Broadview Press is changing ownership while aiming to keep its publishing model intact. Glenn Rollans became the Peterborough, Ontario, academic publisher’s CEO and majority shareholder after acquiring 85% of its shares in a deal that closed September 29. He says his first priority is to build on Broadview’s existing list and reach, with its management team and 30 employees staying on.
That emphasis on continuity matters for a publisher whose value rests in a substantial backlist and steady use in classrooms. Founded in 1985, Broadview publishes more than 30 titles a year and has over 900 titles in print. Annual revenue is about $5 million, with exports generating more than half. Rollans describes its market as North American: the company’s sales and its readership cross the border.
A change in ownership, with the team intact
Rollans is already a familiar figure in Canadian publishing. He is a former president of the Association of Canadian Publishers, co-owner of textbook publisher Brush Education, and owner of Freehand Books. Broadview launched Freehand as a literary imprint in 2011; Rollans acquired it in 2021. Both Freehand and Brush Education are distributed by University of Toronto Press.
He told PW that the Broadview transaction had been planned for some time and should not be read as a push to merge the businesses. He called Broadview “a really solid, strong company with a great record, great list, lots of adoptions across the continent,” adding that “the first task is to build on that rather than to disrupt it.” He plans to operate his publishing businesses independently.
Broadview’s senior team remains in place: Stephen Latta as president, Marjorie Mather as vice president of editorial and production, and Christine Handley as vice president of sales and distribution. Founder and former CEO Don LePan will continue as a part-time employee for a short period and remain on the board.
The arrangement gives Rollans a new leadership role while preserving the staff and institutional knowledge behind a long-running academic list. It also puts the company under the ownership of a publisher who already works across educational and literary publishing. The practical test will be whether Broadview can continue to sustain its editorial program and classroom adoption without changing the qualities that have made the list useful to instructors.
The value of a long backlist
Literature in English is Broadview’s central subject area, led by its bestselling Broadview Anthology of British Literature and related spin-off editions. History, philosophy and composition are also among its largest areas. The catalog includes hundreds of critical editions in the Broadview Editions series, spanning familiar authors such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens as well as less commonly taught works, including The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith.
Many of those backlist titles sell only in modest quantities each year. Rollans argues that low volume doesn’t make them disposable: they continue to serve instructors and readers who need them, including readers looking for works by racialized and equity-seeking authors that may be hard to find elsewhere. “So it’s really important to keep the whole list active,” he said.
That approach depends on patience. Broadview’s scale is small beside Cengage, Norton, Pearson and Wiley, but Rollans considers it one of the largest independent education publishers in English-speaking Canada. University presses account for the largest share of that market. Broadview’s position, he said, comes from having built “a niche that’s hard to push it out of.”
For an independent publisher, maintaining a large list means carrying titles whose value can’t be measured by their yearly sales alone. Continued availability supports teaching choices across a wide range of courses, while a strong core title such as the British literature anthology can anchor the business. Rollans’ stated plan suggests that he sees the breadth of the catalog as an asset to protect, even where individual books reach a relatively small audience.
Copyright and AI raise business questions
Rollans also inherits a company operating amid long-running disputes over educational copying and copyright. In 2012, Canada added education to the fair dealing exceptions in its Copyright Act. Since then, schools and universities have been able to copy publishers’ work under the education exception, a shift that has reduced payments to publishers and creators. Access Copyright, the nonprofit that licenses copying of published works in English Canada, estimates those losses at C$200 million.
Rollans has advocated for authors’ rights through the Association of Canadian Publishers and the International Publishers Association. He sees artificial intelligence adding pressure to an already difficult copyright environment, particularly through the use of published work to train AI systems without permission. He also points to a second open question: what role publishers may have if AI systems become authors or instructors.
In Rollans’ view, copyright is increasingly being treated as secondary to intellectual property concerns or as a tool for AI policy, rather than as an important area in its own right. He calls it “the basic infrastructure for our industry.” His argument is direct: a publisher that sells books must be able to establish ownership of the work it sells. Under the Berne Convention, he said, “when you create something you own it.”
Canadian class actions over AI training are underway, with authors and publishers among the lead plaintiffs. Rollans is skeptical that court cases will settle the wider questions quickly. He describes litigation as a slow way to resolve the issue, pointing to Bartz v. Anthropic, which concluded in a settlement rather than a court decision. He argues that governments should set guardrails, while cautioning that publishers have yet to show that AI tools outperform simpler processes for many tasks or match human judgment for trustworthiness.
Course materials as guidance
Rollans’ defense of educational books is rooted in their role in shaping how students encounter reading. For some, he said, textbooks and other school books may be “their only experience of books in their whole life.” In an information environment he describes as chaotic, he sees course materials as a guide for navigating unfamiliar subjects, rather than an imposition on students.
Annotations, introductions and other scholarly material can offer students a way into a text. Rollans said that for some readers, “that takes like a fish hook and you’re on it for the rest of your life.” He also sees good course materials as a way to make the student experience more equal, particularly when instructors aren’t teaching in their strongest subject area.
Open educational resources compete with Broadview’s books, but Rollans says many are underfunded at launch and treated as one-off projects. Without continuing revenue, he argues, they can struggle to support revisions. Broadview’s model takes the opposite time horizon: develop a title gradually, keep it available, and revise it through multiple editions.
Some colleagues may view Rollans’ acquisition as another instance of consolidation. He acknowledged the perception, joking that he could be cast as “the Pac-Man eating up the other dots,” but said colleagues had been supportive. He hopes the change can contribute to greater optimism in the industry.
For now, the clearest signal is the commitment to keep Broadview’s people and publishing program in place. Rollans says he is drawn to an industry with limited room for quick profit because it requires a lasting interest in the work. Broadview’s next chapter will depend on whether that patient approach can continue to support a wide catalog, durable classroom adoption and a business facing new pressures over how books are used and paid for.
