Douglas & McIntyre imprint sold to Coast-based Harbour Publishing

Books from D&M Publishers will find new life on the shelves, with the announcement late yesterday that BC-based Harbour Publishing will buy the bankrupt publisher’s flagship imprint.
“I have been admiring Douglas & McIntyre since we started publishing books together 40 years ago,” said Pender Harbour’s Howard White, who owns Harbour with his partner Mary. “I just felt if there was a role for Harbour to play in keeping that great program going, we had to do it.”
Last week, D&M’s Greystone Books was sold to Heritage House, which means the publisher’s two major imprints up for sale will stay in the province.
Scott McIntyre, one of D&M’s cofounders, said in a statement he was pleased that both imprints found local new homes.
“It is a bonus that both will remain blessed by superior national sales and distribution support. In perilous times for independent publishers everywhere, this is very good news for our writers, for their books, for the legacy of D&M’s forty-year publishing record, and for Canada,” he said.
There are about 500 titles on Douglas & McIntyre’s roster including greats such as Douglas Coupland, Will Ferguson, and Wayson Choy.
The Whites have said that they will run Douglas & McIntyre as an autonomous company with its own editorial vision. Whether Harbour Publishing will pay out royalties owed to several of the imprint’s authors is yet to be decided.
“That’s the $64,000 question. We’re going to do everything we can for them, but it will have to be worked out through negotiation, on a case-by-case basis,” White told reporters.
White started Raincoast Chronicles and Harbour Publishing in the early 1970s and has written many books. He was awarded the Canadian Historical Association’s Career Award for Regional History in 1989. In 2000, he completed a ten-year project, The Encyclopedia of British Columbia. He has been awarded the Order of BC, the Canadian Historical Association’s Career Award for Regional History, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree from the University of Victoria. In 2007, White was made an Officer of the Order of Canada