Support for BC Bookworld

Four times a year I look forward to a new edition of BC Bookworld. Each issue profiles BC authors, illustrators and publishers, including self-published authors. It is an invaluable resource and a wonderful way to profile all things literary about BC. The magazine is available free through bookstores and on the BC ferries as well, so it is sure to get into peoples' hands and, no doubt, helps put new writers in readers' hot little hands. You can also subscribe to BC Bookworld for the very reasonable price of $25. Given the latest round of funding cuts BC Bookworld's future is a bit shaky. Please take a minute to read this letter and consider supporting BC Bookworld.

Dear Friend,

For more than twenty years, Alan Twigg and David Lester have produced B.C. BookWorld, Canada?s most-read independent publication about books. It?s an educational newspaper that serves 100,000 people per issue, via more than 900 distribution outlets around the province.

With the onset of the Olympics, the B.C. provincial government has suddenly withdrawn all its annual support, terminating a 22-year partnership with the non-profit society that sponsors B.C. BookWorld. The news came in a brisk phone call in October, without any explanation, and no paper trail, with less than one month?s notice.

Similar calls were made, on the same day, to the B.C. book publishers? association and the B.C. magazine publishers? association.

The future of B.C. BookWorld is now in jeopardy.

If you value and enjoy B.C. BookWorld, I invite you to help preserve and embolden this essential publication by sending a Supportive Subscription cheque of $25 to:

Pacific BookWorld News Society
3516 West 13th Avenue
Vancouver, B.C.
V6R 2S3

In return, B.C. BookWorld will be mailed to your home or office address throughout 2010.

Please act now. As legendary Canadian publisher Jack McClelland put it, ?In all sincerity, let me say that I have never encountered a book journal as engaging as B.C. BookWorld.?


Sent on behalf of Pacific BookWorld News Society; publisher Howard White (president), historian Jean Barman, Simon Fraser University chief librarian Lynn Copeland, Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing director Rowland Lorimer, Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia executive director Margaret Reynolds, author Andreas Schroeder, bookseller Don Stewart, Vancouver Public Library chief librarian Paul Whitney. In conjunction with the Coalition for the Defence of Writing and Publishing in British Columbia.