Made in Canada vs. Created in Canada: What Makes a Book Canadian?
Lately, Canadians have been paying much closer attention to where the things they buy actually come from for a variety of reasons both personal and political and that's great that we have so many choices available for things that it is something that can be a choice, or is it?
Sometimes things marked "Canadian", have a shiny maple leaf on them, say "Product of Canada" or "Made in Canada" are not 100% Canadian nor do they have to be. In a high trust society people trust what the labels say - but more and more we are learning that labels are not telling the whole story of these products.
51% is the threshold for "Made in Canada" label which I discovered when I went to research writing this post. That is actually a bit disappointing to see.
Buy Canadian Story on CBC
The other day in the car, we were listening to a CBC News story about the renewed Buy Canadian movement where people were sending short videos to be featured as part of this trend and that caught our attention. The story was about how Canadian shopping groups, websites, and apps are once again seeing huge increases in traffic as people search for Canadian products and businesses to support.
It made me think about something I have had to consider quite a bit as a Canadian independent publisher: Are our Canadian books qualified to actually say "Made in Canada?"
As I've talked about before, the answer is surprisingly complicated so for now we are not labeling them with that phrase.
What makes a book Canadian?
When we describe a book as Canadian, we could be talking about several different things.
A book might be:
written by a Canadian author
illustrated by a Canadian illustrator
designed and edited in Canada
published by a Canadian-owned publishing company
published under a Canadian ISBN
printed in Canada
Sometimes all of those things are true and sometimes only some of them are. That distinction has become much more noticeable as Canadians increasingly look for products that are not simply sold in Canada, but actually made here.
A Canadian book isn't necessarily printed in Canada
Little Goodbyes Press is an independent Canadian publishing company based in Ontario. Our books are written, illustrated, designed, and published here in Canada, and all of our books use ISBNs issued through Library and Archives Canada. But even with all that, it doesn't necessarily mean every physical copy of one of our books is manufactured here.
Like many independent publishers, Little Goodbyes Press uses print-on-demand printing and distribution. (see, What is Print-on-Demand and why we use it)
Instead of printing thousands of copies of a book at once and storing them in a warehouse and packing and shipping each copy one at at time. A copy can be printed when a reader, bookstore, or library orders one. That makes it possible for a very small Canadian press to make books available to readers around the world without maintaining warehouses full of inventory.
It also means the location where a particular copy is printed can depend on the printer and distribution channel fulfilling the order. Our books distributed through IngramSpark as well as Amazon. Both use global print-on-demand networks. As a result a Canadian author and a Canadian publisher do not automatically result in a book being physically printed in Canada.
IngramSpark which supplies Indigo (Chapters) does not currently print books in Canada so even if you purchase our book from this Canadian store, it will be printed in the US and shipped to you from there. Ironically, copies of our paperback books ordered through Amazon.ca have been printed in Canada in Bolton, Ontario as well as other local printers in the country.
So, as you can see, the same Canadian-published book can potentially have a different printing origin depending on where the reader buys it even inside of Canada.
Other Canadian books have the same problem
I was particularly interested to discover how Made in Canada Gifts, an Ottawa retailer devoted to Canadian products, handles books. On its book collection page, the shop explains that all of its books are Canadian-authored and illustrated and are published by Canadian publishers while also clearly noting that some are printed overseas.
Individual titles are even identified as 🍁Printed in Canada or without that designation. Honestly, I love that. It is an unusually transparent way of dealing with a question that is much more complicated than it first appears.
It turns out, a Canadian children's book can support a Canadian writer, a Canadian illustrator, a Canadian publisher, and a Canadian retailer while still having been manufactured somewhere else.
“Made in Canada” has a specific meaning
There is another reason publishers and other businesses need to be careful about the language they use. “Made in Canada” isn't simply another way of saying that a company is Canadian.
The Competition Bureau has guidelines for businesses making Canadian-origin claims. Generally, a product described as “Made in Canada” must have undergone its last substantial transformation here, at least 51 per cent of the direct production or manufacturing costs must have been incurred in Canada, and the claim should include an appropriate qualifier where required. (See their site, Made in Canada Claims)
That is very different from saying that a book was written in Canada, published in Canada, or published by a Canadian company. Those distinctions may sound small, but for shoppers deliberately trying to support Canadian businesses, they matter.
This is why our books say Created with love in Canada vs Made in Canada because it truly depends on where you buy the final version of our books whether or not it would be "made in Canada".
So how can you support Canadian books?
Perhaps the better question isn't simply whether a book was printed in Canada. Let's face it, the final printing of the book is one part of a much larger publishing process.
When you buy a book from a Canadian independent publisher, you may be supporting Canadian authors, illustrators, editors, designers, translators, publishers, booksellers, and other people involved in bringing that book into the world even when the final printing might be happening somewhere else. And when a Canadian-printed edition is available, that adds another piece of the Canadian publishing chain that supports local businesses.
For small presses like ours, print-on-demand also makes something else possible: a book created here in Ontario can remain available to a reader in Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia, or elsewhere without thousands of copies having to be printed in advance and shipped around the world.
After a year of creating books, we can see that roughly half of our sales currently come from the United States, not really a surprise considering the size of their population, the rest are finding their ways into families and libraries around the world. So right now having our books printed closer to readers in different markets is an important part of keeping international distribution practical for us.
We are also working to make Little Goodbyes Press titles easier to discover through Canadian book-industry systems such as 49th Shelf, which highlights books from Canadian publishers. This is fed through Booknet Canada/BiblioShare and once the first round of books has been submitted I'll share that process in another post.
So, are Canadian books actually printed in Canada?
Some are 100% written, illustrated, edited, published, printed in Canada, but not always. And sometimes, like in the case of our books, the answer can even depend on which copy of that exact same book you buy or store that you support even inside Canada.
As Canadians continue to look more closely at where our products come from, books are a good reminder that “Canadian” can describe much more than the place where the final product rolled off a printing press. So for now we are not adding that label "Made in Canada" to our books as they are truly printed all over the world, one at a time and we love that.
You can explore all of our current titles on our Books Page.
If you'd like to help share our works, visit our Libraries Page for circulation details and ISBNs.
Our books are available through major retailers including Chapters, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and Waterstones.
