Fernwood has been profiled in a few media pieces that attempt to discredit the public funding of arts and culture. These folks think it's a waste for public money to be spent on a publisher that is politically driven and not profit driven. What does it mean to prioritize politics over profit?
Our publishing program operates as a whole: our bestsellers support the books that may not break even but are crucial for smaller communities. When we think this way, then we can take risks on publishing the most underheard or cutting-edge thinking. That’s the role of a publisher: to document, represent, question, and imagine anew. When we choose to publish a book, it’s because we think it can move us all closer to a better world — not just because we can sell it.
But guess what? Readers love these books; they buy them and teach with them and give them to a friend. Indie publishers like us are intimately, locally, internationally connected to our communities — our readers, authors, peer reviewers, designers, printers, booksellers, and like-minded publishers in other countries. We are part of a vast network of people who love books and the incredible transformative potential they hold. Publishing is an industry that returns to the economy exponentially more than it receives in grants, whether we measure that in dollars, jobs, cultural production, or community building. For example, Fernwood has received $86,000 in Manitoba arts funding since 2020 but brought approximately 3.9 million in sales in Manitoba during the same period. That is a return on investment of 4500%. Everyone in this creative chain benefits — this is money well spent by the government.
However, operating funding is necessary to survive the ups and downs of living near the US, a cultural whirlpool and a massive market. Funding for the arts, including for publishers, was created after WW2 to support distinct cultural production in Canada. Cutting this funding means giving over this entire, diversified, internationally connected industry to the US.
Our grant reports detail the economic returns of government investment in publishing and the arts. We urge provincial and federal governments to consider the social and economic benefits of thriving cultural industries before using that money to instead subsidize unsustainable businesses like fracking, fossil fuel pipelines, and AI.