Inside the frantic rush to get Chrystia Freeland’s biography into stores two months early | Canada Voices

Author Catherine Tsalikis had just finished changing her 13-month-old son’s diaper at 9:30 a.m. on Monday when she noticed a text from her mother-in-law, sharing a news story about Chrystia Freeland’s resignation as federal finance minister. She immediately texted her publicist at House of Anansi Press about the news, because it had significant consequence. Anansi was scheduled to publish Ms. Tsalikis’s book on Ms. Freeland in February.

The staff in Anansi’s office were already running from room to room and making frantic calls. By 9:45, they began asking themselves a very hard question about the unauthorized biography, titled Chrystia: From Peace River to Parliament Hill. Could they push up its publishing date? If so, how soon could they pull it off?

By the end of Monday, Ms. Tsalikis and her publisher had their answer: They would publish this Friday. Anansi has channeled the power of its staff, its distributor, and its external sales reps – plus the author – to perform the logistically complicated ballet required to release a book more than six weeks early in the middle of the highly competitive holiday shopping season.

Well, maybe not a ballet. “It might be a little clunkier than that,” says Karen Brochu, Anansi’s publisher. “But hopefully, by the end, we can see the beauty in all this. This is the work; this is publishing.”

Ms. Freeland’s resignation from cabinet after nine years came after weeks of mounting tension with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over government spending. The elevated media coverage of Ms. Freeland immediately began running through Ms. Brochu’s head as she got a text from Ms. Tsalikis’s publicist Melissa Shirley about it Monday while riding the subway to Anansi’s Toronto office. Fifteen minutes later, after consulting with colleagues, she was plotting out what calls she needed to make and double-checking how many books were in the warehouse.

The answer was 4,000 – which was lucky, because the books actually arrived a week earlier than expected. Ms. Brochu called Anansi’s Canadian distributor, University of Toronto Press, and learned that they would only be closed three days over the holidays. That meant they could get books out for early in the new year. Or perhaps keep things flowing if they released the book even earlier.

If Anansi shipped copies to stores that early, Ms. Brochu wondered, “are they going to open the box? Will they realize the box had even shown up?” But her trusted bookselling contacts ensured her the answer was yes.

Just after 4 p.m., the Anansi team decided to pull the trigger on the Dec. 20 release date. Ms. Shirley gave the author a call. Ms. Tsalikis was in her car with her 13-month-old son, waiting to pick up her daughter from daycare. Her first thought was: Who will look after my son if I have to spend the week doing publicity?

Ms. Tsalikis had reflected a lot on Ms. Freeland’s relationship with childcare while writing her book – the former finance minister was an architect of the Liberals’ $10-a-day childcare program, and the author was impressed at what Ms. Freeland had achieved while raising three kids, in part thanks to family help. Ms. Tsalikis wound up texting her mother: “I might need your help this week.”

Her mother came through, and she and Ms. Shirley began filling her week with interviews. Ms. Brochu, meanwhile, began calling her army of sales reps, who began calling their contacts in the bookselling world – independents, Indigo, Amazon, Kobo, wholesalers and more – to update the release date and see if they could get books on shelves. Anansi’s distributor, University of Toronto Press, started getting copies ready to ship boxes around the Toronto area, while they arranged for overnight air shipping to get copies to a west coast wholesaler.

By Tuesday afternoon, the gamble was already paying off: Some Toronto bookstores were already stocking Chrystia: From Peace River to Parliament Hill. It’s okay to Ms. Brochu if it takes a few weeks to get truly everywhere. “I don’t think the story is going away,” she says. ”I don’t think Chrystia is going away.”