Not from the Onion!

[james_davis_nicoll]

Comments

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

It is.

Although I'm increasingly skeptical of that argument, as Canadian publishers are able to make a profit tailoring textbooks to a single province, which is a lot smaller than all-America-except-Texas.

As an example:
http://www.nelsonschoolcentral.com/cgi-bin/lansaweb?webapp=WSUBDSC+webrtn=subdsc+F(LW3CATURL)=S_S_GENERAL_SCIENCE

Nelson publishes textbooks for just Ontario and just BC. They even publish textbooks for fairly small courses (possibly one section in a bigger school) so very low numbers, but they still manage to be profitable. And there are three other publishers competing for the same markets.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

The province of Nova Scotia, with an even smaller school population, has custom textbooks as well.

Prince Edward Island appears to be under the limit, however.