A Response to the Canada Council’s “Public Engagement in the Arts”
The members of the Association of Canadian Publishers, representing independent, Canadian-owned publishers of English-language books, congratulate the Canada Council on publication of its discussion paper, “Public Engagement in the Arts.” This is a timely consideration of an important issue for the cultural sector today.
The Association of Canadian Publishers is the national voice of Canada’s independent English-language book publishers. Our 120 members are drawn from all ten provinces and Nunavut. They publish in every genre, and serve literary, trade, educational, scholarly, and specialty markets. Public engagement is at the core of publishers’ activities; increasingly, over the past four years, it has become a core focus for the ACP as well, as manifested in the National Reading Campaign, the 49th Shelf, and eBOUND Canada. All of these initiatives are intended to foster public engagement, from the most fundamental act of reading, to the application of technologies that enable new kinds of communication among authors, readers, publishers, and the public at large.