Raincoast Books

Raincoast Books is a Canadian book distribution and wholesale company. Based in Vancouver, 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, and BookExpress.

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, Drawn & Quarterly, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Lonely Planet, New Harbinger and St. Martin's Press.

Publishers Group Canada (PGC) was acquired by Raincoast Books in 2000. Based in Toronto, Ontario, PGC distributes independently owned book publishing houses including Grove Atlantic, New World Library and Egmont Books in Canada.

BookExpress is a wholesale division supplying Canadian bookstores and retailers. BookExpress carries bestselling books from publishers including Random House Canada, Penguin Books Canada, HarperCollins Canada, Scholastic Canada, Diamond Book Distribution and Firefly.

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, Amanda K. Hale, and Bill Gaston. As a publisher, the company was noted for using large amounts of recycled 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. Raincoast also ceased to be the Canadian publisher of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books in 2010.

1. ^ Raincoast Blog – "Getting Back to Basics"
2. ^ CBC.ca – Arts – "Raincoast Books to ditch publishing arm"
3. ^ Pottersource – Penguin Canada Contest Archived 28 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine

• Raincoast Distribution
• Publishers Group Canada