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 cit ...

, 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.

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 Chronicle Books is a San Francisco–based American publishing company that publishes books for both adults and children. History The company was established in 1967 by Phelps Dewey, an executive with Chronicle Publishing Company, then-publish ...

Drawn & Quarterly Drawn & Quarterly (D+Q) 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 con ...

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company ( ; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, and reference works. The company is based in the Financial District, Boston, Boston Financial District. It was fo ...

Lonely Planet Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books. History 20th century Lonely Planet was founded by married couple Maureen Wheeler, Maureen and Tony Wheeler. In 19 ...

, New Harbinger and

St. Martin's Press St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in Manhattan in New York City. It is headquartered in the Equitable Building (New York City), Equitable Building. St. Martin's Press is considered one of the largest English-language publishe ...

Publishers represented by Raincoast Distribution

:Alma Books :Beginning Press :Birdhouse Kids Media :BIS Publishers : Bilingual Books, Inc. :Bloomsbury :Celadon Books :

:Creative Company :

:Encantos :Entangled Publishing :Familius :Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) :Figure 1 :Flatiron Books :Galison + Mudpuppy :Game Seven Books :Games Room : Gibbs Smith :Greywolf Press :Hardie Grant :Harriman House :Henry Holt & Co. :Kingfisher :Laurence King :Levine Querido :

:Macmillan Publishers Group : Magnetic Poetry :Media Lab Books :Minotaur : The Mountaineers Books :Neon Squid : New Harbinger Publications :Osprey :Page Two :Petit Collage :Picador :Pownal Street Press :Priddy Books :

Princeton Architectural Press Princeton Architectural Press (now PA Press) is a division of Chronicle Books. Founded by Kevin Lippert in 1981 in Princeton, NJ, PA Press has been a leading publisher of books on architecture, design, and visual culture for over forty years, ...

:Prufrock Press :Quadrille :Raincoast Books :Ridley's Games :Sounds True :Sourcebooks :St. Martin's Publishing Group :Tor/Forge :Twirl

Publishers Group Canada

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

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, Ontario, PGC distributes independently owned

book publishing Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

houses including Grove Atlantic, New World Library and Egmont Books 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 i ...

Penguin Books Penguin Books Limited is a Germany, German-owned English publishing, 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 ...

Canada,

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmi ...

Canada, Scholastic Canada, 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, Paul William Roberts, Naim Kattan,

Roy Miki Roy Akira Miki (10 October 1942 – 5 October 2024) was a Canadian poet, scholar, editor, and activist most known for his social and literary work. Life and career Born in Ste. Agathe, Manitoba to second generation Japanese-Canadian parents, ...

, Amanda K. Hale, and Bill Gaston. As a publisher, the company was noted for using large amounts of

recycle ReCycle is a music loop editor designed and developed by Sweden, Swedish software developers Propellerhead Software. It runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh based Personal Computer, PCs. The software debuted in 1994. The principal idea ...

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 The Canadian dollar (currency symbol, symbol: $; ISO 4217, code: CAD; ) is the currency of Canada. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $. There is no standard disambiguating form, but the abbreviations Can$, CA$ and C$ are frequently used f ...

. Raincoast also ceased to be the Canadian publisher of J.K. Rowling's ''

Harry Potter ''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven Fantasy literature, fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young Magician (fantasy), wizard, Harry Potter (character), Harry Potter, and his friends ...

'' books in 2010.Pottersource – Penguin Canada Contest

Notes

External links

Raincoast Distribution

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