Anvil Press Competitors

As Canada's oldest independent publisher, the company successfully combines a regional heart with a national profile to introduce readers to work by the best established and emerging authors. Goose Lane holds the banner high for excellence in literary content, engaging communication, and well crafted books. We're here to share stories through words, experience, and texture, to "make public" all manner of ideas and explorations. Feed your head!

Douglas & McIntyre is one of Canada’s pre-eminent independent book publishers, specializing in books of national interest including history, art, current affairs, Indigenous subjects, literary fiction and cookbooks. Douglas & McIntyre was founded by James Douglas and Scott McIntyre in 1971 as an independent publishing company based in Vancouver. Reorganized with new owners in 2008 as D&M Publishers Inc., it bought New Society Publishers. In October 2012 New Society returned to its previous owners, the imprint Greystone Books was sold to a group headed by Heritage House Publishing and set up as a stand-alone company called Greystone Books Ltd. while the original Douglas & McIntyre list was sold to the owners of Harbour Publishing who placed it under a new independent company, Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd. It is the publisher of Douglas Coupland, poet Robert Bringhurst, anthropologist Wade Davis, chef Rob Feenie, artists Bill Reid and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas; and the journalist Susan Delacourt. Its full titles list stands at over 1000, with over 500 active titles.

House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 by writers Dennis Lee and David Godfrey to publish work by Canadian writers. Anansi owes its name to the West-African spider god Kwaku Anansi, one of the world’s greatest folk heroes. Godfrey, who taught in Ghana in his twenties, admired the wise but mischievous prankster who created the world. The two named their publishing venture House of Anansi Press, both as a nod to the small-but-mighty spider god, and a poke at a certain other publishing “House.” Staying true to the spirt of Anansi, their international, boundary-pushing namesake, the House got its start publishing authors such as Matt Cohen, Michael Ondaatje, Northrop Frye, Austin Clarke, Harold Sonny Ladoo, Daphne Marlatt, Roch Carrier, and Margaret Atwood (who also worked for the press as an editor). Now under the ownership of Scott Griffin, House of Anansi Press is Canada’s leading independent publisher. We continue to break new ground with award-winning and bestselling books that reflect the changing nature of the country and the world, and we help shape the national conversation with the publication of the annual CBC Massey Lectures (in conjunction with University of Toronto’s Massey College and CBC Ideas) with contributors like Martin Luther King, Jr., Tanya Talaga, Esi Edugyan, and Tomson Highway. Anansi continues to publish poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, French-Canadian writers in translation, lifestyle, and authors from around the world. We take pride in finding and developing talent, publishing Indigenous, Black, and other deserving writers, and firing up the imagination with Very Good Books. House of Anansi Press respectfully acknowledges that the land on which we operate is the Traditional Territory of many Nations, including the Anishinabeg, the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee. It is also the Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit.