Library and Archives Canada has just published a study we did for them late last year on audiobook and eBook publishing in Canada. The study is online now in HTML and MP3 editions and soon to be available via accessible PDF.

As far as we know, this is the first comprehensive study of digital publishing in Canada. It explores the context for audiobook and eBook publishing, the current Canadian market, production of digital editions, and circulation of digital books in libraries.

The study’s main findings include:

Mainstream audiences are primed for digital: “Digital natives” (i.e., those who have grown up using computers and the Internet) are very at ease reading off a screen as opposed to the printed page and are ready consumers of digital content. At the other end of the demographic spectrum, Canada’s aging population means that an increasing number of consumers will prefer or require non-print formats that help them counter sight or other print-reading challenges.

Digital devices are on the rise: The mass market’s adoption of a new generation of Internet-enabled portable devices—e.g., cell phones, smart phones, and PDAs—has accelerated consumption of digital content, both online and via download. Similarly, the rapid adoption of purpose-built reading devices, especially the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle, has given eBooks real traction in consumer markets for the first time.

Digitization of book content is increasing rapidly: Thanks to increasingly digital production workflows, virtually all publishers can easily generate some level of eBook file from their native production files. As publishers accumulate a growing archive of digital production files, and as older backlist titles are scanned or otherwise converted into usable digital source files, the commercial output of digital books has naturally increased. To date, this has mainly been in the form of eBooks of various formats—especially PDF—and large multinational publishers have accounted for the majority of commercial releases.

There is relatively little Canadian content in sales channels for digital editions: The Canadian-owned publishing firms that account for the majority of Canadian-authored titles published each year have been relatively slow to publish digital editions of their books. Canadian-owned firms are small compared to their multinational competitors and generally have more limited staff and/or budget resources to invest in digitization programs.

Management of rights and copyright is a major market shaper: Many book publishers will have audio rights for their titles, but relatively few have historically acquired electronic rights. Therefore, a decision to publish electronic editions of one’s books is often accompanied by the need to revise contract language for new titles and to clear or acquire electronic rights for previously published work. The application of Digital Rights Management protections (DRM) is the other key rights issue in digital publishing. The goal of DRM is to limit piracy of copyrighted work, but these measures often also have the effect of locking content into a given sales channel. Consumer resistance to DRM restrictions on digital content, combined with publishers’ interest in breaking down platform monopolies has led to a weakening (or even abandoning) of DRM protections on an expanding range of digital titles.

You can find the complete study report on the LAC site, and please drop us a line anytime with questions or feedback.

A special thanks to the many industry experts in Canada and the US who contributed their ideas and data to the study, and also to the Initiative for Equitable Library Access team at Library and Archives Canada for their support of the project.

1. When you think en dash, think numbers in almost all cases.* Em dashes, by contrast, apply exclusively to words.
2. Think number ranges when it comes to the en dash—in other words, inclusive numbers (e.g., “See pages 40–42”). Non-inclusive numbers like phone numbers (e.g., 604-734-1896) demand hyphens. En dashes with numbers mean up to and including. With the example, then, I meant “See pages 40, 41, and 42.”
3. Finally, a direct and important quote from The Chicago Manual of Style: “For the sake of parallel construction the word to, never the en dash, should be used if the word from precedes the first element; similarly, and, never the en dash, should be used if between precedes the first element.” Therefore: “He was a member from 1998 to 2001,” and “Between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. there will be no power.”

*The main use of en dashes between words is when there is a to implied (e.g., “The Vancouver–Toronto train,” “The Canucks won 4–2 over the Leafs”). There is also a use for compound terms, but it occurs infrequently enough that I’m not getting into it here.

To read me waxing poetic about em dashes, please see “Writing That Sounds Like Speaking” on blogthecat.

Distribution is a part of the book business that is not easily visible to many of those involved in the book trade and certainly not to the average book reader in Canada. However, effective management of the supply chain—the process of getting books to where they need to be, when they need to be there, and as efficiently as possible—is a critical function in publishing. It is a process that increasingly touches virtually all other aspects of the Canadian book trade from editorial acquisitions to marketing to consumer behavior.

A special thanks to the many publishers, distributors, booksellers, and industry groups who contributed their time, expertise, and data to the study. And congratulations to our colleague Marcel Oullette whose complementary study on Canada’s French-language market was also published today.

In 1868, writer Mark Twain said

“Anybody can have ideas—the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”

In an age where attention spans are shrinking, and 140 character sound bites are all you are allowed on marketing vehicles like Twitter, it is once again time for writing less to become a valued marketing skill.

I couldn’t agree more. In The Power of Slow and Spare, I wrote:

When you’re excited about something your business is doing—a new initiative or product, for example—it’s tempting to want to include in your press release every one of the 34 reasons it’s so great. And explain each reason in depth. And quote all the people who were involved in the idea. And give background. And context. And related information.

But guess what?

Most people will abandon your press release unless you relinquish your dream of including everything you’d ideally like to say. Our society is time-starved as well as compelled to cram as many sources of information in as possible—we are news grazers, not gourmands.

What I love about Partner’s post is that she includes ten tips to apply to the way you describe your own business that will help you distill your message to its absolute core. Here’s Tip #7:

Count how many times you used your product or company name or the word “we.” If it’s more than once in every 500 words, ask yourself if you are writing about you or for your reader. For every statement you write, answer the question “what does this mean for my reader?”

I’m going to sit with those ten tips tomorrow and chew them over. I want to see where the exercise gets me. If nothing else it will be exercise, and exercise is the only way to become a better writer. 

Use comprise, composed of, or consists of as per the examples below. As Fowler’s notes, “The special function of comprise is to introduce a list of the parts making up the whole that is its subject; that is, it means to consist of or to be composed of. All the parts compose the whole; the whole comprises all of the parts.” Therefore:

• The book comprises eight chapters.
• Milk, honey, and nutmeg compose the sauce.
• The sauce comprises milk, honey, and nutmeg.
• The committee was composed of nine representatives.
• The lesson consists of four sections.

Another trick I just thought of is to think of comprise along the same lines as contain. It’s not perfect, but it might end any confusion between comprise and compose.

Next week: the en dash.

If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad.
John Benbow in Manuscript and Proof

Everyone hates hyphens. They don’t make any sense—it seems there are a million exceptions to their rules. Yet an ill-placed hyphen or lack of hyphen when there should be one can make a sentence stick out like a sore thumb and the writer look amateur. This post is devoted to an area of hyphenation that drives people especially batty: the treatment of compound terms like “middle class” or “much despised.”

There are two main points to remember when dealing with this sort of thing:

1. Never hyphenate an adverb ending in -ly (e.g., you would never write “the unjustly-accused innocent”). There is no happy union between -ly and a hyphen.
2. Everything depends on where compound terms occur in a sentence—that is, their position. If you’ve got two words modifying a noun and they occur before that noun, smack that hyphen right on in there. So: “the upper-class neighbourhood,” “the open-ended arrangement.” If they occur after the noun, pump the brakes—take your finger away from the keyboard and stifle your sense of injustice at the weirdness of the rule. So: “the neighborhood was upper class,” and “the arrangement is open ended.”

Just remembering these two points can help you immensely when it comes to hyphenation.

As for words that don’t serve to modify a noun, like “email,” “toothache,” or “healthcare,” the best idea is to consult a recent edition of a good dictionary. Whether to hyphenate these, close them up, or leave them open changes over time and over dictionaries, so the only way to proceed is to check the word and then remain consistent throughout your document.

My thoughts on the exclamation mark are that:

• it shouldn’t be banned the way purists have commanded it be in the past
• it shouldn’t be overused in business communications
• it’s nice to see in emails sometimes—it can impart a friendly tone
• when it’s not used well (e.g., to camouflage insincerity or even petty negativity) it’s REALLY annoying (just like ALL CAPS are)—smiley faces are like this, too
• if it’s sprinkled all through your writing, you can come off as silly or insubstantial

But overall, I like the comeback of the exclamation mark (in small doses), and I agree with Jeffries that it really was “the funless and fastidious” who were keeping it trodden underfoot. That said, one will do: it’s a powerful mark, and there’s no need to triple the action unless you’re purposefully being goofy with good friends.

We’ll post full mailing/phone details soon, but please know that we’re always available via our current web/email contact information, and that our clients and networks will continue to be all over Canada and the world. That’s how we like it.

Vancouver and BC in general, we will miss you dearly, but we’ll be back and forth lots so stay beautiful.

Paris’ $250 million pool party for her newest dog ...

They’re using the style convention where when a word ends in a sibilant (a consonant that sounds like a hiss, like Paris), it’s fair game to end with the more visually attractive s’.

Paris’ does look better than Paris’s. But I’m in the camp where you always add the final s after the apostrophe. I like how Paris’ looks, but I don’t like how it sounds in my head.

Both styles are correct. What’s incorrect is to be inconsistent. Choose one style and stick to it.

p.s. When the word in question is plural—e.g., the players’ wives—just add an apostrophe. But you knew that.

p.s. When you get all hot and bothered about the issue as I so often do (just think of our company name, Turner-Riggs) try to reframe the sentence. Instead of “Turner-Riggs’ company mascot was fired soon after the unfortunate event,” I’d write “Turner-Riggs fired their company mascot soon after the unfortunate event.” And avoid the passive voice in the process!

So let’s get started!

Topic #1: Commas (Between Adjectives)

Oh, don’t pretend you’re bored by commas ... that you don’t want to know more. Commas are tricky little devils that beg for understanding—otherwise they can run rampant through your writing. They can turn you into a comma bomber, like someone I know in this office. And it isn’t me.

There is much to know about commas, but for now I’m going to limit myself to an invaluable little lesson I learned from the brilliant Frances Peck about how to figure out whether you need a comma between adjectives. If you are anything like me, you’d look at a sentence like this one (purposefully unpunctuated) and get a little anxious:

They are selling their blue pine table their damaged oak dresser their beloved shag carpet and their thick luxurious throw.

Would you put a comma between “blue” and “pine”? Between “damaged” and “oak”? Between “beloved” and “shag”? Between “thick” and “luxurious”?

I might have, pre-Frances. And I would have been 75% wrong.

The correct punctuation** for the sentence is:

They are selling their blue pine table, their damaged oak dresser, their beloved shag carpet, and their thick, luxurious throw.

Here are the tricks that helped me figure it out:

1. Can you insert an “and” between the adjectives? If you can’t (e.g., you wouldn’t say “the blue and pine table”), you shouldn’t use a comma. In other words, the comma substitutes for “and,” as in “the thick, luxurious throw.”
2. Can you rearrange the adjectives? If you can’t, you shouldn’t use a comma (e.g., you wouldn’t say “the pine blue table”).

To end in full geek glory, let me just add that beneath these tricks, there is a proper point of grammar: the decision about whether to use a comma between adjectives has to do with what kind of adjective you’re dealing with: coordinate or cumulative. In the sentence we used above, “thick” and “luxurious” function as coordinate adjectives (they all separately modify the same noun) while the others work in a cumulative way (they build and lean on each other).

That’s it for today. Don’t worry, Weekly Geek will be back. Soon. Like in a week.

**Assuming you’re using a serial comma, which is another topic (and a contentious one at that!). If you choose to use serial commas, as I do, you put a comma before the last item in a list.