Your Canadian comix news aggregator:
- As we mentioned in a previous post, Reed Exhibitions has been having trouble signing up publishers for its recently announced Fall book fair in Toronto. Quill and Quire broke the news yesterday that Reed has canceled the annual BookExpo, scheduled for June. The culprits? The large group of Canadian publishers (really branch plants of U.S. publishers) including Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins, who have decided that it’s not profitable to devote resources to what is essentially a regional trade show. For good measure, Reed has canceled the proposed Fall show (aka “Booked!”) as well. In terms of comics, BookExpo Canada, essentially a tame version of a comics convention that doesn’t let fans in and focused on non-comics, had been following the lead of its New York counterpart in recent years, introducing a “Graphic Novels Tent” and some comics panels, in order to help sell this hot new category to publishers and book buyers. The Shusters blog has the CP article and a quote from Scott Chantler, who launched his Northwest Passage graphic novel at BookExpo in 2007 and notes that it lead to great things for him. It’s hard to imagine that the show cancellation will have a major impact on the book business but its effect on individual authors and small publishers should be noticeable.
- Some reports from this past weekend’s Toronto Comicon: Jason Truong, Nexus Studios, The Comic Store Critic
- Publishing: Four Vancouver area artists set to launch Dystopia comics anthology.
- Retail: The top 15 books of the month at Montreal comic shop
Fichtre. - Review: Some notes on Kelly Byrne’s Lillian the Legend.