Is Government funding of Canada’s literary and arts magazine in Jeopardy, Yes or No?
I asked Stephanie Rea, Minister James Moore’s press secretary at the Department of Heritage this question recently. Here, via an email from Media Relations Advisor Charles Drouin is the answer:
"No…support to extremely small titles will be limited by a requirement that these titles must sell at least 5 000 copies per annum (not per issue) to be eligible for support under the new Canada Periodical Fund formula. This means the title must sell a grand total of 5 000 copies over the course of the year, through all sources—newsstand as well as subscription. For example, a quarterly magazine (published four times a year) with 1 000 paid subscribers and 251 newsstand sales per issue would still be eligible (4 × 1 251 = 5 004 copies sold during the year, which makes the title eligible). This policy takes into account a recommendation from the 2005 summative evaluation of the Publications Assistance Program that noted that there were significant administrative costs to manage extremely small amounts of funding for extremely small periodicals." (my bolding)
The reason I bold in the first instance is to emphasize that this 5,000 figure does not refer to circulation, but rather to number of copies sold over the course of a year…certainly a more reasonable figure to work with. Or, going with the example cited above: is this country of 36 odd million so little concerned with literature that literary journals with paid circulation of over 1000 distributed once a quarter, just aren’t viable? If so, isn’t this a depressing statement on how little Canadians actually care about the literary, and on how inconveniently small – minute – Canada’s literary pond actually is?
Granted, quality not quantity is what should be used as a criteria to determine magazine funding, but at some level popular appeal – any kind of appeal – should also surely be considered. I don’t agree that ‘popularity’ should be the measure of a magazine’s worth, or of eligibility for public funds. Quite the contrary…public money is often most required where the market place fails to adequately meet societal needs, regardless of how “significant” administrative costs might be. And public money should certainly not be dispensed only to those whose world view parallels that of the party in power, or indeed only to profitable publications…but requiring evidence of at least some readership, is, I think justified when it comes to handing over government funds.
And paid circulation of 1000 doesn’t seem too outlandish, especially when you consider that websites, such as this one, dedicated to the discussion of books and literature, enjoy (at least according to Cystats) in the neighbourhood of 30,000-40,000 unique visits per month (which reminds me: Time to replay this self-serving funding-for-literary-blogs tape).
I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but there is I think a connection between quality, and success in the marketplace, even if we are talking literary products. And a connection too between the low readership of literary magazines and how cheaply, as John Metcalf points out here, Canadians hold the First Editions of books written by their greatest writers.
Related posts:
- Industry Message to Heritage Canada and the Canada Council re: Literary Magazine Funding: The Short Version
- Marketplace as determinant of merit, and the perils of Funding the Arts
- Arts Funding (1): City of Ottawa cuts will cost Life
- The Case for Public Funding of Literary Blogs and Book Reviewers
- Rights and Wrongs of the Federal Government’s proposed new Canada Periodical Fund
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:09 PM
All of this is assuming that a magazine’s a quarterly. A mag that publishes twice annually–such as Arc or, until we recently went up to 3 per annum, CNQ–has to have twice the circulation and twice the stand sales per issue in order to qualify. Either that or expand to a quarterly, which isn’t necessarily in the best interests of content quality. Arc is one of the most professionally run literary magazines in the country and one of the most dynamic in terms of web content. That it would get its funding cut whereas a possibly less well-run–and less subscribed-to–mag gets to keep its funding, is absurd.
Another mathematical obstacle is the sheer number of magazines, which divides the relatively small audience for lit mags many times. No one can afford, even if they wanted to, to buy every issue of every magazine published.
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:18 AM
And don’t forget that a novel selling 5,000 copies in Canada is considered a bestseller. How realistic, then, is it to expect a literary magazine to have a circulation of 1000?