Raincoast Books is a Canadian book distribution and wholesale company. Based in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

, British Columbia, Raincoast was founded by Mark Stanton and Allan MacDougall in 1979 as a consignment wholesaler that shared overhead, warehouse space and staff with the pair's sales agency, Stanton & MacDougall. Today, Raincoast has over 90 employees and three divisions: Raincoast Distribution, Publishers Group Canada, and BookExpress.

Divisions

Raincoast Distribution

Raincoast Distribution is a Canadian company which provides complete sales, marketing and fulfillment services to a wide range of general trade and gift publishers from the United States, Britain and Canada. Companies distributed by Raincoast include Chronicle Books,

Drawn & Quarterly Drawn & Quarterly is a publishing company based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, specializing in comics. It publishes primarily comic books, graphic novels and comic strip collections. The books it publishes are noted for their artistic content, a ...

, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,

Lonely Planet Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books. History Early years Lonely Planet was founded by married couple Maureen and Tony Wheeler. In 1972, they embarke ...

, New Harbinger and St. Martin's Press.

Publishers represented by Raincoast Distribution

:Beginning Press : Bilingual Books, Inc. :Bloomsbury : Chronicle Books :Creative Company :

:Figure 1 :Flatiron Books :

Gibbs Smith Gibbs Smith is an American publisher based in Utah. The publishing house was founded in 1969 by Gibbs M. Smith (1940–2017) and his wife Catherine. Its offerings include children's books, including the BabyLit line, cookbooks, home reference bo ...

:Hardie Grant :Houghton Mifflin Harcourt :Laurence King :

:Macmillan Publishers Group : Magnetic Poetry : The Mountaineers Books : New Harbinger Publications :Osprey :Page Two : Princeton Architectural Press :Quadrille :Sounds True :Sourcebooks :Raincoast Books :Tor/Forge :Twirl

Publishers Group Canada

Publishers Group Canada (PGC) was acquired by Raincoast Books in 2000. Based in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

, Ontario, PGC distributes independently owned

book publishing Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, news ...

houses including Grove Atlantic,

New World Library New World Library is a San Francisco Bay Area-based American publisher of books for adults and children. The press focuses on publishing books concerning the mind, the body and the spirit. The company was established in 1977 by authors Marc Al ...

and

Egmont Books Egmont may refer to: * Egmont Group, a media corporation founded and rooted in Copenhagen, Denmark * Egmond family (often spelled "Egmont"), an influential Dutch family, lords of the town of Egmond ** Lamoral, Count of Egmont (1522–1568), the bes ...

in Canada.

BookExpress

BookExpress is a wholesale division supplying Canadian bookstores and retailers. BookExpress carries bestselling books from publishers including

Random House Canada Random House of Canada was the Canadian distributor for Random House, Inc. from 1944 until 2013. On July 1, 2013, it amalgamated with Penguin Canada to become Penguin Random House Canada. Company history Random House of Canada was established in ...

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News ...

Canada,

Scholastic Canada Scholastic Corporation () is an American multinational publishing, education, and media company that publishes and distributes books, comics, and educational materials for schools, parents, and children. Products are distributed via retail and on ...

, Diamond Book Distribution and Firefly.

Raincoast Publishing

Between 1995 and 2008, Raincoast Books was also a book publisher. The Raincoast publishing program produced a range of fiction and non-fiction titles for both adults and children. Authors who published work with Raincoast included Anne Fleming, Alison Pick, Colin McAdam, Nick Bantock,

George Bowering George Harry Bowering, (born December 1, 1935) is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He was the first Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. He was born in Penticton, British Columbia, and raised in the nearby town o ...

, Paul William Roberts, Naim Kattan, Roy Miki, Amanda K. Hale, and

Bill Gaston Bill Gaston (born January 14, 1953 in Tacoma, Washington) is a Canadian novelist, playwright and short story writer. Gaston grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Toronto, Ontario, and North Vancouver, British Columbia. Aside from teaching at various univ ...

. As a publisher, the company was noted for using large amounts of

recycle Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. The recovery of energy from waste materials is often included in this concept. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the p ...

d paper in its books. In January 2008, Raincoast announced that it would cease to publish new books due to the rise in the Canadian dollar. Raincoast also ceased to be the Canadian publisher of

J.K. Rowling Joanne Rowling ( "rolling"; born 31 July 1965), also known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author and philanthropist. She wrote ''Harry Potter'', a seven-volume children's fantasy series published from 1997 to 2007. The ser ...

's '' Harry Potter'' books in 2010.Pottersource – Penguin Canada Contest

Notes

External links

Raincoast Distribution

Publishers Group Canada
{{Authority control Book publishing companies of Canada