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The Boho Index for Big Cities and Small
by Jamie
Design & Typography + Gift & Stationery / June 11, 2010
As the Canadian distributor for Moleskine, we are always looking out for information on people who love Moleskine. It is truism is that if you do creative work in your life you are probably a fan of Moleskine.
Richard Florida, theorist of the Creative Class, has a good post over at The Atlantic Monthly that discusses a recent study on the Boho Index for major North American cities (with populations over a million). Florida cites work from the Bohemian Index from the Martin Prosperity Institute that tracks cities with the highest percentage of working artists, musicians, writers, designers, and entertainers. Turns out that Canada is a Boho Haven.There are three Canadian cities in the Top 10; Vancouver is # 2, Toronto # 4 and Montreal rounds out the top ten. While flattering, none of this is hugely surprising.
But one of the major knocks against Creative Class theory is how can creative people actually afford to live in Creative Class cities? Most artists can't afford a fair-trade, organic, shade-friendly coffee at 49th Parallel in Kits let alone buy a house, condo or rent a single room apartment in Vancouver. This is what is cool about this index--it ranks smaller cities too, and here, Canada does very well: Halifax, Victoria, Peterborough, and Guelph all who have Boho Index values above the norm.
Lesson from all this? Grab your Moleskine Notebook and move to Peterborough, you will be very happy.
Raincoast Wins Bookseller Award for Service
The Canadian Booksellers Association held their annual Libris Awards this weekend in Toronto and Raincoast came away a winner! We were picked as the best distributor in Canada as voted by booksellers across the country.
Distribution is the selling, promoting, shipping and customer service aspect of bookselling; skills that really matter in a country as big and diverse as Canada. We have been shortlisted or won this award every year for the last decade, so we must be doing something right!
In accepting the award, our CEO John Sawyer, made the case for why we feel the future of traditional books will be very bright. You will be reading more about this theme on our blog in the weeks to come.
Rorie Bruce, our sales representative for the Prairies won the Libris for Rep of the Year which gave us a double reason to celebrate. Rorie has many years of experience in the book industry and his passion and breadth of book knowledge is one of the reasons that the book culture is thriving in western Canada. Congratulations Rorie.
A full list of the winners can be seen here. Congratulations all.
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5 Things Vancouver: Jamie Broadhurst
by Jamie
Travel + Vancouver / February 10, 2010
Jamie is VP Marketing at Raincoast. When not working at Raincoast or teaching at Simon Fraser University he's reading and playing with his son.
Don't ask him about any fashionable films or restaurants that have opened in the last few years. He hasn't been.
What neighbourhood do you live in?
Kitsilano, our two and half year-old son knows he lives in “Kits” but the word “Vancouver” is meaningless to him. Everything is local.
How long have you lived in Vancouver?
I have lived in Vancouver for almost ten years but for the first two years I was commuting back and forth monthly between Toronto and Vancouver; two weeks here , two weeks there. No one else in Canada believes me but I actually think the two cities are far more similar than anyone will admit. Despite the myth of being a people of wilderness, Canadians actually do urbanism very well. Toronto and Vancouver could teach each other lot about what makes our cities so liveable.
What is the single best thing about living in Vancouver?
The ocean; when the tide is out my son and I can go exploring for starfish and glass smooth pebbles, and for about three weeks in the summer, even I will swim far out into English Bay and look back at our City of Glass framed by the mountains.
What’s your favourite book about Vancouver?
It's not about Vancouver per se, but Dave Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. On one level the book is about archetypal migration Westward in his case to San Francisco. It is a book I read one fateful summer while on vacation in B.C, when my (now) wife and I decided to head west permanently. The scene where Egger is playing Frisbee with his younger brother, crystallized for me the idea of how kinetic energy jumps geographical and cultural space, much like how Aby Warburg describes the art history of drapery being the hidden social history of movement. It makes no sense rationally, but is why I wanted to move to Vancouver.
What is the best thing to do with kids in Vancouver?
With opening of the snazzy new Canada line, my son and I love to go the airport on the weekend. We take two buses and the aforementioned train straight to the airport and end up at the new enclosed observation area where we munch on our snack and look at airplanes, trucks, and baggage carts. Nirvana if you are two or forty two.
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Reflections on Duthie Books
by Jamie
News / January 19, 2010
The sad news about Duthie Books closing has just hit the wires.
Today everyone at Raincoast is thinking about the wonderful staff at Duthie's, many of whom have decades of bookselling experience. These type of people are vital to the long term health and vibrancy of the publishing scene. We are rooting for them.
There will be lots of talk about what the closing of this landmark bookstore in Vancouver signifies for the book industry and for the culture of books in Canada. Let that be a debate for another day, but when that debate comes, I will argue that despite what certain painful recent examples may suggest, the future of book in Canada is very, very healthy.
For today, I want to comment as resident of Kitsilano, the Vancouver neighbourhood where Duthie's final store is located.
Many people who have lived in Vancouver longer than I, will remember Duthie Books as a large sprawling chain. I have been in Vancouver for decade and know Duthie's as single stand alone store, that stocked books I wanted to read and whose staff loved to talk about books as much as I do. I bought my son's first book at Duthie's and to this day we can't go by the expansive thirty foot store front window (with displays changed daily) without him insisting we go in. I love books on politics, he loves the books on dump trucks. Good stores, large or small chain or non-chain matter to cities. Stores like Duthie's matter to me.
Canadian Readers Will Help Plant 12 Acres of Trees
by Jamie
Environment + News / April 10, 2008
We have just kicked off a campaign with Eco-Libris that is pretty exciting. Read about the details below.
Raincoast Books and Eco-Libris announced today the results of their first joint environmental campaign: Buy a Book, Plant a Tree.
Raincoast Books has signed up 80 Canadian retailers who will be selling a wide range of environmentally themed books through April 2008 which are emblazoned with Eco-Libris stickers stating that for each book purchased a tree will be planted in Central America and Africa. Participating independent bookstores, located from cost-to-coast, have purchased over 4,500 specially stickered books and hence over 4,500 trees will be planted on behalf of Canadian readers.
Raz Godelnik, Eco-Libris Co-founder and CEO explained that these trees not only benefit the environment but also the local communities where they are planted: “More than 12 acres of trees will be planted on behalf of the Canadian readers, offering many benefits to the local communities, from trees planted on the mountain slopes in Guatemala, preventing mudslides, conserving soil for more productive crops and protecting water to fruit trees that provide additional food and income in Malawi.
“Reading books should not have an adverse impact on the environment,” adds Godelnik, “and planting trees to balance out the paper usage in books is a practical first step towards sustainable reading, by replenishing our dwindling forest resources on this planet. We plant these trees with the help of highly respected U.S. and U.K. registered non-profit organizations who are screened for, and work to, very high ecological and sustainability standards. This way we make sure that Raincoast's efforts to go green will have a maximum impact on society and the environment
“Raincoast and our Canadian customers are very pleased to be working with Eco-Libris on the ‘Buy a Book, Plant a Tree' campaign,” said Jamie Broadhurst, VP Marketing for Raincoast Books. “No one campaign is going to solve the challenge of creating sustainable publishing practices, but each new campaign raises more awareness and makes that goal more attainable. We have a lot more work to do.”
For more information and great book recommendations go to: www.raincoast.com/green/
For more information on Eco-Libris go to: www.ecolibris.net
Raincoast is nominated for Libris Awards
by Jamie
News / April 03, 2008
The Canadian Bookseller Association announced today that Raincoast has been short listed for the CBA Libris awards for Marketing Achievement of the Year for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and for Distributor of the Year. Raincoast won the Marketing Achievement once before in 2005 and Raincoast has won a plethora of distribution awards over the years: being named the fastest distributor in the two annual Quill & Quire industry surveys (2003 and 2004), winning the CBA Distributor of the Year Award four times in the last six years and having be named by the Western Book Reps Association as The Best Shipper through Hell and High Water.
The winners of this year's Libris Awards will be named on June 15 in Toronto. Many thanks to our customers for their vote of confidence in our abilities.