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Essay Type: publishing
Essay Date: 2011
In one way, Michael Burch has been a B.C. publisher ahead of his time. As the founder and owner of Whitecap Books, he has long self-identified as a publisher who is fond of “attacking the marketplace that the bookstores don’t reach.” As conventional bookselling outlets are being threatened by ebooks and Amazon, now trade publishers must improvise, as Burch has done, to target unconventional markets and specialty book sales. Here Laurie Neale profiles Burch and Whitecap Books, a company that has produced almost 1,000 titles since 1977. Currently Whitecap specializes in culinary, wine, gardening and gift books—but Burch got the wheels turning with a classic book about a B.C. railroad.
Michael Burch still plays competitive soccer, so it’s easy to assume he must have named his company, Whitecap Books, after the Vancouver soccer franchise that was hugely successful in the ’70s when his imprint was founded. Or else it was named for foaming ocean waves, as the current Vancouver Whitecaps’ soccer logo would seem to suggest.
In fact, Burch chose the name Whitecap Books while driving one morning toward the North Vancouver, impressed by the snow-capped peaks of North Shore Mountains pointing above the fog and cloud. As a native Brit, rather than a British Columbian, those looming mountains struck him as quintessentially West Coast, and he has gravitated towards them, operating Whitecap Books from North Vancouver since the mid-1980s.
Previously a maritime engineer for steam turbines in England, Burch got started in publishing with a job in sales and marketing for Methuen Publications in Toronto in 1971. After moving to Vancouver in 1974 to open a Methuen branch office, he started his own book sales commission agency one year later with Norman Adams. After several years with Adams Burch Ltd., he struck out on his own with Whitecap Books in June of 1977.
In those early days, Burch liked to joke that his books were about pictures, not words, but Whitecap didn’t start off by concentrating on gift books. The first title he published from his home, when he was Whitecap’s lone employee, was a B.C. classic called McCulloch’s Wonder: The History of the Kettle Valley Railway by Barrie Sanford. Often reprinted during the past 34 years, it reputedly still sells more than 2,000 copies per year.
In the late seventies, Burch graduated to an office in the basement of Douglas & McIntyre. Relocating to the North Shore and establishing a small warehouse, Burch produced numerous successful trade titles such as Michael Kluckner’s groundbreaking Vancouver the Way It Was and the first full-colour book on Vancouver, by Duncan McDougall, which he says sold over 25,000 in 1978/79.
Then along came the 1986 World Exposition and Whitecap responded with a blockbuster coffee table book, The Expo Celebration: The Official Retrospective Book, an enormous and complicated undertaking—unprecedented in B.C. publishing. Burch has likened “event publishing” to mounting a military campaign.
A so-called instant book, The Expo Celebration was initiated by Burch and photographer Derik Murray, president of Murray/Love Productions. Together they approached Expo boss Jim Pattison who later gave three days of his time, unpaid, to help promote the finished product. The contract for the book was with a company called Expo Souvenirs from Seattle who held the print material rights at Expo 86. Royalties were paid to Expo Souvenirs.
The production team secured headquarters in an office right outside the Expo grounds, working with Murray’s partner, Marthe Love, who assigned photographers and liaised with the Expo 86 staff. The late CBC host David Grierson, then a freelance journalist, was assigned to interview people and write the text accompanying the photos. Michael Morissette, as photography coordinator, sifted through more than 100,000 images submitted by more than 50 photographers.
It worked. The book was released just six weeks after Expo 86 closed. Most of the signatures for that book were printed in stages, so that when Expo closed, the last signatures were added. The Expo Celebration reputedly sold 50,000 copies within three weeks, rising to 150,000 copies overall.
A similar process was undertaken for Diana: A Tribute to the People’s Princess, by Peter Donally. Photographers lined Diana’s funeral route and the resulting 175-page book was the first one published after her death, another huge seller.
But so-called “event publishing” is always a precarious gamble. When Burch and Derik Murray joined forces with Petrocan to document and celebrate the 88-day winter torch relay from St. John’s to Calgary for the Calgary Olympics—the longest Olympic torch relay in history—Share the Flame: The Official Retrospective of the Olympic Torch Relay fell far short of replicating the success of The Expo Celebration.
In the pre-digital age, Whitecap often printed tens of thousands of colour books. But with the advent of digital photography and the subsequent shrink in demand, colour book printing shrunk to around 3,000 a run. Burch once said, “Colour books haven’t quite gone the same way as encyclopedias and the atlas, but they are not as fast as they once were.”
In 1994, Whitecap moved to its current North Vancouver headquarters on Lynn Avenue. In 1996, Nick Rundall, previously the marketing director of Canadian Book Marketing Group, joined Whitecap as a partner. In the new position, he ran the sales and marketing division for Whitecap in Ontario and eventually became vice president of Whitecap, handling authors and accounts in eastern Canada. Rundall was an important addition, as Whitecap authors increasingly lived outside of B.C.
Colleen MacMillan joined Whitecap in 1988, climbed to the position of publisher and then left in 1997. Whitecap increasingly shifted its collective sights towards cookbooks after Robert McCullough’s arrival in 1990. In 2001, McCullough became publisher.
Under McCullough’s watch, Whitecap snagged the likes of Anna Olson (pastry chef on the Food Network); Michael Smith (of TV’s Chef at Home), Curtis Stone (of Take Home Chef), Anthony Sedlak (of The Main), and Roger Mooking (of Everyday Exotic) and many other Canadian culinary personalities. McCullough remained publisher until 2011, when he left Whitecap to work at Random House. Burch has resumed his position as publisher.
According to Burch, Whitecap’s recipe for success includes five critical ingredients. First, dream up something original; second, be the first to publish a book on the subject (like Whitecap’s book on Princess Diana); third, know current trends and choose the right topics for the right time; four, choose authors that are promotable, like the exuberant Roger Mooking; and five, pursue authors who are tuned into the “pulse,” while maintaining ties with proven authors.
Burch stresses that in the foodie realm, success largely is determined by the fourth ingredient: an author’s persona is instrumental to a book’s promotability. “Publishing culinary books is like high fashion,” he says. “What’s in today is gone tomorrow. It’s hard to keep up with it.”
Burch contends that advances in technology—namely the Internet and ebooks—have not done irreparable damage to Whitecap books. “For us it’s still a healthy business. We’re not scared of many things,” he says. Whitecap, to its credit, has striven to keep abreast of technology throughout its lifetime by fully embracing the possibilities technology presents.
Currently, Whitecap is working with eBOUND and the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP) to have e-rights built into author contracts, as well as getting older authors to sign e-rights addendums. Beyond that, Whitecap recently signed a contract with Apple that will deliver high-design books right into the hands of iPad users, a move that was initiated by Whitecap alone.
“It’s tough right now,” says Burch, “with only having one superstore system, in Canada, to put your books into—Indigo. That’s becoming a bit tedious at times, with some of the unilateral decisions they inflict on the rest of their industry.” But he remains optimistic as Whitecap scrutinizes the food and wine industry for up-and-coming stars.
“We’re always looking for something new,” Burch says. Burch’s wife and Whitecap’s comptroller, Kristina Stosek, insisted on signing the authors of Quinoa 365, Patricia Green and Carolyn Hemming. Sales this year have reportedly zoomed to 100,000 worldwide. Burch says Whitecap sifts through about 25 submissions per week.
You can have your cake and publish the recipe for it, too.
Michael Burch still plays competitive soccer, so it’s easy to assume he must have named his company, Whitecap Books, after the Vancouver soccer franchise that was hugely successful in the ’70s when his imprint was founded. Or else it was named for foaming ocean waves, as the current Vancouver Whitecaps’ soccer logo would seem to suggest.
In fact, Burch chose the name Whitecap Books while driving one morning toward the North Vancouver, impressed by the snow-capped peaks of North Shore Mountains pointing above the fog and cloud. As a native Brit, rather than a British Columbian, those looming mountains struck him as quintessentially West Coast, and he has gravitated towards them, operating Whitecap Books from North Vancouver since the mid-1980s.
Previously a maritime engineer for steam turbines in England, Burch got started in publishing with a job in sales and marketing for Methuen Publications in Toronto in 1971. After moving to Vancouver in 1974 to open a Methuen branch office, he started his own book sales commission agency one year later with Norman Adams. After several years with Adams Burch Ltd., he struck out on his own with Whitecap Books in June of 1977.
In those early days, Burch liked to joke that his books were about pictures, not words, but Whitecap didn’t start off by concentrating on gift books. The first title he published from his home, when he was Whitecap’s lone employee, was a B.C. classic called McCulloch’s Wonder: The History of the Kettle Valley Railway by Barrie Sanford. Often reprinted during the past 34 years, it reputedly still sells more than 2,000 copies per year.
In the late seventies, Burch graduated to an office in the basement of Douglas & McIntyre. Relocating to the North Shore and establishing a small warehouse, Burch produced numerous successful trade titles such as Michael Kluckner’s groundbreaking Vancouver the Way It Was and the first full-colour book on Vancouver, by Duncan McDougall, which he says sold over 25,000 in 1978/79.
Then along came the 1986 World Exposition and Whitecap responded with a blockbuster coffee table book, The Expo Celebration: The Official Retrospective Book, an enormous and complicated undertaking—unprecedented in B.C. publishing. Burch has likened “event publishing” to mounting a military campaign.
A so-called instant book, The Expo Celebration was initiated by Burch and photographer Derik Murray, president of Murray/Love Productions. Together they approached Expo boss Jim Pattison who later gave three days of his time, unpaid, to help promote the finished product. The contract for the book was with a company called Expo Souvenirs from Seattle who held the print material rights at Expo 86. Royalties were paid to Expo Souvenirs.
The production team secured headquarters in an office right outside the Expo grounds, working with Murray’s partner, Marthe Love, who assigned photographers and liaised with the Expo 86 staff. The late CBC host David Grierson, then a freelance journalist, was assigned to interview people and write the text accompanying the photos. Michael Morissette, as photography coordinator, sifted through more than 100,000 images submitted by more than 50 photographers.
It worked. The book was released just six weeks after Expo 86 closed. Most of the signatures for that book were printed in stages, so that when Expo closed, the last signatures were added. The Expo Celebration reputedly sold 50,000 copies within three weeks, rising to 150,000 copies overall.
A similar process was undertaken for Diana: A Tribute to the People’s Princess, by Peter Donally. Photographers lined Diana’s funeral route and the resulting 175-page book was the first one published after her death, another huge seller.
But so-called “event publishing” is always a precarious gamble. When Burch and Derik Murray joined forces with Petrocan to document and celebrate the 88-day winter torch relay from St. John’s to Calgary for the Calgary Olympics—the longest Olympic torch relay in history—Share the Flame: The Official Retrospective of the Olympic Torch Relay fell far short of replicating the success of The Expo Celebration.
In the pre-digital age, Whitecap often printed tens of thousands of colour books. But with the advent of digital photography and the subsequent shrink in demand, colour book printing shrunk to around 3,000 a run. Burch once said, “Colour books haven’t quite gone the same way as encyclopedias and the atlas, but they are not as fast as they once were.”
In 1994, Whitecap moved to its current North Vancouver headquarters on Lynn Avenue. In 1996, Nick Rundall, previously the marketing director of Canadian Book Marketing Group, joined Whitecap as a partner. In the new position, he ran the sales and marketing division for Whitecap in Ontario and eventually became vice president of Whitecap, handling authors and accounts in eastern Canada. Rundall was an important addition, as Whitecap authors increasingly lived outside of B.C.
Colleen MacMillan joined Whitecap in 1988, climbed to the position of publisher and then left in 1997. Whitecap increasingly shifted its collective sights towards cookbooks after Robert McCullough’s arrival in 1990. In 2001, McCullough became publisher.
Under McCullough’s watch, Whitecap snagged the likes of Anna Olson (pastry chef on the Food Network); Michael Smith (of TV’s Chef at Home), Curtis Stone (of Take Home Chef), Anthony Sedlak (of The Main), and Roger Mooking (of Everyday Exotic) and many other Canadian culinary personalities. McCullough remained publisher until 2011, when he left Whitecap to work at Random House. Burch has resumed his position as publisher.
According to Burch, Whitecap’s recipe for success includes five critical ingredients. First, dream up something original; second, be the first to publish a book on the subject (like Whitecap’s book on Princess Diana); third, know current trends and choose the right topics for the right time; four, choose authors that are promotable, like the exuberant Roger Mooking; and five, pursue authors who are tuned into the “pulse,” while maintaining ties with proven authors.
Burch stresses that in the foodie realm, success largely is determined by the fourth ingredient: an author’s persona is instrumental to a book’s promotability. “Publishing culinary books is like high fashion,” he says. “What’s in today is gone tomorrow. It’s hard to keep up with it.”
Burch contends that advances in technology—namely the Internet and ebooks—have not done irreparable damage to Whitecap books. “For us it’s still a healthy business. We’re not scared of many things,” he says. Whitecap, to its credit, has striven to keep abreast of technology throughout its lifetime by fully embracing the possibilities technology presents.
Currently, Whitecap is working with eBOUND and the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP) to have e-rights built into author contracts, as well as getting older authors to sign e-rights addendums. Beyond that, Whitecap recently signed a contract with Apple that will deliver high-design books right into the hands of iPad users, a move that was initiated by Whitecap alone.
“It’s tough right now,” says Burch, “with only having one superstore system, in Canada, to put your books into—Indigo. That’s becoming a bit tedious at times, with some of the unilateral decisions they inflict on the rest of their industry.” But he remains optimistic as Whitecap scrutinizes the food and wine industry for up-and-coming stars.
“We’re always looking for something new,” Burch says. Burch’s wife and Whitecap’s comptroller, Kristina Stosek, insisted on signing the authors of Quinoa 365, Patricia Green and Carolyn Hemming. Sales this year have reportedly zoomed to 100,000 worldwide. Burch says Whitecap sifts through about 25 submissions per week.
You can have your cake and publish the recipe for it, too.
