2025 Recap, Part One: WHY?!

Every single person I casually chat with has been saying this year has been a doozy. Doesn't matter what you do for work, doesn't matter where you live. 2025 has been a whole thing.

I've wanted to get into a rhythm writing this newsletter/blog since I first set it up, and just haven't had the time or energy (see above).

So here's what I'm going to do as this sickeningly eventful year begins to wind down: I'm going to get very clear about what I want to achieve through this writing, and I'm going to write about this year in that context.

What's This All About?

Working to get a new press off the ground in Canada is—unless you're spinning off from an established career in Canadian publishing and therefore know everyone (it's a small industry, after all)—a lonely, isolated exercise in learning things it shouldn't be so damn challenging to learn.

What I'd like to achieve through this effort is sharing from my experience so it won't be quite so challenging for others.

Nine Ten is the only dedicated craft publisher in Canada. In fact, there are very few niche publishers in Canada on any subject.

I came up in my career working with American publishers, even though I have lived in Canada for the entirety of my career. While not all of the publishers of my own books were focused exclusively on crafts, most of them marketed their craft books within the craft industry as well as through the book trade.

The typical craft book is full-colour, photo-heavy, and larger in trim size than a trade paperpack. That's an expensive print project. I'm committed to keeping Nine Ten's book production work in Canada, which means we aren't shaving off half the cost of printing by going overseas. And finally, we print on expensive 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper.

I'm mentioning all that in this context because it's the reason Nine Ten released only one book per year until 2025. Between crowdfunding the bulk of each book's $45,000 budget to managing editing and production, it was all I could do to get one book out the door per year. In 2024, I planned to release black-and-white, self-funded books for the first time. I was a giant leap forward.

I'm laying all this out because the entire publishing trade infrastructure in Canada revolves around publishers being eligible for federal funding through the Canada Book Fund (CBF)—and to qualify for CBF funding a press must have published a minimum of 15 qualifying books, 12 of them over the three years prior to applying.

As of this writing, Nine Ten has published six qualifying books and one non-qualifying book. It'll be a while before we have the minimum 15, and though I did get four books out the door in 2025, I'm not sure I can guarantee, for sure, that I can continue to release that many titles per year, for certain, no doubt.

So, two things:

First, because federal funding is only accessible to established presses and eligibility requirements trickle down into how provincial and national publishing trade groups design their eligibility criteria for membership, it's a long time until a startup press can access the trade for networking, timely information (quite relevant in a year involving a trade war, a federal election, a Canada Post strike), advocacy, etc.

Nine Ten released our first book in the spring of 2022, and I was only able to join the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP) in October of 2025. We had five books on the market and two about to release by the time I gained access to the benefits of membership.

Because of this, I made our first seven books by sorting out all kinds of things I'd have had a vastly smoother time navigating if I'd had access to the trade, from finding a great domestic book printer to securing distribution and sales representation for our books, to opportunities for collaboration and cooperation. Had I not been comfortable cold-emailing strangers and articulating what I need and wish for, Nine Ten would have been up a creek.

My ultimate goal (beyond getting Nine Ten onto solid ground), which I'll work toward through this newsletter, is to advocate to the Canadian publishing industry and funders to support startup and early-stage presses. Maybe that would mean establishing a high-risk fund to help presses to get established in the first place. Maybe that would mean recognizing that early stage-presses are making books just like everyone else, and that letting us participate in the trade would not only make it far more likely that we'll continue being able to make books, but possible that we could share our experiences to the benefit of other presses, startups or established. Overall, I would like to convince Canadian publishing that supporting startups and welcoming fresh voices is a basic best practice for nurturing a healthy industry in any sector. (If that means challenging the scarcity mindset reinforced by the industry making federal funding its focal point, so be it.)

So what's to come?

Our first book may have come out three and a half years ago, but in many ways 2025 has involved a whole lot of things—good and bad—that can be used to exemplify the challenges and opportunities of getting a small press started in Canada. So I'm going to write about this year, probably two to three months at a time.

On January 1, 2025, Nine Ten books gained sales representation in Canada, dovetailing with our having secured Canadian distribution of our books in March, 2024. (Unlike in the U.S, sales and distribution are decoupled in Canada; it's a massive chicken-and-egg challenge and there is almost no information about it available to startup presses. In other words, Google turns up almost nothing of use, and every startup press is on their own to figure it out.)

We'll be ending 2025 with global sales and distribution of our books, and with two of our four 2025 titles having been national bestsellers.

Between the beginning and the end of this year, the release of each of our books coincided, almost perfectly and to the extent that I began to consider I was legit cursed, with one or another major disruption that was fully out of my control: tariffs, labour disruption (more than once), the end of the de minimis exemption for low-value goods crossing the border, a personal injury, and an unexpected viral success.

Some of what I'll write about will be specific to our Canadian publishing landscape, some of it will be specific to Canadian businesses of any kind, and all of it will hopefully shed some light on what goes into getting a new press off the ground anywhere.

Stay tuned for the first installment, hopefully before the end of November!

Onward.
Kim