To the Editor:
Recent spotlights focused on Creative Saskatchewan have unfairly painted a negative picture of an organization that has been of great assistance to numerous creative producers in Saskatchewan, including the small book publishing company that I and my husband operate in Regina.
We work in partnership with authors from Saskatchewan and other Prairie provinces to produce books about Prairie people. We do not qualify for other provincial or federal funding of our work.
In 2014, our mom-and-pop publishing firm received assistance from Creative Saskatchewan to help with publication of three new books. All three of those books, in addition to two other new titles that we produced in 2014, received awards at the 2014 Great Midwest Book Festival in Chicago, IL.
One of those titles quickly sold its first print run of 1,000 books and we gratefully received another grant from Creative Saskatchewan to assist with reprinting that title.
Two new books we’ve scheduled for release in 2015 have also received production assistance.
All of this is a substantial boost to our small company’s bottom line.
Part of Creative Saskatchewan’s mandate is to increase the profile of Saskatchewan creative producers nationally and internationally. DriverWorks Ink has received a market and export development grant to assist us with sharing our work at trade shows, schools, libraries, and other speaking events in at least 20 Prairie communities by December.
SaskBooks (Saskatchewan Publishers Group), as the industry association representing book publishers in the province, worked alongside SaskMusic, Saskatchewan Motion Picture Industry Association (SMPIA), SaskGalleries (formerly SaskArt), the Saskatchewan Craft Council, and Saskatchewan Interactive Media Association (SIMA) in the working group which helped build the framework for Creative Saskatchewan. As vice-president of SaskBooks, I have attended meetings with Creative Saskatchewan officials and I have first-hand knowledge of how important this arms-length agency is to creative industry producers engaged in commercial activity.
In 2014, support for the publishing industry in Creative Saskatchewan’s first year of operations increased from $100,000, previously provided via SaskBooks through Grants to Publishers, to more than $400,000. We wish to publicly thank Creative Saskatchewan, working through the Ministry of Parks, Culture, and Sport, for its support of our small publishing house’s ventures and those of others involved in all of the creative industries.
Deana Driver (dee-na)
DriverWorks Ink
Proud Prairie Publishers
