44_M_Horsdal_Publishing.mp3

otter.ai

18.01.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:00 But they weren't getting

Unknown Speaker 0:07 Oh, I know that's true. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 0:16 Now, I'm not sure what all you wanted to hear. But I made a few notes. And I'll just go through what I think would be interesting. But stop me at any point and ask questions. If I'm not, you know, being clear about things. We said that we would call it publishing regional history. And I thought I'd make the distinction between local and regional from a publishing stance. It's really the size of the area, I'd say, for example, the history of Burgoyne United Church, or a history of salt, Spring Island would be local history, history of Vancouver Island, which we published is regional history. And the main difference is, from from our point of view is the potential market, you want to publish books that will appeal to as many people as possible. So local history, mostly local history has a smaller market. Now, there are exceptions, for example, Barkerville, which is a big tourist destination, if there were a history, I there probably is a history of Barkerville, which is a local area, but it probably sells to a very much wider readership than just because so many 1000 people go there in the summer. So that's a sort of special case. Yeah, and then in, in talking about regional history, I think there are two different types of history. There's the kind that takes an area, like British Columbia, or Vancouver Island, and tells, you know, goes through what has happened in that area and tells all, all the stuff within a particular area, for example, Margaret ormesby book on BC, you know, that was published the history of British Columbia, I think in about 1960 59 or so. And then our own Book on Vancouver Island, those are this type of geographic based regional history. And then there's also the kind which I think it's probably more interesting, is a fanatic history where you, you, you use a thread, either a biography of a person or a family history or some some group of people. And then you you learn the history as sort of the background what these people are doing, you focus on your thread. I don't know if you know the book Bray head by Cheryl McLaren. That was it was mostly the history of Western Canada. But it follows three founding families, one of which is the crosses that own pacing pubs. That was a very good book of that fanatic case. Also, the two books by Lynn Bowen, boss whistle and $3 dreams about them, the miners in Nanaimo, the coal miners, which also you do get a certain amount of regional history as well. But that's the focus. And more English than the English Perry Rexton spoke about Victoria, some of you were here to hear Carrie when she was here for the writers celebration. That was sort of a lot of the families in Victorian and what society was like, but it was a history of Victoria at the same time. Sometimes this type of history isn't even called a history, you know, it's it's a biography or, or just a work of certain groups. And it doesn't even have to be people. There's a wonderful book about the coast called chrysalis the inlet, about the union steamship line. And there's also in the same vein, the Pacific Princess, which is about the princess boats that used to fly these waters. But that's a regional history of that sort. And of the books that we have done, this, seven shillings is the only one that I would consider a geographic beef regional history and the other ones are really all the map. The Samuel mccluer was an early architect who practiced in Victoria and Vancouver from 1892 to 1929. And this chases his life and work but also has quite a bit about what conditions were like in the cities. That's a different type of post summers, you probably know because this is one of the best killed books. This is based on the journals of a couple who used to cruise the posts in the summers from 1906 to 1941. But it's not just about them. It's gives you this view of what the coast was like through those years. On the shady side is about Vancouver between 1886 and 1914. But it's about the prostitutes and gamblers and policemen on the take and all the naughty folk who aren't in the, you know, the street has consumed the city. But again, that's the theme of this book. Seven children's he talked about and then stoppers, this is facts. Most recent book is about the Royal Engineers, and what they did in southern British Columbia. But of course, it is also a regional history of sort of laying the foundation of what we now have as the province.

Unknown Speaker 5:49 Oh, no, republishing history of any type. There are four things that we have to think about. We're publishing for the general reader, that mythical creature, whoever it is. But the fourth thing we have to think about are one, it has to be a topic that's going to be a, like I said about the regional history of topic of appeal to as many people as possible. So it has to be a very good and interesting topic. And this is because the more books you print, the more you think you're going to sell, the more you can print, the lower your unit cost of producing the book. And then the return gets better. If you if you print 1000 copies of a book, it would cost maybe $2, say to print if you printed 5000, it might go down to $1.20, or something like that. So that's a very big consideration. That's why you need a topic that's going to sell well for us, preferably across the whole country, then it has to be well written. And in a lively style, the people, most people don't want heavy academic Tomes. There's a place for those things, but it's not in the general trade bookstores. And I just, I picked out two of my favorite lines from this book, just to show you what I mean. Now, Charles is also a poet. So he has a very nice way with language. Here, he's talking about how Victoria ceased to be run just by the Hudson's Bay Company. And he says, the company was disappearing into the northern forests, as quietly as the small animals on which its fortunes were based. I thought that was a very nice graphic sentence. And then another one a little later, he's talking about the ping who are islands, you know, San Juan. He talked about what the the British sent the couple of gunboats in within days ticket and his company, that was the Americans found themselves on a hill looking down the gun barrels of two British war Steamers. And see that's that it's lively, you know, it's not, it's never boring. So those are two things. Then a third consideration is it has to be right, it has to be accurate. Now, the editor, obviously, we can't check every single fact, in a book, you have to trust your authors. But I had, this brought home to me once I was working on a book. This was when I was working for Grey's publishing. And we were doing a book on pear Murray, the man, the priest who found a doctor damn College in southern Saskatchewan. And I forget why this was in the book Exactly. But the author was talking about the three astronauts who landed on the moon in 1969. And I had gone through the manuscript several times and hadn't thought about it. And I finally I thought, one of those names doesn't seem quite right to me. So I checked it. And indeed, he had a wrong guy going to the moon, and it was just sheer. I mean, I trusted everybody in those days, it was just sheer accident that I thought doesn't really quite sound right. You know, because this was, like 10 years after the moon landing. Anyway. So you do, you do want your authors to write accurate history. And the other thing is, it has to be on a topic that hasn't already been done a lot. There's nothing wrong with, you know, books on the same topic from different points of view, but generally, you can't bring them out at the same time. That happened to us just when we started our publishing company, I had a very good manuscript in about the Spanish explorers on this coast, where there are books about it, but there had they hadn't hadn't been a good one for you know, 10 or 20 years. But it was just the exact year that the men with wooden feet was done by John Kendrick and it was backed by the Galliano Historical Society and they had a foreword I think from the King of Been. So you see, that shot the market for probably another 10 years. And that was too bad. So we had to send the manuscript back. And it was probably a better book because I have read reviews of the Kendrick book, which said, there are a lot of errors in it. So it's a shame. It may have been that this manuscript would have been better, but they had got the market. So we lost on that. But we did. We did gain when we did our book, our book on Samuel mccluer, this, this book, we knew that there was another book in the works on Samuel McClure by Martin Seder, who is an architectural historian in Victoria. But we thought, what we'll do is we'll just charge ahead and get ourselves first we hoped, and we did we got ourselves a year in advance of Martin's. So if there are two books, it's best to be the first. Also, this is a 995. Paperback and Martens is a big $45 Coffee Table Book. So they were after different markets anyway. But, but that's the fourth thing, you have to pick a topic that's either new or a new treatment. That hasn't already been done a million times. In fact, when Peter Neumann started doing the Hudson's Bay books, I felt quite John just about it, because I had earlier in my life done a lot of work on, you know, with the Hudson state archives, and I thought, why does he think we need more books about the Hudson's Bay Company, but then I haven't read the second one. But I read the first one. And I thought it really was a great book, he did it. It's so interestingly, and from a sort of a different angle. And it really, if that's the case, where the other books about the Hudson's Bay Company, were not as lively, let's say. So I think that he that he really has done a great job with those books. Now, I thought it might also say how a publishing company works, because sometimes people confuse publishers and printers. What the publisher provides is, to the author, this is the publisher provides the money, mainly, and the distribution network. Those are the two things why if you're writing a book, you you want a publisher, first, you want somebody to pay all the bills. And the second is you need a network to get your books into the stores. Because the bookstores don't want to deal with a whole lot of one book publishers or self published books. Normally, it's just a pain in the neck for their bookkeeping. And I looked up on the money side, I looked up what we had spent on on our six titles. This is just for just for the printing, or the production and promotion. And we have spent our own money $58,548.79. I'm a little dubious about the accuracy of my figures here. But that's what I had them. And then in addition, we had $7,000 in grants for three of the books got grants, that was from the BC Heritage Trust. And that's just that's just producing the books that's not you know, rent he gas for my car, my time or anything like that. Production and publicity. Yeah, promotion? Yeah. No, the way the manuscripts arrive in my hands is two different ways. Sometimes a manuscript will come to a publisher, you know, either with a query letter or just arrived, or the also the publisher may get the idea for a book and go and find an author. And we've had this happen both ways. mccluer, these two books, the Maclaurin book and AppCode. Summers, already existed as manuscripts. And I knew about them because they had come to me when I had been the editor at Grace publishing, and then grades sort of went down the tubes. And so I got back in touch with the authors and nothing had happened to them. So those already existed.

Unknown Speaker 14:17 shady side is the only one that came to us, as you know, approach from an author we had met Becky Keller, who is normal ceiling sister actually, you probably know Norma who lives here. And Helen Tara's sister to we met her in seashells. She is the prime mover behind the seashells Festival of the written arts. And she had had the manuscript at another publisher who could never make this was a co op publisher and they couldn't make up their mind and finally, she gave them an ultimatum and said, If you can't make up your mind by whatever date, I'm taking it away, so she asked us if we would like to do it and and we were delighted because she was our highest profile author. so far. And then seven shillings was our idea to do a history of Vancouver Island. And we went out to find the author, I had known Charles and I got in touch with him and asked him if he knew anybody who would like to do the book. And he said, me, me, I've been trying to get sun on this to do Book on Vancouver Island for years. So he was quite dazzled, to get to do that. Then our next book, which will be I haven't got the manuscript yet. It was supposed to be to be by the 30th of April, but authors are often late, is about the Russian American Telegraph Company, which, in the 1860s, and that, again, was an idea, actually, it was a book that was begun by Alan Wright, who did tell you to bonanza for graves, and I knew him because I had edited that book. And he started the book, he did all the research, and I'd written one chapter and he died. So I got in touch with his widow and said, Do you think you know, wouldn't it be nice if we carried on our this project, and, and she agreed. And so I went out again and asked, you know, freelance writers that I knew who would be interested in that's how we got Rosemary nearing, who was here for the writers celebration that we had in April. So those are the two different ways that a manuscript comes into being. And then then it goes through a long process of editing, because no manuscript is perfect, probably even Peter Newman's manuscripts are not perfect. They have to be, you know, a certain amount of rewriting, the things that happen are, the author is so close to the manuscript, you know, if you've worked on something for five years, they, you're just too close to it to see where you have missed the mark, or where you haven't quite explained things well enough, or maybe there's a better order in which you could present the information. So all that stuff is, is dealt with in the editing process. Which takes Well, depending on how many rewrites and how quickly the person rewrites, it could be, we reckon that six months is a very fast time to produce a book this, this book probably took the least editing, there is a very good writer, and she's written many books. And this was probably the least work I ever had. Of course, it's not a very big book either. But her writing was very good. And so we we got this book from manuscript to the stores in six months. And that that's very fast. Some books take two years, but that was that was quick. Um, then you send the manuscript, which is either print out from a word processor or tight to the typesetter. We use typesetters. In Vancouver, they used to be on main island, people who used to do the cloudburst rural technology books. And they they do the typesetting, then they send you back proofs and you prove them in the end, the author proofs them, you don't allow the author to make any changes at this stage because it has become more expensive now. But if they insist, usually in the contract, there's something about the author will pay for your any additional typesetting. If they make a change at that stage, if they just see something they don't wait. Then you get the book printed. We use the printer in Winnipeg Hypno printing, and people say how come I'm gonna pick? What about PC? Well, the reason is that their price is usually about half of any of the printers in the seat, because we what you do is you set out the specifications for the book. But these are all five and a half by eight and a half. And you say the number of pages and the number of photographs and drawings and for color cover and then you send these around to whatever printers you want to bid on it. And consistently signals has been the lowest bid on any of our books, and they do very nice, they use nice paper, you know, it's not a crummy project. It's a nice paper lovely work and they're very nice people, but they just happened to be in Winnipeg, and it's a third generation family owned non union printer which I suppose is why there's so much cheaper but they really were half the price of some of the bids I got from Vancouver printers. And at first I thought that the cost of dealing with somebody you know 2000 miles away or whatever it is would take away from the savings but it doesn't because even seven shillings which is our biggest book the cost of shipping it from Winnipeg to here what the boat. Oh, probably $300 for the whole 5000 copies. So you see it, doesn't it If no consequence at all the shipping charges, then we get all the books in our little office down there in Ganges across from the library, and then we have to send them out to the bookstores. And we do this by being linked up with publishers, representatives who are agents, they go around, they have a staff of salespeople who they go around all of BC and Alberta, and take the orders from the bookstores and send them to me. And then most of the books that go to the bookstores come right, they go from I wrap them and ship them and send them out. Then we also have some of the books were hosted in Seattle and in Vancouver. This did we don't do as well, because the the middlemen the where the wholesalers take a bigger discount, I'll get into the pricing in a minute. But it's we get less money but more volume, you know, if you have stopped that will used to be called Vancouver magazine. And now it's great Pacific news, I think they've got taken over by Jimmy Patterson. And we also have book Express, which is a warehouse service that our publishers reps has set up. And we have the neck Pacific pipeline in Seattle for the American market. There. So that's how we get them into the stores. That's the other thing you see that a one book publisher or a self published book, wouldn't get into that network. Because the reps also don't want one book publishers, they want to deal with people who are going to keep bringing out you know, a new book every year or every six months or more than one, we're a small publisher. And then you have to do the promotion. And this is terribly important. Because no matter how good the book is, if people don't hear about it, they're not going to buy it. So the the main things you do for promotion are to send out review copies, you hope it'll get reviewed in The Globe and Mail, you know, but a lot of these papers don't do very extensive reviews, interviews on radio and TV you send you're off the road to get, you know, you set up as many interviews and talks and as you possibly can. And then you also have book signings in bookstores. Those are the three things you do when the book just comes out. Now we there was a wonderful lady in Vancouver who was a freelance,

Unknown Speaker 22:30 freelance promotional agent, she called herself and she knew all the people she would get people on Patrick Monroe, you know, in the early edition, she got all the other small TV and radio stations that I don't even know the names of. And she would do it on an hourly rate. She takes an author spends a whole day or two days and sets up the interviews and drives them around, you know, when does all this unfortunately, she's quit doing it, she went back to work for the curriculum development branch or something like that. So it's very hard from Salt Spring to do it yourself. So we do have to have somebody in the city to trot the authors around. So that's, that's what you do. Immediately the book comes out. But then you have to keep on. That's what what's frontlist frontlist is what is the term used for new books, then backlit, these are all backlit, you see because they're there were out at least a year ago. That's but you still have to keep on promoting your back list, or it's just going to languish in your warehouse, you know, so things like I happened to see a copy of the Vancouver Sun this past Saturday, and there is a 100th anniversary celebration of Stanley Park happening in June. Now Stanley Park, as some of you know, was originally set aside by the Royal Engineers. So I phoned up the sun and I got the lady who wrote the story and said, Who's doing the party? Who should I talk to? It was the Parks Board. So I phoned the Parks Board and said, Have you thought about having some Royal Engineers at this party? Because they were red jackets? You know, they look very nice. And and they were the original source of setting aside the holy courage. And they said, Oh, no, we haven't thought of that. That's a good idea. So I sent them a copy of the book. And we'll see maybe they will pay but that's the kind of thing you have to just keep working on. Making the public aware, at least of the Royal Engineers. I mean, you they're not going to sell the book at the party. But if enough people are aware that the Royal Engineers were involved. Another one we're doing is we're having a contest. See we oh, this is we also this isn't a second printing now. And so to promote that, I decided we would have a contest. And you can all enter. Yeah, this about it's asking three questions based on the book. You don't have to buy the books but three questions about the barrels and their lives and the prizes. is our weekend stays in resorts up the coast in the areas that the Barrows explored. So I've got the little brochures all set up, and I'm going to be sending those out to the bookstores in the next week, it's going to run till the end of July. And this again, people don't have to buy the book, but it's, you know, we hope it'll call attention to the book and the booksellers will go mention it to their, to their customers. Then also, next August, August 89, is the 60th anniversary of when Sam mccluer died. So the author Janet Bingham, and I are already thinking, what can we do, you know, to bring that to the public's attention, have a little mccluer day or something in one of the Vancouver heritage houses. I got my brother to write a song about this book. And they, they we had a tape gun, but he's putting it on his next record, actually, because it's really quite a good song. But but that got some extra play for the book and for for Betty, because all these things are that is concerts, you know, and then people think, oh, on the shady side, you know, when you have no money to promote, you have to think of all these things, put the arm on the family. And then also now this did take money, these books that won awards that I bought, these gold stickers I had made in Victoria, that this this book won the Lieutenant Governor's medal for best BC history. So the sticker says lieutenant governor's medal, and then this, this book of best also won the award of merit this year for from the BC historical Federation. So this one just says, Award of Merit. And I haven't had the stickers on long enough to be able to tell if that's, you know, increasing sales or not, but probably after six months, I'll be able to figure it out. Oh, no, I said I would mention about the financial financial the financial side, the bookstores buy if a book is this, these books are 995, the bookstores always buy at a 40% discount. So we get basically, we get 597 when we sell them to a bookstore. So the way it goes is your printing costs, production costs are, say 20% of the cost of the book, the bookstores get 40% discount, you pay 10% royalty to the authors. And then we've spent probably three to 5%, promoting each book. So the publisher ends up in that case with around 25% of the cost, then if you sell through a wholesaler, you're giving them up to a 55% discount. So the publisher ends up with about 10%. Probably in that case. And that's just that's just not overhead. That's not again, that's not the gas for my car, my phone bill, you know, type writing paper, or a salary for anybody. So you can see that the margins are very small. But by the time it gets down to that now, we haven't done any hardcover books yet. We think our next book is going to be a hardcover. And we'll just see if it's a better return, you know, some papers will review hardcover books faster, then they'll review these trade paperbacks, you know, that seems more serious if it's in hardcover, something. So we'll see how that goes. But I think that, that the margins, maybe a little bit better on hardcover books, but we'll find out. And of these six titles, three of them are in fact, in the black, they've sold enough copies to have paid for their cost of promotion and production. And one of them has this one only has 23 copies to go before. Also in the black. Now my husband, who is actually the financial genius of the family tells me that this is just a mythical number, because I'm not taking into account, you know, the carrying costs on the money that we borrowed to produce it. And it's true, I'm not because I don't know how to do that. So this is a, it's a very rough indication of how they're doing. But I read them that three of them are in the black. And then this is two new, this just came out a year ago. So it hasn't had time yet to sell enough. And then the other one, which isn't here, because it's not a history book. We then see, you know, the compilation of Peter Weiss's columns sells only really at gardening season. So you know, it's still got about 120 copies, I think to sell. Now, do you want to hear how we got into the publishing business? That's the only other thing I could think of that might be interesting. I had worked for probably 10 or 12 years as an editor, both as a freelance editor and as an in house editor for us. They're publishers and my husband whom a lot of you know, Michael Schubert kept. He's very keen on business. And he kept saying, why don't we get into the publishing business? Why don't we get into the publishing business? And I had these great reasons why we couldn't one I knew that the bookstores would not look at somebody who just did one book, we I said, we have to bring out three books the first year if we're going to do it, and that seems like impossible. And then another major reason was we had no money. That was a very good reason. So in the fall of E four, I guess, yes, Hank, and Maggie, were screwing some money around the family. So we thought we'd use that as sort of seed money. And, and also, I could think of these three books and see because these two, as I said, already existed as manuscripts and I knew where the authors were. And the third one was weed seeds, which I put together myself out of here, five years of the college. So there are all night, excellent reasons for not going into publishing had dissolved in the fall of 84. So that's, that's why we got into it. And are we're now three years old. Our first book came out in April 85. That was the gardening book. And so here we are. And I think that actually, our accountant, EDA, Sackers, quite pleased that we're doing as well as we are, it doesn't pay me any salary yet. I'm still working for free and being supported by my husband. But the books are doing quite well. And you know, that's three of the six have won awards. And she thinks she seems to think that for your company, this young, we're doing quite well.

Unknown Speaker 31:38 I think so too.

Unknown Speaker 31:43 Oh, financially? No, I think the author Charles got, I think, Oh, $100 or something for an actual little metal. But no, these particular words haven't brought us anything. You know, you you get promotion out of it?

Unknown Speaker 32:10 No, in fact, we want to do from now on I think we'll be less local than this, the Russian American telegraph project, we think we'll probably have a sale right across the country because they were racing against the the undersea cable across the Atlantic, you know, which was going from Newfoundland. And also it was an American project. So we think that we should have some American sales out of that. No. And you see, the reason for that is the as I was saying earlier, the wider the market, the more books you can print, and the lower your units cost. So it's fairly hard to make any money if you didn't think, you know, for a small market. So I think that we're gonna stay with nonfiction, but we're trying to do bigger topics

Unknown Speaker 33:07 this is the first one that's that have been accepted for the school library bulk purchase plan. Yeah, we always submit them and they haven't accepted any of them until this one. That's not into the classroom that's into the library. Yeah. Yeah, that's what this is for the whole of ECE. So I haven't had the orders yet. What they do is they send around a list of books that they recommend, and then it's up to the school librarians themselves to decide what they want to order, but at least we finally got one accepted. And no, well, I don't know why they didn't take seven shillings either. You know. Yeah, I know. But they know they, you get this thing back and they say status not recommended. very brutal. Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't

Unknown Speaker 34:12 I don't know how you would. Oh, sure. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yes. Well, no, they know about it because the librarians are read quill inquire and the library news and they've all been reviewed in the DC library news. So some of the I'm sure that some of our orders are for libraries that we don't know because we sell a lot to library jobbers, their library wholesalers. So I don't know. There may be but but that's the first time they've been accepted into the program. That's something

Unknown Speaker 34:56 Oh, yeah, we sell all over BC we sell as far east Toronto, but there's a big gap in the prairies. We've got a couple of bookstores in Alberta, BC they're mostly such BC titles so far. And book buyers are very regional, it seems. So we were all over BC, a couple of stores in Alberta and then a store a couple of stores in Toronto, but they only order you know, one they don't take usually out here, they take 510 15, they just take one. And then we also get quite a few special orders where, for example, if you go into Roger and say, Roger, Please order me blah, blah, blah, that's a special order. And and they don't get the same 40% discount on that they get 20%. But it's a sure sale, you know. So we get orders from funny little bookstores and you know, that I've never heard of and well, and places like that, depending on what the where the books were reviewed, now sappers was reviewed in Canadian Geographic. And I know that a lot of the orders we're getting from these far flung places are because of that review, because that's magazine has a very wide circulation. It was a good review, wasn't it? Yeah. Do you?

Unknown Speaker 36:05 Do you send them the copies on solicited?

Unknown Speaker 36:10 Committee? Oh, yeah, send it to them? Yeah. You have to send out about a brand 100 free review copies for every title you publish. And some it's more than 100. But 100 is sort of a, you know, a general figure when you send out for free. And some of them just get thrown in a pile, obviously, you know, you might get out of 100 books say that I sent for staffers, I bet I've seen a dozen reviews. So you have you, you've got no clout to say, you know, you must review this book.

Unknown Speaker 36:57 Oh, ISBN, yeah, that would that comes from the National Library, they send you a little form with all the numbers on it, they assigned a prefix number ours is 00920663. That's the horse doll, and she barks prefix number. And then the next numbers, the old five, two, in this instance, they send you it's sort of this size with a column with all the numbers on it, they don't go necessarily quite. They will. Like they go, Oh, this is oh, five, two, and the previous one was old, four, four. So those numbers are set, and you just fill in whatever title comes next in your list. But that's that does come from the National Library, you know? I don't think so. No. But then also at the National Library, they do the cataloging in publication, you know, you see on the copyright page, these long, long, long numbers with periods in the apostrophes and thing that comes use and to the National Library and description of the book. And they do all this now this is Dewey Decimal, right are one of those library cataloging. And that they set that and you just put it as is right on the copyright page. And that's for the library.

Unknown Speaker 38:31 This is a little off topic, but you know, how the explain how the system is going to work whereby

Unknown Speaker 38:38 publishers and authors are going to be reimbursed for photocopying? Oh, I don't know how that's gonna work incredibly complex to me. Yeah. Or, you know, I don't know see that that would come nothing less. No. It's like also they are now paying authors royalties on books that are borrowed in the library, depending on frequency. Somebody keeps track that I think they actually have a model. You know, they don't count every single time sappers comes out, but they have certain categories, but I know that when Janet was over the author of the Maclaurin book, she got I think she got a couple $100 last year from the library sort of royalty. I don't know what they call it library payments. And that's very nice. Because they you know, when you sell one copy of a book, the author makes her 10% But then 100 People might read it, so it's nice that they're getting some some money from the libraries. Oh, no, it would be all across the country. Yeah. It's a national program.

Unknown Speaker 39:41 Very that's because we're also photocopying.

Unknown Speaker 39:49 Facilities publisher

Unknown Speaker 39:57 ratings. Oh yeah. Because

Unknown Speaker 40:02 the the only contact I've had with it is what Becky was concerned in on the shady side because there are some people apparently who didn't want it revealed that granny was a prostitute or something like that. And she said that she couldn't indemnify us, or whatever was the word she couldn't promise that we wouldn't be sued. We weren't we haven't been. But I think that the publisher does is liable if you if you malign somebody, but then and then you have to go to court. I think it's very hard to prove, you know, and but you know, all the court costs, because I know it sounds there's one there one is if the person is living in one of their dad, isn't it to ruin somebody's reputation? But I think that I think it's hardly ever proven that you know, that, that it was you damage somebody's reputation, so you don't have to pay a fine but defending the case alone would be expensive, but you know, the on the other hand, and that they're getting an awful lot of free publicity for that book about Reagan, you know, so you got to balance that off. There's a saying, No, publicity is bad publicity. Probably, yeah. Yeah. But no, no, no, I think that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Now the DUNS Muir family, Terry Rexton wants to do a book on the Dunsmuir family and they have been they have just shut down every person who has tried to work on them. They one book was published and they managed to get the courts to take it all off the bookshelves. I don't really know why. I mean, I know he was a robber baron. Yeah, but the Terry thinks maybe she's going to manage with this one. So we'll see if one comes out the next couple of years, but they're very anti publication of any sort. And in fact, we were up at Congress this has nothing to do with books but the sudden here we were at Cumberland you know the old coal mining town of Vancouver Island and there's a plaque a big plaque explaining you know, that here was the Chinatown and so on. And right on the plaque it says something to the effect that the Dunsmuir family refused to allow access to you know, records that we could have completed this plaque or you think that the family would rather have given them access and have something like that on an IBC historical plaque but anyway, there it was. It depends what's in the record

Unknown Speaker 42:46 didn't say why. Yeah, one of the sons was alcoholic and ended up sort of a wastrel in San Francisco is that the 100

Unknown Speaker 42:57 That's one of the guns one of the done from your family

Unknown Speaker 43:37 Ah, yeah, clearly there's a lot to be told. And one one other thing I should say is I brought Well I brought some brand new copies but I also brought what we call hurt hurt books. It started Penguin Books started the term they called them hurt penguins that have either got a fault from the printer this I took out of the box and it's got a smudge on the on the cover. And then some of them are doing but anyway, if anybody wants to buy them these are all half price. They're they're a bargain. And these are if you want to buy brand new ones that they're full price, but if you want some bargains they're there

Unknown Speaker 44:38 yeah

Unknown Speaker 44:48 Oh, yeah. If I, for example, sent out an order of books and the cover came off, you know, just in the mail or something i Yeah, they would send them back to me and say they didn't arrive have been in mint condition through Norte Yeah, well, there are there. You know, it's depends on the binding. There's two different kinds of binding. There's the sewn binding, you know, and then the perfect binding. And I've never heard anybody say any of our books had fallen apart. But, but after they'd been used a couple of times, it's, you know, it wouldn't be our responsibility. But I think that if somebody published books that routinely fell apart, I think the bookstores would quit pairing. Oh, do they? Oh, last

Unknown Speaker 45:45 part. Oh, the inside

Unknown Speaker 45:51 cover. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You

Unknown Speaker 46:01 Oh,

Unknown Speaker 46:04 yeah. Yeah, but I can see that the if this got to be a general problem, the bookstores wouldn't carry your books, we wouldn't go back to the same printer because it's the quality of the printing that find it printing and binding that would govern that so you know, the printer would lose work too.

Unknown Speaker 46:33 Yeah, I know. Yeah. I think it's a lot to do with the quality of the glue. If it's the perfect bound. These glued ones are called perfect bound. I don't know why. But that's the distinction there either sewn or perfect bound is the glue and and there must be many different qualities of glue. But but I've never had anybody complain about ours. Even you know that. Oh, there's also this is kind of interesting. There's a returns policy in the book business for the booksellers. If a book