Coach House Reborn
by Val Ross, from The Globe & Mail, 28 January 1997
TORONTO - Coach House Press is dead. Long live Coach House Books, a new enterprise born last night in a celebration at Tallulah's Cabaret in Toronto.
"We're making books available via the Internet," explained printer and software visionary Stan Bevington. He founded the recently deceased press in 1965, and last night he launched the first title out of the new enterprise: Nicholodeon, a tribute to poet bpNichol by poet Darren Wershler- Henry, which will appear in two formats: as an on-line text any Internet browser can read for free, and what Bevington calls "the fetish item formerly known as the book" - a handmade limited edition volume priced at $35.
You'll recall Coach House Press as the influential literary press, first publisher of Michael Ondaatje, which died last summer after Ontario publishing grants and loan guarantees dried up. Although Bevington had been its founder, he always concentrated on the Coach House printing operations, while the editorial collective developed a literary, ambitious but unprofitable, publishing program and turned to outside companies to print and distribute. The publishing house and the printing arm had separated by 1990.
Coach House Press's ultimately fatal money problems never affected Bevington's profitable printing operation when the press went broke, he did not. "Now we're getting back to our roots" he said yesterday.
That involves republishing some of Coach House Press's backlist, and returning to original principles of book craftsmanship. Bevington hand printed elements of Nicholodeon on his century-old letterpress. Another new Coach House Books title, Kiyooka, marries the text of poet Roy Kiyooka with original hand-painted David Bolduc watercolours. In its book form it will sell for $150.
These books will be sold at a few Toronto independent book stores, via an 800 number and (mostly, it is hoped) via the new on-line Coach House Books Web site http://www.chbooks.com.
Coach House Books only makes money from the sale of fetish objects. Hilary Clark, managing editor of Coach House Books, says, "If people can't afford to buy the books in their limited-edition formats they can view them for free on the Web site. But in that instance we want them to tip the author via the Web site. Otherwise they won't be paid."
Clark, 30, co-editor and co-publisher of Broken Pencil magazine and Bevington, 54, only began working on their re-invention of Coach House last August. Whether they can revolutionize publishing remains to be seen. "It's experimental," Bevington allows of his new hybrid enterprise, "but I have a gut feeling..."
