Orca Book Publishers, headquartered in Victoria, B.C., marks its 40th year in 2024. Founded in 1984 by Robert Tyrrell, and now owned and operated by copublishers Andrew Wooldridge and Ruth Linka, Orca amplifies diversity, inclusion, and sustainability in its children’s books, written in English, French, Spanish, and more than 20 Indigenous languages.
Orca publishes board books and picture books, middle grade fiction and nonfiction, and young adult fiction, averaging 85 new titles annually. In addition to print, Wooldridge says, “we’ve got more than 100 books on audio, but we’re trying to figure that market out,” due to less demand for audio in children’s than adult categories.
Wooldridge got his start at Orca 32 years ago, as a college student working in the warehouse. “I often think about how much things have changed in the last 40 years,” he says. “Back then, we were making regional guidebooks and history books, and selling them as best we could. Today, as we grow, it’s gone from just books to all these other formats.”
A decade ago, Wooldridge began purchasing Orca from Tyrrell, who transitioned away from ownership over several years. After Tyrrell retired, he remained in touch with Wooldridge and Linka, and he spoke at the company’s anniversary gathering in June. Tyrrell passed away suddenly on August 31—a shock to his colleagues in an otherwise celebratory year.
“Bob was a passionate publisher, an astute businessperson and an ardent supporter of BC and Canadian publishing,” Wooldridge and the Orca group posted in a statement. “Bob will be missed. Not only for his business sense and his commitment to always doing the right thing, but also for the joy he brought to those around him.” The company noted that Tyrrell helped establish the Victoria Book Prizes, served on the boards of the Association of Canadian Publishers and Livres Canada Books, and was past president of the Association of Book Publishers of BC.
Trade, education, and global ambitions
Orca has grown to a company of 50 staffers, who work out of B.C., Ontario, Edmonton, France, and the U.S. Its team includes in-house sales reps and workers at the distribution warehouses in Victoria and Bellingham, Wash. “We do everything in-house except print the books,” Wooldridge says.
Recently, the team branched out by “building the French side of the distribution model outside of Quebec,” Wooldridge notes, plus “selling rights overseas and—probably more importantly—buying rights as well. We’re finding books that can work in this market and seeing them as a way to grow the list.” Orca acquired Alice Dussutour’s Born a Girl from the French publisher Les Éditions du Ricochet and published its edition in March. This account of five girls from different nations is “doing incredibly well, partly because the focus is not so North American, but a wider view” of global girlhood, Wooldridge adds.
Trade sales are important for Orca, yet the educational market is significant too. “We’re not a curriculum publisher, but we’re trying to crack that market,” Wooldridge says. “As we’ve seen in the U.S., the wholesale market to schools is being driven more by curriculum, and before it was driven by trade books in the classroom.” In recent years, Orca has anticipated demand with the multimodal Meg and Greg phonics series.
In addition, “we’re committed to figuring out how to deliver content so it’s not all trapped inside a physical book,” Wooldridge says. Accessible e-books are a top priority, and all future Orca publications will be “born accessible” from the concept on up, to serve a wide audience and comply with the European Accessibility Act.
When it comes to Orca’s most popular titles, “our bestselling books are all Indigenous content,” notably dual-language picture books and backlist titles, Wooldridge says. “As a white colonial settler publishing company, we work with our Indigenous staff, who have taught us a lot about collaborating with creators.”
Acquisitions of Indigenous titles have gotten more difficult, he admits, because “it’s a more crowded field, which is a great thing.” When Cree/Lakota author Monique Gray Smith and Cree/Métis illustrator Julie Flett’s My Heart Fills with Happiness “was chosen as the Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s TD grade one book of the year in 2019, every grade one kid in the country got a copy in English and Cree, which was exactly what we’ve been trying to do.” A board book edition of Smith’s When We Are Kind, illustrated by Diné artist Nicole Neidhardt, came out in August.
This fall, Orca publishes the bilingual English/Plains Cree This Land Is a Lullaby, by Tonya Simpson, of Pasqua First Nation, and illustrator Delreé Dumont, of the Onion Lake Cree Nation, as well as the English/Anishinaabemowin picture book Hummingbird (Oct.) by Jennifer Leason, translated by Leason and Norman Chartrand, both of the Pine Creek First Nation.
Wooldridge also sees strong growth in nonfiction over the past decade. “Years ago, we always said, ‘We’ll never publish nonfiction—it’s too much work,’ ” he recalls, “but now, so many of our books go into the school market.” Three years ago, Lindsay Herriot and Kate Fry’s Growing Up Trans found success: “We weren’t sure how it would be received, but the sales numbers were great, and the support it got was incredible,” Wooldridge says. “It came out at just the right time.”
“I’d like to describe our nonfiction as always having a social justice and an environmental protection lens,” says Sara Hartley, Orca’s marketing director. “Our books bring a level of critical thinking and ask kids questions to help them learn how to think about an issue.”
In Orca’s four decades, Wooldridge says, the company has evolved; over the past 15 years in particular, a deep commitment to diversity and professionalism has benefited the company and its list. “I’m so proud of the people we get to work with. We’re trying to sell books, but we get to do it in a way that feels good.”
