In early January, we got the good news that two of our titles were on McNally Robinson Booksellers’ 2018 Manitoba Bestseller list.
Rooster Town: The History of an Urban Métis Community, 1901–1961 by Evelyn Peters, Matthew Stock, and Adrian Werner has been on the bestseller list for 14 straight weeks, including two weeks before it was officially released in October.
All those weeks earned Rooster Town the #1 bestseller spot in the Non-fiction category of McNally’s 2018 Manitoba Bestsellers list.
It didn’t hurt that the October launch was the biggest event that UMP has ever had, with an estimated 230 people and that since then the two McNally Robinson locations have sold more than 600 copies of the book.
Also, Rooster Town received coverage from the Winnipeg Free Press, CBC Manitoba, UM Today, The Manitoban, UMFM’s Turning Pages, and Prairie Books NOW.
In addition, the University of Manitoba’s Archives and Special Collections made the photos and original research by Matthew Stock and Adrian Werner available on a website.
This project was an integral part of digital historian/archivist Jo McCutcheon’s review of Rooster Town on the Unwritten Histories blog: “There are so many elements of this new, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and impressive archival work to share and explore.”
“It is really exciting to see what some of the data that was collected for this work is available at no cost to researchers and the general public,” wrote McCutcheon in her conclusion.
Structures of Indifference: An Indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City by Mary Jane Logan McCallum and Adele Perry was #7 in the Non-fiction category of McNally’s 2018 Manitoba Bestsellers list.
It didn’t hurt that the book received local and national coverage.
An excerpt was published in the Winnipeg Free Press as part of the coverage of the 10th anniversary of Brian Sinclair’s death, which was followed by a review.
McCallum and Perry also appeared on CBC Manitoba and APTN’s Face to Face and were interviewed by the Canadian Press and Global National. Anishinabek News contributed one of the first reviews.
Closer to home, the book received coverage on UMFM’s Turning Pages and in The Manitoban.
The same day as the launch, McCallum and Perry participated in a webinar hosted by the National Collaborating Centres for Aboriginal Health (NCCAH) and Healthy Public Policy.
In the months since the launch, Structures of Indifference has been ordered for course use in universities across the country.
Most significant was Karen Dubinsky’s intro history course at Queen’s, where 450 students will be working with McCallum’s and Perry’s text.
After ordering the book in October, Dubinsky took to twitter and announced:
“Yesterday, I read Mary Jane Logan McCallum and Adele Perry’s Structures of Indifference in one sitting. It makes Brian Sinclair’s unbelievable 2008 death by racist negligence in a Winnipeg hospital emergency room completely believable. Historians, read this book.”
In late October, we reprinted both books and in December, we ordered a third reprint of Structures of Indifference.
We’d like to express our thanks to McNally Robinson for their ongoing support of Manitoba books and to readers and thinkers across the country for supporting these important books.
