Who’s your favourite M&S author?

The standard answer to that question is, all of them. As with your children, you would never tell one you loved him more than the other. Do I have a favourite author? I do, but I would never tell.

M&S has been deeply involved with a flowering of Cana­dian nationalism in publishing. Yet you made your name in the U.S. Are we still the little brother?

When I was in the U.S., colleagues looked to Canada for the best writing in the world, and not only admired but were somewhat jealous of our literary tradition. For a very small country, we export a lot of writers, and not many other countries do that, especially ones next door to the most powerful country in the world.

M&S is well known for its fiction, but the last few years have been tough for the fiction market in Canada. Is that scary?

I think what’s happened is that people are still buying a lot of fiction, but they’re narrowing their choices. Everyone’s buying the same few books. But I disagree that fiction is in a bad state. Go on a subway anywhere, and people are reading fiction, though I wish they were reading a more varied assortment of it.

In a piece about why men don’t read fiction, you were quoted as saying that it might help to have beer at reading groups.

There was a letter in the Globe from a guy who said that he and a bunch of his buddies got together, drank beer and talked about books, and I thought that was fabulous. I was going to write the guy—I think he was from Ottawa—and say, ‘Any time you want to invite me to this thing I’d be happy to show up, and I might even buy a round.’ ”

What’s your take on the movement of Google to digitize entire libraries?

Everyone in publishing is looking at the example of the music industry, but books are a lot more tactile, whereas music can be on a CD or an iPod and it doesn’t make much difference. I’m very impressed by technology, and I think there’s a real boon for books in there. We just have to figure out what the business model is.

What was working with the right-wing pundit Ann Coulter like?

I enjoyed every minute. Honestly. I know a lot of people aren’t huge fans of Miss Coulter, but she was a pleasure to deal with—professional, kind (extremely) and she met her deadlines. Nobody believes me, but it’s true. It didn’t hurt that most of her books hit number one.