Independent publisher New Star Books in Vancouver, B.C., announced on January 13 that it will stop acquiring new books and “wind down” operations. Its People’s Co-Op Bookstore in Vancouver remains open.
“New Star will continue to promote and distribute titles in print, through our trade distributor, UTP Distribution; New Star’s own website; and Amazon.com as well as Amazon.ca,” publisher Rolf Maurer wrote in an email newsletter. “However, it will no longer be acquiring new books for publication.”
Maurer, who has been publisher at New Star since 1990, said that the reasons for the closure included his “age and health, increasing difficulty of access to the marketplace, and the cold wind blowing in New Star’s direction from our arts councils, whose support of our work is a condition of existence.” New Star began as a writing collective in 1969, and has published books about politics and culture in addition to fiction and poetry.
Recent titles include Tomorrow's News: How to Fix Canada's Media, by Marc Edge, and Hanna Calder’s Hester in Sunlight, a contemporary riff on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Among New Star's backlist titles are a 20th anniversary edition of Guilty of Everything, by Vancouver journalist and former Modernettes lead singer-guitarist John Armstrong; chronicles of regional history in the Transmontanus series, including work by Judith Williams; and Captivity Tales: Canadians in New York, early nonfiction by novelist Elizabeth Hay.
New Star’s fate has increased the debate around public funding for literary and arts organizations in Canada and raised awareness over the conditions publishers must meet in order to secure financial support. Toronto nonfiction publisher Sutherland House Books reported that the British Columbia Arts Council, a New Star fiscal supporter, had placed the press on “concerned status” in 2023, and that New Star’s ongoing funding from the Canada Council for the Arts also was in doubt.
Books BC, the province’s trade association for Canadian-owned publishers, said that its leaders were “saddened” by the news. “Attending poetry readings at the People’s Co-Op Bookstore on Commercial Drive, voluntarily run by Rolf Maurer, was how I and many of us in Vancouver got intimately connected to the local literary scene,” Books BC executive director Matea Kulić wrote on the organization’s site. “The winding down of the press is a painful reminder of how these spaces can never be taken for granted.”
Don Gorman, board chair of publishing trade association Books BC, wrote that New Star’s closure “stands as a sobering reminder of the critical need for sustained support—by the industry, consumers, and government—for arts and culture.” Gorman noted that “this loss is profoundly felt by all who value independent and thought-provoking publishing.”