Book Prices (and what Chapters can't do about it)

Now that the Canadian dollar's more than par with the American dollar, complaints have grown about the discrepancy in prices for books, which are very noticeable since they're usually printed on the back cover.

It's been getting a lot of media attention lately, what with Wal-Mart announcing that they'll sell books and greeting cards at US prices, which they probably can because it's likely a loss leader to draw people in to buy other things rather than having it as a major part of their revenue source.

Then there's this article about how prices are established months in advance and how titles NOW are reflective of the exchange rate of previous months.

Finally, there's this column venting on Chapters-Indigo and calling on the company to cut prices because it's so big that it gets HUGE discounts from publishers, moreso than small retailers, and that it should do it because,

"sure, they'll lose on some stock but it would make them heroes and they'd sell lots more books than usual."

Will Chapters-Indigo really be hailed as heroes, even in the figurative sense? I doubt that. Here's why.

If they were to completely sell all merchandise at US prices, yes, the consumer wins out and conceivably people may buy more at Chapters-Indigo locations. However, as that columnist stated, small booksellers don't get the discounts Chapters does and they've bought their merchandise at the prices set months prior. So now, not only are they competing against Chapter's purchasing discounts, but they would also have to face the new price competition that Chapters, the bookselling giant that they are in Canada. Will they be able to sell at US prices and take the loss that she thinks Chapters can so easily absorb? I doubt it. How long before we hear small booksellers complaining that Chapters is undercutting them and thereby killing the downtown, Main Street 'mom-and-pop' bookstores?

Chapters-Indigo would get villified just the same. They're in a (insert Joseph Heller reference here). So don't expect Chapters-Indigo to do much except say that they're waiting on the publishers to adjust the prices (which is what my friends the employees have been trained to say). They don't gain anything from action, so inaction will be the status-quo.

Therefore, please don't complain to Chapters-Indigo employees about the price discrepancy...they know it sucks. They're the book buying public too. And don't bother telling them that you'll only buy at US prices or you'll walk out. They don't care. They don't have to because the opportunity cost for the book was clearly higher than what you were willing to pay for anyhow (especially since you can get almost-US prices online anyhow, so what the hell were you doing in the store in the first place). Otherwise, you would own the book now.

It's basic economics. The sale was never there.

Anything BUT "hot air"

Ever since the issue of climate change burst onto the scene in recent years, there have been a deluge of books tackling the subject, from various perspectives, often with overheated rhetoric about the plight of what our actions towards the planet (and its subsequent effects on our daily lives) (See Heat by George Monbiot, or Tim Flannery's "The Weather Makers") or the almost-complete denial of the issue being a big deal (*cough* Bjorn Lomborg, *cough).

Since climate change is a global phenomenon, these books take a global perspective. There wasn't really a book that analyzed it from a Canadian perspective.

Until now. I've just finished reading Jeffrey Simpson, Mark Daccard and Nic Rivers' "Hot Air: Meeting Canada's Climate Change Challenge" and I rarely say this, but this book should be required reading for everyone who acknowledges that climate change is a major issue in Canada. Here's why.

If you're a climate change denier, this book's won't convince you otherwise. It assumes climate change is happening and briefly summarizes the issue and science in one or two brief chapters so it wouldn't be too convincing. Its focus isn't the science, but the complete failure by our successive governments to be serious and committed to dealing with this problem, starting with the Mulroney government and ending right up to the Harper government.

It's saved its most scathing critique for the Chretien/Martin era, when they committed Canada (through Kyoto) to a difficult target, and then only set up voluntary measures, subsidies and as he said it on this morning's CBC show, "exhortations" as means to get Canadian involved. We all know how well THAT turned out. Instead of getting us 6% below 1990 levels, we were ABOVE by 25-26%.

And while they're less mean on Harper, they show how he and his government were completely blindsided the first time around (when Rona Ambrose, then Environment minister, became the sacrificial lamb) because throughout the 90s, they never believed in climate change anyhow. Smelling the political air changing, they quickly cobbled together a plan that was only slightly better than Dion's plan, with one major difference: The implementation of a mandatory emissions cap.

Their book is therefore bi-partisan in its critique, at the Liberals for failing to do ANYTHING, and at the conservatives for failing to believe in the issue. They also take swipes at the environmental movement, who've dogmatically regarded the Kyoto Protocol as the planet's sole saviour, and the Canadian business community, for being so antagonistic about dealing with this issue.

And this is where environmentalists might disagree with them but I agree wholeheartedly. KYOTO'S DEAD. WE'RE NOT GOING TO MAKE THE TARGETS IF OUR LIVES DEPENDED ON IT. MOVE ON.

While this doesn't mean that Harper should join that ludicrous "Asia-Pacific Partnership" (which by the way, has no compulsory components whatsoever, so voluntary targets will work SO WELL in Canada, as we've seen...), it does mean that our government (on both sides of the House) need to be adults and acknowledge that they've failed the public and the world community on this issue and that amends need to be made.

Their solutions are straightforward: Carbon tax, emissions cap, tradeable certificates, and carbon sequestration. Most of these would be compulsory, market-driven mechanisms aimed mainly at heavy emitters and energy producers. This does not mean they'll target Alberta (as Albertans are SO scared about that), as they show how different components can alleviate concerns but also reflect the fact that the Oil and Gas's newfound wealth has a cost that should be fairly paid. The carbon tax and the tradeable certificates would be the two that would really affect the individual.

None of these mechanisms will be very palatable, if only because the Canadian public hasn't completely accepted that our current lifestyle has a emissions cost that has yet to be paid. Their solutions are the first steps towards everyone accepting this cost.

While many people may not like using policy to change behaviour, we've seen that we won't do it voluntarily. We're all a part of this problem. It's time we be forced to do something about it.


P.S. Amazon customers are SO OFF BASE in that those who've bought "Hot Air" are buying books that pretty much deny the existence of climate change. Boy are they going to be disapointed. If anyone ACTUALLY wants to read a good book on the science of climate change, read Elizabeth Kolbert's "Field Notes From a Catastrophe".

Top 5 Books (so far): a High Fidelity tribute

I've just finished reading "High Fidelity", and having been voraciously consuming books since I've been working at Chapters, it seemed like fun to write out my top 5 books I've read so far:

Top 5 Picks
1) The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan
Written like a travelogue, the author takes its readers through the different ways we grow our food, from our current industrial production system, to the 'industrial organic', the truly sustainable model and 'hunter/gatherer' systems. Along the way, he examines the implications for each of them and shows that separating ourselves from our food sources has really undermined our appreciation of the food we eat and the environment from which it is produced.

2) The Dodecahedron (or a Frames for Frames) - Paul Glennon
Imagine each of the 12 self-contained short stories as a face on a 12-sided polygon, where the vertices and edges represent the elements common to the 'adjacent' stories. Is that such a cool concept or what?

3) Stanley Park - Timothy Taylor
I think it helped that I read this immediately after The Omnivore's Dilemma, as I was still mentally engaged with issues about how we grow our food. This novel isn't just about food, but also about identity, roots and the meaning of 'home'.

4) Made to Stick - Chip and Dan Heath
On a recommendation from a co-worker, it's all about how to get people to remember your ideas after you've told it to them. It's effective because it's like the duct tape on the book jacket: easy to use, useful for almost any situation, and their ideas really stick!

5) The Road - Cormac McCarthy
I've already said my piece about it HERE. I may end up buying it at some point, especially to see if I can peel off the 'Oprah's Book Club' sticker on the trade paperback edition.

Not all my reads, however, were fantastic. While none of them were awful, there were some that didn't satisfy:

Top 5 Surprisingly Disappointing Reads

1) DeNiro's Game - Rawi Hage
A Governor General's Award and a Giller Prize nominee, I expected this book to be one of the best reads of the year. While I understand the motivations behind the main character, I couldn't sympathize with him at all. I just thought he was a giant dick for a lot of the novel.

2) Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
Another co-worker recommendation. It's very fantastic and well-conceived world with its own internal logic. I just didn't find the plot of the novel to go anywhere. The main characters gets thrown from one ridiculous situation to another with no logical end. Maybe that's the whole point of Discworld, but it still didn't make me like it.

3) Getting to Maybe - Frances Westley et al.
The book's premise tries to show that individuals have been and can continue to be the focal point for major social change. It tries distill those real-life experiences into general rules for how individuals might want to get involved. However, the suggestions are too vague and if the people you describe couldn't predict that they would be this focal point, how can the authors? If the authors applied the ideas from Made to Stick, maybe it would've been more effective. Or, it's just something a book can't properly describe.

4) How Happy to Be - Katrina Onstad
I read this on a recommendation by Paul Wells, who found it to be an absolutely fantastic read. I read this after Stanley Park, and while they both seemed to tackle similar issues (particularly the estrangement with one's father), I thought Stanley Park handled them much more effectively. I also found the main character of this book to be more neurotic than necessary. The not-so-subtle in-jokes and monikers like "The other Big City Lefty newspaper" (get it, it's the Toronto Star, wink wink!) and "The Annual International Film Festival" (both paraphrased, but you get the idea) made me want to scream, "EITHER USE THE REAL NAMES OR MAKE UP A NAME!"

5) Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures - Vincent Lam
It's not a bad collection of short stories. I really didn't know what to expect. It's more me than the book. I think the fact that the connections built up between the characters in the earlier stories quickly unravels in the later stories left me wanting. While I understand that this is what happens once you leave university or med school or whatever, it just left me with a neutral feeling. It does make me want to read more short story collections to see how others do it.

Honorable Mention: High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
This was entirely my own fault, having seen and loved the movie before reading the book. It's not that the book was bad, but I couldn't develop my own scenes from the descriptions in the book. Instead, all I could think about was Jack Black and John Cusack...)

Maybe I'll post again when I've found a real job and can no longer read books at the current pace and see if the list has changed any.

The Road

This is one of those few times where Oprah Winfrey's taste and mine match, if ever. On Wednesday, she picked "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, as her new Oprah Book Club pick.

I know this because it popped up on the Chapters-Indigo website last night, but also because today we had about 900 trade paperback copies in the store (ok, so I exaggerate).

Anyways, I read it in hardcover, i.e. before the force of nature that is Oprah Winfrey picked this title out of the billions found in the masses to be placed in the sales-inducing canon that she's created. It was on a lot of top ten lists for books in the US for 2006, which was one reason why I chose to read it. And I really liked the book.

The basic premise is a father and son who's on a journey to the sea in a post-apocalyptic future where nothing living remains, except for the straggling remnants of humanity here and there. It's a tale of survival, and the bond between them that makes them desperate enough to keep on living.

What makes McCarthy's setting so terrifying is not the presence of monsters or mutant zombies or what not. It's the complete absence of life. The thought that the wide, wide, world is more or less empty just chilled me to the bone. It doesn't burden the reader with words, but it's still vivid enough that you feel you are there wandering with them, hungry with them, cold with them. It was the atmosphere that made the book for me.

But while I liked it, I don't think I could read it again for a long time because it depressed the hell out of me. It's a bleak book and to me, it's not one of those novels where there are chapters that could be read and re-read all the time.

It'll be interesting to see whether the people who tend to buy books based on her recommendations will continue to do so with this title.

Canada Reads 2007

I've been listening to the streaming audio for this year's Canada Reads 2007 (which I always thought was a great idea to introduce you to Canadian titles that a person may not have been exposed to otherwise). This year, the books in contention were:

Gabrielle Roy's 'Children of My Heart'

Timothy Taylor's 'Stanley Park'

Anosh Irani's 'Song of Kahunsha'

Heather O'Neill's 'Lullabies for Little Criminals'

David Bezmozgis' 'Natasha and other Stories'

I've listened to two episodes and 'Children of My Heart' has already been voted off. While I want 'Stanley Park' (which I loved) to be the book that they suggest Canadians read, I don't think it's going to win. Most of the panelists didn't have enough positive things to say about the novel. Listening to Denise Bombardier describe the passages about food as 'boring' just stabs me in the ear. The closest was John K. Samson's description that the novel was the most ambitious.

My prediction is that 'Song of Kahunsha' will win this thing. There were very little criticism (though the topic at the time was only, 'did this book qualify even though it was set in Mumbai') and the only opposition was Jim Cuddy, who thought the character didn't change enough (he also didn't like 'Natasha' because it was a set of short stories and 'Lullabies' because the characters weren't really affected by the events that happen in the book. It'll be interesting to see what he'll vote for after 'Stanley Park' gets voted off...

Update (Mar. 2 11:39 AM): Wow. I'm listening to Canada Reads live and I've been proven wrong. It's now between 'Stanley Park' and 'Lullabies for Little Criminals', with Denise Bombardier breaking the tie for voting off between 'Stanley Park' and 'Song of Kahunsha' and choosing the latter.