Business in Vancouver's "How I Did It" feature asks business leaders to explain in their own words how they achieved a business goal in the face of significant entrepreneurial challenges. In this week's issue, former Douglas & McIntyre associate publisher Chris Labonte explains how he and two other long-time employees spun out a new publishing company after D&M went bankrupt. Labonte, Peter Cocking and Richard Nadeau took one of the more profitable parts of D&M's business to create Figure 1 Publishing.
"In a lot of ways, this is a fresh take on the oldest publishing model, which was patron-sponsored publishing. We work directly with our clients to produce books that extend their brand. For instance, for a restaurant like Burgoo or White Spot – two books that we're doing this fall – they want to do a book that celebrates their brand.
"They buy books in advance, and that finances the entire project. We do make some money there first, and then there's additional money made out of the retail sales.
"We get a lot of press about the fact that it does seem like a new model. But in a sense it's not new in that we were doing this at Douglas & McIntyre for quite a long time. In the last year of D&M, I was developing it as a separate imprint. When, a year ago, the company went into notice of intent, I thought why not continue the work that I was doing?
"Richard and I went and talked to Paddy Laidley at Raincoast Books who is vice-president there. At that point, we had maybe two or three books that we could possibly sign. We told her what we were doing, and she was willing to sign us right there.
"The two big focuses of what we do are beautiful, high-quality illustrated books and corporate memoir and business books. We do corporate or individual memoirs.
"They're often legacy pieces, where somebody who has worked 60 or 70 years and has built up a wonderful business and wants to leave their lessons behind.
"But we're also doing business books – prescriptive non-fiction. We have a book coming out in January on RSPs. We're doing another book that will come out in the spring on wealth transition for multi-generational families.
"In most cases, our partners have the ability to sell copies of a book directly to their constituents, their customers, their clients. What we can do to extend their brand is we get those books out widely into the market.
"If we can deal directly with White Spot and they have 65-plus restaurants, and they want to do a book to celebrate their 85th anniversary, they have the ability to sell directly to their customers. We don't have to rely on the market as much and the market becomes gravy on top of that.
"Our goal for 2014 was to be at 10 books but we're already at 15, and in all likelihood it will be more like 20. In terms of our revenue goals, this year what we set – which was a fairly ambitious goal – we're double that right now."
