"More Canada for Oxford University Press" Special to the Quill & Quire, Dec. 1, 2004

Oxford University Press Canada’s centennial might be remembered for marking a move away from representing imported titles from the U.S. and the U.K. to publishing more homegrown books, says Krystyna Ross, the firm’s new vice-president and director of trade and reference books.

“I’m going to be reviewing our list really in terms of what is working for us, and perhaps altering the mix a little bit,” says Ross, who comes to OUP Canada from McClelland & Stewart, where she worked for 11 years, most recently as senior vice-president and general manager. “I would anticipate focusing a bit more on our own publishing and a little less on the imports.”

Ross says her decision is based on industry trends that make it more difficult to sell midlist non-fiction than in previous years. “The market has shifted: there is more of a focus on bestsellers and big books; you don’t get the shelf time and exposure we used to see as little as five years ago,” she says. Books on the British political system, for example, hold limited appeal in Canada, Ross notes.

Ross also hopes to bring OUP Canada into the spotlight with increased marketing. “We haven’t been doing very much in the way of advertising and that’s something I would hope we would be able to change,” Ross says. Although she might look to American publishing houses for inspiration, “we’re not in the same range when it comes to budgets,” she concedes. “We might look wistfully in that direction, but we are going to have to be a bit more inventive with our resources.”

Although OUP Canada is in the middle of a fiscal year, Ross says they are certainly hoping to increase the marketing budget for the next year. “We are in the process of trying to explore that,” she says, “One thing that I would very much like to do is make greater use of some of the amazing talent we have in-house in our dictionary department.” As for specific plans, though, “we’re not quite there yet,” she says.

In any case, a major shakeup of this traditional publishing house is not in the cards at this point. “[OUP Canada] is a venerable institution. I don’t know why anyone would want to change that. It’s a major strength,” Ross says. In fact, much of OUP Canada’s cachet is built around the success of its dictionaries and reference books. And to be a player in the Canadian publishing industry over the next few years, they should build on this strength, says Rowland Lorimer, director of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University. “Oxford is a very strong publisher of authoritative books, such as dictionaries,” Lorimer says. “That’s their strong suit right now.”

The first hardcover edition of The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, which came out in 1998, has sold more than 195,000 copies. The second edition, which was released in July of this year, has sold almost 20,000 copies. “These are pretty major numbers for any title in Canada,” says Ross.

But she says the numbers are particularly impressive for a dictionary because of the high price point ($59.95). “It’s quite an investment for people, and it’s not generally the kind of book that would have a lot of buzz and it’s not the kind of thing people are reading and recommending to each other by word of mouth.”

Katherine Barber, the editor-in-chief of Oxford’s Canadian dictionaries, confirms that they have no plans to stray from a winning formula. They will keep publishing “different dictionaries for different users – not one-size-fits-all dictionaries,” she says. “That’s what we focus on and do really well.” Lorimer says it might be wise to create focus groups to determine what the Oxford brand represents to the general public and to use this knowledge to “extend their credibility as a reference publisher.”

A mass-market copy of The Canadian Oxford Dictionary is scheduled for release next spring, and Canadian versions of other Oxford dictionaries, like The Oxford Dictionary of Current English, are also in the works, says Barber. “I expect we will be looking at producing a dictionary for nine- to 12-year-olds at some point in the future. [English as a second language] comes into that as well because we recognize that ESL learners have particular needs and those have to be addressed in a dictionary,” Barber says.

Ross’s other strategies for the future are good news for booksellers. She plans to provide improved support material on Oxford dictionaries and to implement administrative processes that would enable orders to be filled more promptly.