Is “trying to produce high-quality non-fiction that is reader-friendly is pretty much a losing game in Canada”? That’s one of the lessons some are taking away from the failure of Canadian publisher Macfarlane Walter & Ross, which went out of business last month. “Many of the traits that writers and editors loved about MWR – the editorial nurturing of writers, the refusal to publish junk titles for a quick profit – are some of the very same factors that got the imprint into trouble and mitigated against a cutthroat salvage operation allowing a prospective buyer to cherry pick assets.”