In French-speaking Québec, criticism of prize funding from Amazon raises difficult questions about the company’s growing place in literary culture
Writers in Québec have taken a stand against a well-established and fairly lucrative literary prize partially funded by Amazon. The French-language Canadian province’s Prix littéraire des collégiens (College Literary Award) is designed to honor a work of fiction written in French by a Canadian author and published by a professional French-language press. Roughly 700 students from 40 campuses in Québec select the winner, who receives an award worth CA$5,000 (US$3,758), as well as a boost in sales and exposure to Québec’s college students.
Last week, the prize’s five shortlisted authors complained about the program’s acceptance of sponsorship money from Amazon. (Amazon’s role is clear in the branding, in which “Presented by Amazon.ca” is displayed beside the prize’s logo.) In doing this, they’re supporting the objection of the region’s publishers’ association, ANEL, the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres.
ANEL’s publishers say that Amazon as a retailer is damaging local booksellers. They add that, as “a multinational”—a publisher headquartered outside Canada—Amazon doesn’t share the “associative, collective, and collaborative values that Québec publishers put forward in defense of their national literature and copyright.” Note that this position about multinationals is frequently leveled at US Big Five publishers, in both French- and English-language Canada—so this particular criticism isn’t reserved just for Amazon.
The authors (with a footnote of support from their editors) write that they have considered withdrawing from the prize. The prize organizers have suspended the program while considering next moves. Amazon, for its part, has issued a statement rather pointedly not pressing its own interests and simply saying, “The organizers of the Prix littéraire des collégiens have our full support as they address the next steps of the 2019 edition” of the prize.
In answer to our questions, Amazon spokespeople tell us that the company’s corporate-responsibility support of the publishing community in Canada includes: The First Novel Award from Amazon and The Walrus, an independent Canadian nonprofit journalism charity; donations of up to $100,000 in support of the charity First Book Canada, which places books in the homes of children in need; support for the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, another charity, which spearheads programs in reading, writing, illustration, and publishing for young readers in Canada; and sponsorship of the annual Politics and the Pen fundraiser in support of the Writers’ Trust, which gives grants in aid and awards to authors to help them “finish a book, promote their work, [or] mitigate an unforeseen personal crisis.”
In the US, the Amazon Literary Partnership program (unconnected to the situation in Canada) has given grants to PEN America, Lambda Literary, the National Book Foundation, Cave Canem, Poets & Writers, Words without Borders, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Graywolf Press, and Hugo House, among many others.
Bottom line: There is widespread concern both within the publishing industry and without that Amazon is becoming a retail behemoth poised to disrupt specific retail markets (see our articles last month about declining fiction sales) and perhaps even the economy as a whole (see our coverage of recent FTC hearings). In that context, it’s hard to know whether Amazon’s contributions in support of the publishing community are sincerely and generously intended or merely “corporate-responsibility” expenditures, part of the cost of doing business. Either way, it’s rare to see writers and publishers stand on principle and object to subsidies from Amazon.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
