Johanna Skibsrud wins the Giller by Christopher King

At a black-tie dinner and ceremony last night in Toronto, the winner of the Giller Prize–er, make that the Scotiabank Giller Prize–was announced, with the award of $50,000 going to Johanna Skibsrud for her novel The Sentamentalists.

When the shortlist was announced last month for the prestigious Canadian literary prize, it was expected that the publishers behind the five nominated books would receive a nice boost in business. But as the Toronto Globe and Mail reported, Skibsrud’s publisher has remained determined not to betray its principles despite its newfound literary fame.

Gaspereau Press, an independent operation based in a small town northwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia, is to writing what the Slow Food movement is to cooking. Insisting on maintaining control of all aspects of the process, publisher Andrew Steeves and three employees produce all of their books in-house, operating their own press and bindery, and printing details like cover art by hand on Vandercook letterpresses. The process limits their output, with a typical first printing falling within 1,500 copies. So when a major publisher offered to take over production of The Sentimentalists after its nomination, one might have expected Gaspereau to welcome the help.

Not so: Steeves steadfastly refused, citing the need to stay true to the press’s founding principles of local economy and traditional craftsmanship. He further explained the philosophy behind his decision on the Gaspereau blog, quoting Thoreau:

How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, & enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? Action from principle ” the perception & the performance of right” changes things & relations; it is essentially revolutionary & does not consist wholly with any thing which was. It not only divided States & churches, it divides families; aye, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

Skibsrud, meanwhile, seems to have a rather more ambivalent take on the issue, as told to the Globe & Mail:

My personal opinion is that making literature more widely available could never be a “lowering of standards”; that it could only be a positive for the publisher, the writer, as well as for the potential audience. But that is the perspective of one author, regarding one book, she wrote. Gaspereau has a long and respected tradition behind them, and an incredible list, and that will continue.

Regardless of who’s right, for now at least, The Sentimentalists will continue to be printed the old-fashioned way, Giller be damned. Steeves produced this short video demonstrating part of the printing process late one night last week as the company struggled to keep up with orders: