This week welcomed Daniel Wells owner and publisher at Biblioasis in Walkerville as our guest speaker.
Daniel shared with us the story of how Biblioasis start with 5,000 books purchased for $125 at an auction. Daniel dreamed of working at a local bookstore but no one would hire him. He says "I wasn’t cool enough to make it. If someone would have just hired me I would have worked and moved on with my life and Biblioasis would not have existed." He describes it now as a very happy accident!
Windsor made everything else possible. He says that this location made it possible to afford to take risks so they’ve seen lots of success and have made money on things that normally wouldn’t work because Windsor is an affordable place to live.
He later because a publisher in 2004 and Biblioasis also started a reprint program and translation program!
They have seen so much success over the years. The first major one was in 2010 when they published Light Lifting – short stories all set in working-class Windsor by Alexander MacLeod. Since then they have won many awards.
Biblioasis believes in the importance of investing in Canadian literature and bringing international books to market.
Daniel explained that Canadians should care about independent publishers because publishing is being threatened by conglomerate publishers and that limits our ability as Canadians to tell our stories. Of the top 10,000 best-selling authors in Canada, only 10% of those are Canadian.