The Escalating Trade War, Books, and Values

When I started working on Nine Ten’s first books four years ago, I did not realize that one of the things I would have to do over the coming years is spend a huge amount of time learning about how to ship books both within and beyond Canada. And that was before the trade war upended everything a year and a half ago.

Transparency is one of the values Nine Ten was founded on, so I’m here to let you know about how the current situation is affecting Nine Ten as a business, and how it affects the availability of our books, zines, and other merch.

First, the manner in which we make our books, etc., will not change. Nine Ten publishes only Canadian authors because until we came around, there was no craft-focussed publisher in Canada for Canadian authors to work with. Creating a home for Canadian expertise and perspectives is our mandate, now and hopefully long into the future. Working with Canadian editors, book designers, photographers, and illustrators similarly supports our mandate.

Second, we will continue to print our books, zines, and stickers in Canada, because our commitment to support our domestic industry is unwavering. Books and zines continue to be unaffected by U.S. tariffs, so they continue to ship smoothly to folks south of the border.

I have been asked if I would, in the future, print books for the American market with printers in the U.S. to avoid tariffs should books become subject to them, and the answer at this time is that I will not. Should this scenario come to pass, it will almost certainly affect the availability of our books in the U.S., and I will cross that bridge if or when I come to it.

It’s not that I would want the many American readers who have supported our books and our business to go without should books become a part of this trade war. It’s that I find the rhetoric coming from the U.S. administration with respect (or lack of respect) to Canada deeply offensive, and, frankly, scary. A few weeks ago, I would have considered exploring whether Nine Ten could afford to split our print runs between the two countries. Now, however, I am resolute that I will do no such thing.

Stickers are, unfortunately, very different from books and zines, and they are a part of the newly instituted U.S. tariffs. When I discovered this last week, I briefly stopped offering stickers for shipping to the U.S., but I have since learned how to collect tariff fees at checkout, so they are now available as they were, though with an outrageous fee on top.

The good news is that I sent my U.S. distributor stickers before this most recent escalation, so Craft Is for Lovers stickers are available through Microcosm—both retail and wholesale—to customers and businesses in the U.S., easy peasy lemon squeezy.

However, the tariff situation means that I will not be able to replenish Microcosm’s stock if the stickers sell out, because Nine Ten covers any duty when I ship to our distributor across the border, and there is no possible way to even break even on the stickers when they incur such a hefty charge. As with books, a few weeks ago I would have considered printing stickers in the U.S. so they could remain available there, but not now.

Third are all the intangibles and uncertainties. Both the U.S. and Canada produce a lot of paper—some kinds of paper are incurring tariffs and counter-tariffs now—and I do not anticipate a paper shortage. The paper I use almost all the time for our books and zines is manufactured in Canada, so it should remain abundant and available. But I don’t know if paper pricing, due to simple changes in demand if not directly due to tariffs, will be affected as the trade war continues or escalates. I am, generally, preparing for print costs overall to continue to rise, possibly out of proportion to other costs. I know that printers absorbed rising expenses as much as they could in the earlier months of the trade war, and their buffers are eaten up, which means prices have increased and may continue to increase. Likewise, Nine Ten has absorbed some of these rising expenses but our ability to do so is diminishing, which will almost certainly lead to our future books being priced higher than our current frontlist and backlist titles.

The uncertainty more broadly is a bigger challenge, because it is a suck on my time. Nine Ten is only me. Many hands make our books, but I am the only person running the business. Every hour I spend reading up on changes to tariffs, every hour I spend keeping up with how shipping carriers are adjusting to changing circumstances, every hour I spend meeting with other Canadian business owners to share information and support each other, every hour I spend contingency planning so I can weather whatever expected or unexpected changes may come—all of these hours are hours I cannot spend making books; they are hours I can’t spend nurturing relationships with authors, vendors, partners, and readers; they’re hours I can’t spend finding better or more affordable systems to make the business more resilient; they’re hours I can’t spend promoting our books which has real consequences for how many books sell, which has real, material consequences for Nine Ten.

I am exhausted from all this, I won’t lie.

Operating within the craft community, creating books for folks on both sides of the border and around the world who love to get nerdy about the topics we cover—this is the joy of my professional life. What we have in common vastly exceeds what makes us different from each other, and anyway our differences are what make us interesting. I do not appreciate the folly of a government getting in the way of our shared love of crafts, making crafts, learning about crafts, and getting to know each other. But I can’t dismiss this folly as insignificant. It is very significant, and Nine Ten is small enough and young enough that it is existentially significant for this tiny, independent Canadian press.

As I have over the last year and a half, I will continue to keep you posted on any changes to shipping or the more general availability of our books. This blog is for longer missives, like the 1100 words you’ve come this far reading. Important and timely updates will be sent more succinctly through our email newsletter and posted on social media (follow us on Bluesky for most immediate info, then on Instagram for info that comes more slowly because it’s more work to post there).

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