When we look back on 2023, it might be remembered as the year of living anxiously.
More literary festivals took the leap to in-person appearances again after the COVID-19 hiatus, allowing everyone to talk about how strange it was to actually be in a crowded room — although the virus hadn’t really gone away. I
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Looking back at 2022, some of the same stories carried into this year: the domination of Colleen Hoover; the uncertainty around who might buy Simon & Schuster; the increasing influence of indie publishers, booksellers and authors. But 2023 brought its own reasons to be nervous: with inflation and interest rates on the rise, a sputtering economy, the unknown impact of AI on the creative industries and the Israel/Gaza war all having an impact on writers, publishers and editors everywhere.
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Nevertheless, the industry persisted and people still bought books, albeit less of them.
We bought fewer books
We don’t have numbers for the year as a whole yet, but we do know that sales of print books were down 12 per cent in the first six months of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, as BookNet Canada reported in its mid-year review. The entire Canadian book market was down $10 million in sales in the first half of the year, with English trade print books reaching $459,644,006 in sales, its numbers also showed. Interestingly, people were buying more print books, with 77 per cent of all books purchased being either paperback or hardcover, than ebooks, with sales down by 23 per cent year to year over that same half-year period.
So what books were Canadians buying?
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Colleen Hoover, the author given a boost by BookTok, topped the Original Fiction lists for the second year in a row, taking the top two spots with “It Starts With Us” and “It Ends With Us,” as well as the 15th spot. It’s a drop from last year, when she had seven books in the top 20.
Canadian author Carley Fortune had a heck of a year, topping the Canadian Fiction bestsellers list for her second book “Meet Me at the Lake,” given an almost unthinkable boost when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell Productions announced they were teaming up with Netflix to buy the screen rights for the title. Fortune was then featured everywhere, including as a Cannon Doll in the National Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” in December.
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Speaking of Prince Harry, his memoir “Spare” topped the Original Non-Fiction list for the year, leading the way in the celebrity memoir parade, which also featured big books from Britney Spears (the second overall non-fiction bestseller for 2023), Barbra Streisand and Geddy Lee — the sorts of big sellers that booksellers countrywide hope for at this time of year.
While finalists for the Scotiabank Giller Prize usually see sales of their books spike during awards season, none of this year’s five short list nominees broke through as a bestselling book of 2023.
Protests at the Giller Prize ceremony
The Giller Prize gala this year was visited by protesters twice during its live broadcast. First, near the beginning of the show, when two pro-Palestinian protesters advanced onstage with “Scotiabank Funds Genocide” signs, one of them held upside down. Protesters appeared again while the winner was being announced just before the end of the live broadcast — Sarah Bernstein’s novel “Study for Obedience” took the $100,000 prize. She wasn’t physically in the room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto but had joined via video link from Scotland, where she had recently given birth.
Three protesters faced a variety of charges for the interruption, including obstruct, interrupt or interfere with the lawful enjoyment or operation of property, as well as using a forged document, which caused an angry backlash. More than 1,800 writers and publishers subsequently signed a letter urging Giller organizers to drop charges against the protesters, including Bernstein. That still hasn’t happened.
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Book banning made headlines across the United States and Canada. Across the border, PEN America reported an increase in the number of books banned in schools, up by 33 per cent over the 2021/22 school year. “Overwhelmingly,” the organization reported, “book bans target books on race or racism or featuring characters of color (sic), as well as books with LGBTQ+ characters.”
Scholastic book fairs attracted criticism for bundling together diverse books in an “optional collection,” which many authors and educators saw as segregating diverse books, pointing out what not to buy instead of leading to inclusion. In a protest letter they wrote, “The books separated for optional exclusion are almost entirely written about or by people of color (sic) or the LGBTQIA+ community. Deciding that the subject matter of these books might go against a state’s law capitulates to the idea that these books are not suitable for children. That is harmful, and wrong.” Scholastic removed the bundles.
In Canada, protests rang out over school boards’ perceived censorship of certain books. The Waterloo Catholic District School Board, as one example, came under fire for “shadow-banning” four books with LGBTQ themes nominated for a “Forest of Reading” list of books. The schools put these titles on shelves accessible only to teachers, although students can see them if they request them, raising an existential question: How could they know to request them if they didn’t know they were there? Publishers and authors protested.
AI sparks mass concern — and lawsuits
The increased use of artificial intelligence has sparked debates over the nature of art and the threat of AI applications, including ChatGPT, to writing and journalism. In the United States, writers including John Grisham and George R.R. Martin launched a class-action lawsuit alleging that ChatGPT is a “massive commercial enterprise” reliant upon “systematic theft on a mass scale.”
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Authors were further outraged when an investigation by the Atlantic magazine showed that a company called Books3 scanned — without permission from authors — 200,000 books to train artificial intelligence in communication. The magazine developed a database where authors could search to see which, if any, of their books had been used. A quick search showed that many Canadian authors’ books had been used.
Cyber attacks and ransomware
AI technology wasn’t the only cyber nightmare facing the books industry this year.
In October, the Toronto Public Library — North America’s biggest library system — fell victim to a ransomware attack that shut down many of its digital services, including holds and access to computers in its branches, as well as compromising employees’ personal data. The library said access to the services won’t be back up until early 2024.
In February, bookstore Indigo experienced a ransomware attack, bringing down its website, leaving it unable to process debit or credit payments for three days, shutting down the company’s online sales for a month and compromising the personal information of former employees. The incident cost the company millions in revenue, the last thing the already beleaguered company needed.
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The Indigo hack was just the beginning of Reisman’s turbulent year. The founder of the Indigo chain stepped down as executive chair of the board of directors in June. The surprise announcement came as four board members also left, with one, Dr. Chika Stacy Oriuwa, citing “loss of confidence in the board … and mistreatment.”
Reisman had been making a slow transition out of the company: she had stepped down as CEO in 2022, promoting the company’s president, Peter Ruis, to CEO. The retailing guru, formerly of clothing chains Anthropologie and Jigsaw, and U.K. department store John Lewis, was hired to rethink the chain’s direction, with a focus on lifestyle.
Then, in September, Ruis resigned, the company announced in a terse statement. Later in the month, Reisman came out of retirement, rejoined the board and again took on the mantle of CEO, with the company announcing that it was embarking on a transformation plan. Many in the book community expressed the hope that means books will once again be at the heart of Indigo stores. Reisman delayed the opening of the new concept store at the Well in Toronto, which opened with a solid focus on books.
She was also the target of attacks by pro-Palestinian protesters who threw (washable) red paint and plastered posters accusing her of funding genocide on the windows of Indigo’s flagship Bay and Bloor store in Toronto. Charges of mischief were laid against 11 people. The protests stemmed from her funding of a program that provides free tuition for soldiers who served in the Israel Defence Forces.
In other bookselling news, indie bookstores continue the trend of past few years: we’re getting more of them right across the country. The Canadian Independent Booksellers Association reported 137 indie booksellers with 157 stores across the country, with more than a dozen others waiting to join.
And, finally, rearing its head toward the end of the year was a scandal over Goodreads review. This one involved debut author Cait Corrain, who was found to be “review bombing”: creating fake accounts to post negative reviews of books she saw as rivals or competition for hers. Her book was set to come out in March 2024 but, when her behaviour was exposed and she admitted to being the culprit, the deal with Del Rey Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, was withdrawn.
Authors have long had a tolerate/hate relationship with Goodreads; it’s a way of getting out word about a book, but the reviewers don’t always read the books, the platform can easily be gamed, and uninformed one-star reviews can skew the algorithm and kill a book. But with writers increasingly being asked to do hands-on marketing of their own books on social media, it’s difficult to avoid.
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Which seems the way 2024 is going to continue: turbulence isn’t going away, conflict and controversy are inevitable, and change is the only thing we can really be sure of right now. Supporting artists of all stripes who raise their voices has never been more important.
