Lighting up literature

The Literary Press Group has launched All Lit Up to promote Canadian independent literature.

The site provides consumers with a selection of over 4000 books from 43 publishers. It also provides behind the scene content about books, authors, and publishers, as well as blog posts about indie books, publishing, and events. All Lit Up only features members of the LPG so far, including authors such as Aisha Sasha John, David Yee, Spencer Gordon, and Tony Burgess.

“To start with, we want to work out the kinks, make sure the site’s the best it can be, so we want to first start out with our members and make it what they need to be.” Tanya Snyder, the Marketing Manager of All Lit Up said. However, there are discussions about including authors outside the group down the road.

“One of the major reasons for launching this site was because of the indie book seller landscape really decreasing and we know that some of our readers don’t have a local indie book store.” said Julia Horel, Project Manager for All Lit Up.

This year in Toronto alone, Book City closed its Annex location, while The Cookbook Store closed completely.

In book stores publishers pay to have the front displays in book stores, and many indie publishers can’t afford those positions, even if they could, they would have to compete with major best sellers.

“If you’re on a site like Indigo or Amazon, it can be really difficult to  cut through all the best sellers and all of the books published by major companies.” Horel said.

While many are thinking about the closing of book stores and the lack of availability for independent book stores, Alison Jones the Publisher of Canadian book review magazine Quill and Quire says there is an upside.

“Support for independent book sellers is getting stronger than it was a few years ago.” Jones said.  “And as some of the new initiatives online start to get some traction, then that will help too.”