About Sono Nis

The name of our publishing company is derived from the first book we published, Man in the Glass Octopus. Sono Nis was the name of a character in that book. Sono in modern Italian means “I am”; Nis in Anglo-Saxon means “are not”; so we are and we aren’t, and have and have not been since 1968. Founded by J. Michael Yates, the company began as a literary house specializing in poetry and fiction. Richard Morriss of Morriss Printing bought Sono Nis in 1976 and moved it to Victoria, B.C. He continued to publish poetry and added high-quality regional non-fiction to the list. Many of those early non-fiction works have been reprinted numerous times and are still in print. When Richard Morriss passed away in 1994, his daughter Diane Morriss took over the company adding juvenile fiction to the mix. In 2023, Sono Nis celebrates 55 years of publishing: more than 400 titles, 200 authors, and an award-winning string of titles that have been nominated for almost every major Canadian book award.

In The Press

2016 Fire Guts Sono Nis | link to article

2016 BC publisher suffers catastrophic fire | link to article