means the books are at disadvantage when it comes to competing with larger editions on a bookstore shelf, especially if the spines all that face the outward. But Leith says, they’re usually grouped with books of a similar topic, and the discerning buyer will find what they are looking for.

A book begins and ends with the writer, so the last word goes to Homel, whose book of essays is on Linda Leith Publishing’s list: “One thing I do not go along with is the idea people have short attention spans and they’re always on their phones and you have to give them something fast and digestible … I think it’s a decision that the writer makes to use that format and I think if you have something to say and you can say it quicker, that’s better.”

Linda Leith Publishing is holding a group launch of its books at the Blue Metropolis festival on Sunday in Suite 10 of the Hôtel 10 on Sherbrooke Street. The festival is on now at the hotel and continues through the weekend.

Peter McFarlane’s and Mark Abley’s books will be launched at Librairie Pulp Books and Café at 3952 Wellington Street in Verdun, on May 28 at 7 pm.