Retaliatory tariffs could be 'devastating' to Canadian book industry: Thunder Bay bookseller

A Thunder Bay bookseller says the United States-Canada trade war could have devastating effects on the Canadian book industry.

Canada plans to impose 25 per cent tariffs on certain goods being imported from the United States on April 2. The move is a retaliatory one by Canada as the trade war between Canada and the United States continues.

The list of items that could potentially be affected by tariffs includes books printed or warehoused in the United States, said Lynne Warnick, one of the owners of Thunder Bay's Entershine Bookshop.

"I think what most people don't realize is the majority of Canadian-published or Canadian-written books are warehoused or printed in the United States at some point," Warnick said. "So it would mean that a majority of our books would have a 25 per cent tariff imposed on them."

"Historically, books have been excluded from tariffs, and as a retaliatory sort of countermeasure, it seems like we might be shooting ourselves in the foot with this one," she said. "I don't think this is really going to hurt the United States, but I think it could be devastating to the Canadian book industry."

In Entershine's case, Warnick said a 25 per cent tariff would mean the store would have to raise its prices on books, "especially immediately any books that we are importing from the United States."

"Our margins are already razor thin as they are," she said. "We can't absorb those costs. So they would have to be passed on to our customer and that would hurt a lot of our customers, especially the ones that are ordering for school boards or school libraries."

7:25How the trade war is affecting Canadian authors and booksellers

As Canada readies its next round of retaliatory tariffs on American goods, booksellers across the country are sounding the alarm. Jonathan reached Lynne Warnick, one of the owners of Entershine Bookshop in Thunder Bay.

Warnick said the tariffs would likely be "really devastating" to authors' sales, as well.

"Indie book shops work on word of mouth," she said. "We hand-sell to customers every single day, and our local authors know that we really support them and talk about them."

"If those books have tariffs on them and become priced out of the market, I think those local authors in particular are going to see their sales drop."

Thunder Bay author Heather Dickson, who writes under the pen name H. Leighton Dickson, has 10 books out that were independently-published, and recently signed a two-book deal with American company Red Tower Books, an imprint of Entangled Publishing.

The first of Dickson's novels for Red Tower, titled Ship of Spells, will be out in November.

"As an indie, for the most part, it might not affect me directly, because I have local printers, and if I'm doing like a bulk print, it will come from amazon.ca," she said. "So that's a Canadian printing place itself."

Dickson is concerned about the impact of any potential tariffs on the books she's publishing through Red Tower, however.

"That's a considerable increase in the cost of a book," Dickson said. "If you're looking at hardcovers, which in Canada are can range anywhere from like $32 to $48 a book, add another 25 per cent to that."

"That's just the easy math. I'm sure there's ramifications all down the line for the whole book industry."

But Dickson is hopeful people will continue to buy books, even if the tariffs are applied.

"When it comes to these books, like my genre of books, people, I think, will probably still go ahead and buy the books because they love books," she said. "If it's costing 25 per cent more, I think for the most part they will still buy."

"That said, the whole publishing industry has been down for the last two months, since January."

Both Warnick and Dickson said Canada doesn't have the printing infrastructure to handle large print runs.

"It really is the US or China," Dickson said. "And so you might see more business going back and forth across the ocean."

Warnick said the issue was discussed at a recent meeting of the Canadian Independent Booksellers Association.

"We're trying to make as much noise as possible," she said. "We're asking people to write to their local MPs, to submit online how they feel about this, to write letters to the department of finance, the minister of finance, and to just make their voices known."

"My understanding is that ... the government is actually going to be looking at how many letters or responses they got to this proposal," Warnick said. "And it will literally come down to how many people said no, we're opposed to this."