It would appear that the market rules OK ethos of life has just got that bit madder. Angus & Robertson, chain store to the Oz book buying public, busied itself last week sending out letters of demand to smaller publishers & distributors, attempting to extort monies for what it claims is, effectively, a failure to be profitable enough for A&R to bother with.
As anyone who has ever had anything to do with retail bookselling will tell you, one of life’s great bugbears is the enormous plethora of distributors you may deal with. For a conscientious bookseller of an independent ilk, this can run to thousands. I kid you not. & of course all of that paperwork, bill paying, handling, ordering etc etc takes time & therefore costs money.
This I would suspect is in equal part why A&R, owned as they are by Pacific Equity Partners, a private equity group, has decided to either blackmail monies out of smaller distributors to cover their admin costs, or just as happy to see publishers rush to the bigger distributors such as ADS or MDS, reducing the number of suppliers into A&R stores.
So you either effectively pay for product placement by subsidising private equity with higher trade discounts, or you use big distributors to sell in & warehouse your books. Again effectively subsidising private equity. Or big business. Or the share market as it may soon be.
Well good I say. Hurray - a clear line in the sand between the independent bookseller supporting local publishing & local culture & the fools at A&R supporting - well - obviously NOT local publishing & NOT local culture. Good. So I trust that all local municipal libraries, schools & other government funded institutions will be very careful to direct their purchasing of Australian material toward booksellers who in turn support local publishing. Local publishing which receives federal funding through various Arts Council programmes or university based publishing programmes.
And yes it is unfortunate that many small centres have no other bookshop than an A&R, often run by a franchisee who is constantly frustrated by the policies of head office. One could well imagine that these franchisees would have grounds from within the Trade Practices Act to sue PEP for constricting their ability to trade. Presumably they would like to able to order Carpentaria, or The Happiness Handbook, or Settling with Indigenous People to sell to their customers, but well, head office knows best. Those trusty bean counters.
At least there’s the web. Lots of good independent Australian based booksellers who WILL stock these unprofitable pariahs & who will happily pop them in the post for those unfortunate to live only with an A&R. Or some other corporate version of profitability.
Er.. A&R won’t “allow” their name in a city/town with a population of less than 40,000 people.
Call a population greater than 40,000 “small” if you wish. But it is one helluva lot of people.
I don’t think so. Could a KFC franchisee sue because the Colonel won’t let him stock Coca-Cola?
Oh quick the bean counters haven’t noticed there’s an A&R in Armidale, NSW - only 21 000 odd souls there. & Orange hasn’t quite got to that heady figure yet. & Broken Hill bumps along with Armidale. If there is a corporate directive to hold the line at 40 000, someone forgot to pass it on.
No - books aint cups of pop - one book can not simply be replaced by any other. To effectively prevent your franchisee from being able to sell product when you do not manufacture that product but are a retailer only - & I suspect it would be a very interesting case if a KFC franchisee took up the case of wanting to sell Coke as well as Pepsi. Any takers? Malcolm Turnbull might be looking for some corporate work next year….
The idea of a franchise is that you operate according to a tight business system - this is what the franchisee actually pays for. If the franchisee doesn’t like it, he can become an independent. I can assure you that you have Buckley’s of using Part IV of the TPA to try to depart from a system you agreed to.
Except for the odd purchase at Readings or Borders, I haven’t bought a book from a shopping centre bookstore like A&R, Dymocks or Collins for I don’t know how long. Their selection and choice is truly dismal, particularly in the genres I enjoy (comparative religion; organic house-keeping; and SF - I’m eclectic!)
I would say I buy a good 95% of my books from the internet. Amazon Traders and Abebooks are pretty much my regular stomping ground, although I’ve been brave enough to try a few Lulu books.
If it’s already receiving government money (aka engaging in rent-seeking), why the importance of external intervention in A&R’s internal corporate decisions?
I’ve had the same experience as a supplier to a major corporation. They’re just too big to be able to deal effectively with small businesses. That’s one reason why they tie up out-sourcing with other big corporations for one big payment. Personally, I think it’s the wrong solution to the problem.
In my case, they re-organised their contracts and accounts payable on an annual basis until they came and asked for a single annual invoice, paid quarterly instead of the month-by-month cycle that had been in place for years. Much easier for them, and despite the budgeting angst, much easier for me in the end too. There is a real cost to a big company to add a new supplier to its books.
Another factor for book sellers is the efficiency requirement to batch orders. Having to gather a dozen orders for some fringe publisher forces them to add weeks of idle wait time to customers’ orders.
Straying from the point, what they really want is some sort of Just-In-Time for books. It amazes me that the industry hasn’t adapted to Print-on-Demand, real-time royalty distribution, and other technological improvements. I guess the business is just too old fashioned, and when a JK Rowling makes it so easy to keep doing what you’ve always done, there’s not much incentive for publishers to change.
If only we had a decent online bookstore like amazon.com. Though with the australian dollar so high you don’t have to buy that many books to make it worthwhile to just order them from the US.
Some of the print on demand services are pretty cool too - why bother printing the book until someone has actually purchased it? Great for the low print run books. And these days there’s no reason to have good online preview mechanisms for books.
“why the importance of external intervention in A&R’s internal corporate decisions?”
agreed.
making stupid decisions should be educative to large businesses just before they close down wondering what went wrong.
sadly, they rarely are.
I would think that local libraries, schools and other bodies would buy their books from whichever provides them the most inexpensively. Otherwise taxpayers (i.e. the population) is paying more for the books than they otherwise would. You’re welcome to pay more tax than you otherwise would, but I don’t plan on doing so.
I don’t understand the idea about why it’s “good” to support authors on the basis of where they reside (e.g. locals). I’m all in favour of good quality literature, regardless of where it comes from. Why support local publishing if it’s not much good?
It’s not Australian but once you experience the cheap prices, no GST and free air express mail offered by The Book Depository in the UK, you’ll wonder why Aussie bookshops charge so much.
No, and a lot of people don’t understand why we shouldn’t become a branch office of USA inc. either.
The ‘blandification’ of our culture continues apace.
I won’t be popping into my local Angus and Robertson again, not that I often do. One of the pleasures of working in the Sydney CBD is the range of quality bookshops within esay walking distance. A&R rated a poor last, even before this decision.
I wouldn’t suggest for one moment that there should be an intervention into the workings or otherwise of the corporate mindset at PEP. As via collins said “making stupid decisions should be educative to large businesses just before they close down wondering what went wrong. Sadly, they rarely are.”
But there is a problem here as regards access to knowledge. If books are not available in a physical sense, how do you propose to find out about them? By reviews only? Well the SMH reviews 15-20 books max per week. Very little of which is academic or technical.
By those Amazon lists - other people bought…? Journal reviews? Because if you can’t browse shelves in a bookshop are you happy to do it entirely virtually? Do you go to Amazon to look & browse or do you go there knowing what you already want? Will you rely on publishers’ advertising?
If a bookshop doesn’t have it, or wont have it, how do you find it? How do you find related titles? & the last little pearler - “Why support local publishing if it’s not much good?” how is that “not much good” bit of the equation worked out? By sales alone? Bit unfair if a retailer covering 25% of the market wont carry the books…..Oh where’s Les Patterson when you need him?
A & R were never an outlet for specialist books - or am I wrong?
Small communities have always struggled for immediate contact with niche titles. And adapted nicely one imagines.
Amazon is one option, The Book Depository in the UK, recommended by Ron here a few months back, is an oasis of great service/pricing/stock on hand.
And as Craig says earlier, the slowness to adapt to new models for distribution is puzzling. As music, and to some degree films go through the pains of transformation, books seem to stay in a pre 21st century model.
Which I don’t mind at all - especially with a good libbary in stone’s throw…
Well they’re there as a public good so piggybacking another public good on that isn’t wrong on principle. Why not just save more money by shutting down libraries?
Which brings me to my next point:
Well an industry needs to be supported to reach the critical mass needed to exist - publishers, reasonable career options etc. This support might not occur if you have dominant business practices of aversion to risk-taking (such as unknown writers) or a short-term approach of not supporting local publishers. I don’t think we miss out as a country by not making our own washing machines but what if we didn’t have a healthy writing culture? It’s not so much about being ‘not so good’ as what if authors who were good enough, never made it?
So even if you’re not personally keen to buy something local at least, when you’re picking up your next foreign-sourced good quality literature, go to a bookshop which will stick its neck out a bit and give local writers a chance.
A & R have never been a source of choice for specialist literature - have they?
Smaller communities have always been annexed from wide choice, but have always adapted quite well I should imagine.
And it doesn’t have to be Amazon - Ron here at LP a few months back recommended a UK supplier possessed of equal dollops of service, range and fine price.
And echoing Craig above, what is it about books that leaves their distribution model muddling so far in the past?
The A&R experience is pretty much what it is like for anybody who ever has the misfortune to deal with a large corporation.
However A&R don’t yet have sufficient market share to be in a position to simply “announce” to suppliers how much (or rather how little) they will be paying for that suppliers goods.
Bernice, possibly A&R have changed their threshold, possibly I got my numbers wrong (though 20,000 would be on the low end of it) as it is quite some time since I tried to open a greenfields A&R. Or possibly that is just the yarn they spun to put people off.
Corporations often make decisions to not expand into a certain geographic area, and use some weak line like “we don’t go into towns of that size” to attempt to placate yokels. Then when caught out by ABS data which shows the town is actually larger than the given threshold, they resort to the sort of black-is-white twisting which Katz uses in every second post.
In reality all they do is convince the yokels that corporations are run by dickheads.
And as Craig says earlier, the slowness to adapt to new models for distribution is puzzling. As music, and to some degree films go through the pains of transformation, books seem to stay in a pre 21st century model.
Depends what parts of the music industry you’re referring to, Via Collins. To my knowledge (and it’s admittedly rather limited) *written* music is even more rare on line than the printed word.
The other thing is, the web seems to have always been geared to text and images. It’s changing now, with YouTube and mp3s flying all over the place, but they still seem to me to be somewhat peripheral. Project Gutenberg and sites like it have been around for longer.
Anyway, I’m not having a go at you, but the picture just seems to me to be a little more complex than you indicate in your statement.
I tend to agree with Sacha - I find that I buy books and magazines because I’m interested in them, and almost never because I think it is ‘good’ to support this author or this publisher. But there is a certain political view that our publishers and writers should be protected, which is belitting, I think, and rather to the detriment of our publishing and writing industry in the long run, since publishers and writers will tend to look to politicians to be protected, rather than the readers who they should be engaging with. Not sure whether the situation with A&B detailed in this post (and it is an excellent post, btw) is an example of this.
It’s kind of like the bandaid question: incremental peelbacks or one-motion ‘RIGHT-OFF’? The ‘we’re Aussie, protect us!’ culture is fair enough in agribusiness, but in the creative media, yeah, it’s getting old.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over…
No problem with that at all but I’d imagine you become interested in them because they’re available.
Yeah I once read an Australian writer, but once she got a taste of that sweet government money, it was like I never even existed.
Depends what you mean by ‘protected’. Bit of an industry grant here or there, couple of awards, some scholarships, a few quid into education - nothing out of the ordinary for any Australian industry.
But we’re getting away from the point of the post, which is - this retailer is shafting local writers and publishers, so are you going to put up with that? Or are you going to go to a bookshop which might cost you a couple of bucks extra and does stock (and by extension support) locals?
“Anyway, I’m not having a go at you, but the picture just seems to me to be a little more complex than you indicate in your statement.”
Very fair comment Tim. I’ve often been accused of being a little pie-in-the-sky with views on the subject! I guess the music business platform experiments are far more public than those of books, and every now and then, they work. I-Tunes, on the one hand, has provided timely cash payments since day one to those who use its delivery - artists/labels alike.
The last week, for another, I received a new album by a performer whose work I enjoy, that I invested in 12 months ago, and have followed in its development on-line. For investing early, I received a pretty sumptuous bonus package, as well as getting the odd MP3 posted throughout the year.
They’re small potatoes issues, but they’re happening.
A subject SATP and I stand toe-to-toe on! Paging Harry Clarke - LP the village square in action!
“However A&R don’t yet have sufficient market share to be in a position to simply “announceâ€? to suppliers how much (or rather how little) they will be paying for that suppliers goods.’
Too bloody right SATP. Which makes it even more nonsensical than first viewing.
One of the problems with the just-in-time/print-on-demand model for bookstores is the proprietary nature of much of the technology involved. It seems a general consensus that ‘long tail’ publishing and these kinds of technologies are part of the way of the future, but it isn’t as simple as the book industry not keeping up. Digital rights, for example, are the problem de jour – with much of the talk at the Frankfurt book fair last year revolving around this issue (as well as the issue of international rights and rights in the rapidly emerging Indian market). The Sony e-book reader, pricy though it is, has had extremely strong sales and generally the market is predicting the genuine digital book boom as being only a couple of years away, led by penetration of viable hardware platforms into the consumer market. The ipod for books could, arguably, already be here.
While the POD model makes sense – the technology overall is still in quite early stages, with too many competing platforms and ideas for businesses to make informed decisions about just now. A little POD press is still a massive investment for most bookstores, chain or indie alike. Some bookstores (and indeed presses) are going this way. The University of Queensland bookstore is an example of a bookstore with a university press behind it (UQP) that has been using a POD platform for years now – both to catch the long tail demand for books that are still selling, but not enough to run off a thousand or so copies of and to try and catch the self-publishing market. It’s worth noting that this model is largely viable because they print their university readers and other student-oriented materials, which have a heavy and quantifiable demand, on the same physical system, thus subsidising the technology itself.
The informed money is predicting that big publishing is probably in trouble (at the moment, if you had a couple of hundred million to spare you’d be better putting it in a standard Westpac bank account than buying Random House). What seems to be emerging is a return to the ‘little press’ model of niche production and consumption of books. Book retailers are not only feeling the pinch from various social phenomena such as aliteracy, a homogenization of certain kinds of reading behaviors, competition from storefronts who can buy en masse a small range of titles (witness the recent phenomenon of independent booksellers turning up at Toys R Us and Woolies to buy their stocks of the latest Harry Potter – these outlets retailing the product for less than the indies could buy it from the distributor) etc.
As someone with a couple of books under my belt, I admit to feeling conflicted about all this. I’m a big fan of indie bookstores, and yet Borders are the only stores in town who still have my last novel on their shelves – smaller stores needing to clear out local novels faster to keep their inventory fresh. So, big chains are bad and good for local authors in different ways.
In short, it’s not nearly a case of the industry ignoring the clear trends that are changing patterns of consumption and therefore production/distribution. It’s more a case of the options being so scattered, combined with readers enduring love of the physical object of the book itself, that is making adoption of single solutions so problematic. We’re still at the betamax versus VHS stage. A platform will win out soonish, and then expect to see POD centers appearing in your local bookstore, or your local bookstore disappearing altogether – depending on who you listen to. Because, of course, it’s not just a bookstore who could have a POD machine. Your local newsagent, or Coles, might have one too and buy them cheaper.
And to Sacha’s question as to why is it important to support local cultural production – you’re not serious, are you?
Oh, and a little tip for anyone who has put up with reading this far – used.addall.com is a search engine that looks at ALL the second hand book sites. So if you’re buying 2nd hand stuff online, that’s the engine most dealers use to track stuff down. Good to help work out what the 1939 edition of Patrick White’s Happy Valley sitting on your grandparent’s shelf is worth too
H&R / Andy / Sasha /etc
Your question isn’t so much about local culture being ‘protected’ as it is about being ’supported’.
Most novelists need several books under their belt before they can start making a living at it. A good-selling work of fiction is OZ might sell, say, 6000 copies. The author makes about 10% of the retail price. You do the math. Authors start making a living when they have several books in print - their current one keeping their profile alive, and their backlist generating a lot of their actual income selling modestly each year. Each book = a new revenue stream.
There are some massive exceptions - the Matthew R’s, the Bryce C’s, certain genre authors, who do sell in large volume. Matthew R’s latest novel, for instance, outsold Peter Carey’s by about 5 to one.
Those exceptions aside, if we’re not getting Aussie novels to the public in some way over the time it takes a novelist to build a career, then we don’t have novelists left except for a couple of big-seller (largely genre) writers.
And rinse and repeat that for most other creative arts as well, from visual arts to theater etc.
So, either there is some scaffolding in place to support emerging aussie artists, or we get all our culture from overseas. It’s your call, I guess, as to which you prefer. And this isn’t an issue of quality. Aussie authors do quite well in the Booker and Commonwealth Writer’s prizes, for example - IE: the international literary prizes for which they are eligible. We have some fantastic writers in this country. And Aussie’s DO want to read them. We’re a culture that consumes its own writers’ work more than most. The problem is, we’re also a very small country - so yes, the work is good, yes, people want to read it, but no, we’re not really a big enough country for even that to enable the average published fiction writer be able to pay the bills (let a lone a mortgage).
Personally, I’d rather see a thousand or so emerging artists supported than a football stadium upgrade, but I’m admittedly personally biased on this matter. We’re actually talking a pittance from the public purse here. Over the years, I’ve received a total of about $25k in grant money from various literary boards - much less than it takes to train a swimmer who never makes it to the Commonwealth games, or to run a government inquiry into something whose recommendations are never implemented. That $25k has come at times when I really needed it, and has genuinely made a difference to me.
And the longer I write here, the further I veer from the topic!
In Sydney, I make the trip to Galaxy or Abbeys to satisfy my reading needs. You pay a little more but the range is excellent. Especially in subjects such as philosophy and science which A & R and Dymocks rarely have anything decent on their shelves.
Worth a look is Kinokuniya above Town Hall station. It is a Japanese chain but they also have a great range of books and again have well stocked their philosophy, science and other specialized interest sections.
Sorry but PEP’s bean counting approach to stock holdings matters for 2 very important reasons SATP & via collins - PEP are one of three main bidders for the 22 store Borders chain here in Oz & NZ. This will significantly increase their market share. & secondly - A&R are about to launch their new whizzbang website, which will aim to be the Amazon of Australasia. & of course Amazon does not have a branch here. A&R are intending on getting in first. & not particularly to service Aust & NZ - its far more about the english language book market in Southern & Eastern Asia.
So it matters very very much as to what they are choosing already to exclude.
The problem is, we’re also a very small country
Depends what you mean by this. Australia has a fair sized population spread out over a wide space. I googled for figures, and came back with stats that told me Australia’s population is about a third of the population size of the UK.
In the UK, they have a thriving publishing industry, with many many competitors in the market for daily news. They also have a number of widely-read and respected international magazines. Contrast the London news stands, where readers would be able to pick up the Guardian, Independent, Telegraph, Evening Post, and other newspapers, with the Sydney news stands. (Sydney Morning Herald, The Telegraph).
Now, granted that the lesser population size and the larger distances will tend to offset costs a bit, but I just don’t believe that it would offset publishing costs so radically as to account for the pitiful amount of material produced in the Australian media market.
What has also tended to keep the size of the Aussie media market down are Government restrictions on media ownership. The most ruinous of these, I’d suggest, would be Government restrictions on foreign ownership, whereby global media players can have little influence on the Aussie media market because a number of rules are in place to protect the Murdoch/Fairfax duopoly from overseas competition. Do they deserve this?
Granted, this is a special case, but similar observations hold true also for book publishing in Australia, where (for instance) rules for the parallel importation of books STILL hold, to the detriment of Australian readers.
I don’t deny that the grants given by Government to Australian authors produces results that may be, in the short term, quite delightful. (Another Australian classic? Bonzer!) But in the long term, like other misguided attempts at Government assistance, they contribute to a culture of industry dependence, where the fundamental reader/writer relationship is left to wither and die.
As a onetime bookshop employee and then a small contractor supplying services to a multinational, Craig’s points certainly rings a few bells with me.
Interesting to note too that Amazon now has its own POD arm.
“with YouTube and mp3s flying all over the place, but they still seem to me to be somewhat peripheral.”
Not to the megabillion buck music industry which is seriously freaking out. They thought they’d seen off Napster only to discover it was just an opening skimish in a long insurgency.
And yes, the Book Depositary is excellent value. And if you’re going with Amazon though, use Amazon.co.uk instead of Amazon.com. The UK arm has far faster mailing times for the same shipping prices (like a week max compared to often months) and their independent sellers are generally much more helpful and up for a cheerful and informative chat about obscure authours and books.
Unsolicted testimonial: I could not have completed my Adam Diment and HH Munro collections without the input of some genial and very knowledgeable UK Amazon independent sellers.
Unless you’re after the most routine of fiction books (generic crime and romance novels, as far as I can tell from their often-bare shelves) A&R is pretty hopeless. I prefer Borders (and I miss the one on Albert Street now that I’ve moved away) or an independent seller (Folio Books near the Botanical Gardens used to be a favourite, as did The American Bookstore). If all else fails, I’ll check Abebooks, eBay or Amazon. The shipping, while expensive, is offset by the vastly cheaper prices of the books themselves.
The state of chain bookstores in this country is pretty pitiful. If Borders does leave the market as I’ve read they are wanting to, it will be a sad day for those who prefer chain stores yet like a choice of more than 10 books.
Unless you’re after the most routine of fiction books (generic crime and romance novels, as far as I can tell from their often-bare shelves) A&R is pretty hopeless.
Me: I’m after a book called Reviving Ophelia, but I can’t remember who the author is. Do you have it?
20something A&R employee *googling*: “Hmmm, “offeelia”, how do you spell that?”
The oaph!
Well it really is going to be a problem for local history groups who have the usual “backyard” publishing approach. Their output (based on living in Northern NSW for many years) was primarily distributed at local A&R outlets. Unless the town has a university then this source of history could dry up pretty quickly - a real loss for the local schools (unless they can organise something seperately?).
As for the A&R selection, apart from history too much fluff - but that’s just my $10exp-9
Hi TimT:
I googled for figures, and came back with stats that told me Australia’s population is about a third of the population size of the UK.
Which, for the average novelist is enough of a difference to matter.
I’ll leave the media ownership / lack of media diversity stuff to one side. Largely I agree with you.
I don’t deny that the grants given by Government to Australian authors produces results that may be, in the short term, quite delightful. (Another Australian classic? Bonzer!) But in the long term, like other misguided attempts at Government assistance, they contribute to a culture of industry dependence, where the fundamental reader/writer relationship is left to wither and die.
Actually, this is a statement I’d love to see you unpack if it’s not too off topic. How do you see government supporting local books being made as undermining the reader/writer relationship? Doesn’t it actually scaffold the diversity you’re so in favor of when it comes to mass media?
Hi (again!) CDB, when I relooked at my comment last night it struck me as missing the point of your original post a bit, though I still agreed with it.
In regards to your last point, I don’t think government support to writers can be seen apart from government support for big publishers, big media, etc. Though it is true that it does have more worthwhile results than other instances of government support. My concern is just that writers become more interested in satisfying governments and the bureaucracies that give grants rather than readers.
Certainly, from my own experience with blogging and zine-making over a number of years, I know that government assistance is not always necessary, and sometimes it can in fact be quite disruptive in the publishing process!
I may have missed it in scanning the above posts but I would like to point out that this decision ONLY applies to the directly owned stores.
It does not apply to Franchise stores.
Why can’t a business make its’ own decision about who it does business with?? I pick and choose my clients and suppliers very, very carefully. Shouldn’t I be allowed to do that??
Hey Tim!
In regards to your last point, I don’t think government support to writers can be seen apart from government support for big publishers, big media, etc.
I guess I personally do see a distinction there. I don’t think cultural policy can be spoken of as one homogeneous thing.
Though it is true that it does have more worthwhile results than other instances of government support. My concern is just that writers become more interested in satisfying governments and the bureaucracies that give grants rather than readers.
Can you think of a single instance of that, though?
I think most writers write to be read rather than to be funded. You can’t make a living from grants - and if you don’t have loyal readers your career is dead. So I guess I just don’t see that dynamic at play in my own life, or in the lives of other authors who I know (and I do know a few). Most writers when they seek grants do it on a very occasional basis, not as a dependency thing. It’s useful when it happens, and sometimes its the only way to get certain (worthwhile) projects up, but it’s not like being on the dole in perpetuity. If you’re not reaching an audience at all under your own steam, then the grant money will go away in any case.
Probably the trickle-down, if it happens at all, between product and funding source is more subtle in that authors tend to have readers front and center in their minds, and publishers second. Where publishers are being influenced by government dollars (see below) writing-to-agenda might start to creep in. I’m devil’s advocating here, because I can’t think of any examples of that off the top of my head, but I guess it’s possible.
Far more pervasive is writing to a commercial commission of some kind, say a wealthy businessman commissioning his own biography. You take those kind of jobs knowing that you’re doing hack work, and knowing what you’re in for. Writers might occasionally prostitute themselves, just like an oil painter who does some graphic design on the side, but again I would think that’s a case of making enough money to keep the central creative practice happening rather than an either/or once-you’ve-taken-his-money-you’ll-never-be-the-same-again kind of thing.
Certainly, from my own experience with blogging and zine-making over a number of years, I know that government assistance is not always necessary, and sometimes it can in fact be quite disruptive in the publishing process!
Ahh. I can see where that might be the case, but can’t think of too many examples in the fiction publishing industry (with regards to small presses and authors - those who need the support, in other words) where it’s been too problematic. I guess sometimes it does have impacts on publishers where the government funds them according to certain initiatives, which impose mandates on the presses (I’m thinking UQP as an example, which has a mandate to publish QLD authors as a result of state government funding and FACP on the other side of the country which is in a similar situation). That said, I think those mandates are part of their cultural roles, and would assume that the presses would rather the money with the caveats rather than go out of business. Look at UQP as an example, which put Australian writing on the cultural agenda in the ’70s and has been a greenhouse publisher for a who’s who of Australian literature. If they had to turn a profit on every title and didn’t have the backing of an endowed sandstone uni and government funding, then we’d be culturally impoverished. The trend towards Aussies reading literature written by Aussies may have not taken off in the way it did.
Popular/commercially viable and good are often two different things. Nothing at all wrong with the Harry Potters of the world. More power to ‘em. I’m also not saying that a popular novel can’t also be good. But in terms of culture-building and cultural vibrancy, good does not always equal profit-making. There are types of creative practice all across the board that would disappear without government support and that we’d be poorer without. I quite like the fact that we have art galleries and theater companies (as opposed to their commercially-viable twins of advertisements and television) for example.
And to bring this back to the topic, I’d argue that part of what a bookstore does is consciously mediate and distribute ‘art’. It’s one thing that sets them apart from your local supermarket, where you can also buy novels - but in a much more commodified way. I do think it’s a shame when a bookseller decides to ignore part of the culture that keeps reading alive in Australia. Lord knows, local authors and presses need their support. It’s hard enough to get product to audience as it is.
Oh, and Bernice - you’re absolutely on the money.
Very apt point Razor.
Being artfully ignored, too!
Well does it only apply to company stores? head office does suggest rather strongly that orders be done only with preferred suppliers, & indeed the discount structures encourage this approach. & often the smaller distributors & publishers rely on head office ordering to put books into the marketplace, as they may not have the selling infrastructure to promote the books into every shop across Oz. Particularly those not in the major urban centres. Carpentaria is a very good example. Published by Giromondo Press, distributed by Tower Books, its just won the Miles Franklin Award. & as far as I can remember that’s the first time it’s been won by a small publisher & by an Aboriginal author. But in the flood of Bryce Courtneys & Dick Francis, Harry Potters & diet books, without head office subbing it in - lost in the snowstorm of new releases. & not on the A&R website. & I find that worrying.
“I pick and choose my clients and suppliers very, very carefully. Shouldn’t I be allowed to do that??”
Possibly being ignored as the thread is about Angus & Robertson, and Australian book suppliers in general.
If there’s a thread about your business Razor, I’m sure you’ll not be ignored.
Bernice - the only public statements I have seen are that the decision only applies to company owned stores, not Franchise stores. If you have any evidence of “head office” dictating to Franchisees about this new policy please lay it on the table for us to read.
As for a Miles franklin Winnr not being well supported and you are worried - big wooop.
I recall in the last couple of years a Patrick White manuscript being offered to publishers by a journo and rejected. The Brilliance wasn’t recognised!!!
Let the market decide what is good art, not some group of out of touch skivvie wearers. If it ain’t good enough it doesn’t get up. Shakespeare, da Vinci and Michael Angelo all competed in the market to get their art out there. It was good enough for them, why not today’s artists?
via collins - OK, ignore my business, but the question remains unanswered as to why shouldn’t booksellers be able to pick and choose their clients and customers?
Firstly
“Michael Angelo”
: 0
Secondly
da Vinci and Michael Angelo
Both relied on wealthy patrons, the Duke Ludovico Sforza and the Medici Family respectively, rather than say duking it out at CopperArt (nothing wrong with that)
But the point is businesses can do what they like, but we’re not going to shop there. I’m personally a bit disappointed with the well you can’t fight city hall free market fatalist consumer mindset.
And
“not some group of out of touch skivvie wearers.”
That’s some pretty out of touch stuff right there.
Finding a wealthy patron is market forces at work, not living off government hand outs.
Skivvy wearers are OK if you are the Wiggles and earn tens of millions each year - that is cool. Other skivvvie wearers aren’t. Especially black ones under jackets.
Oh, and how does one know if the store they shop in is a Franchise or Company owned??
Razor writes:
I recall in the last couple of years a Patrick White manuscript being offered to publishers by a journo and rejected. The Brilliance wasn’t recognised!!!
Oh lawd, every couple of months someone trots out this tired old joke. It happened most recently when 19 UK publishers rejected a Jane Austen manuscript. The gag goes: someone with a barrow to push finds a Great Dead Author, sends a bit of their stuff in and when publishers reject it they get to have a good laff about how publishers don’t recognize good writing. The truth, of course, being that Austen/White/Etc writing in a style fifty or a hundred years out of date wouldn’t get picked up today. Try time traveling and selling a Irvine Welsh to Victorian publishers and you’ll probably get the same result.
As for - “Let the market decide what is good art”. Oh, my.
Indeed, why shouldn’t they? ANd why shouldn’t they expect to cop criticism from those who find their choices troubling? And why shouldn’t those disgruntled customers tell other potential customers just what they find troubling, and recommend that if other potential customers also find it troubling they should boycott the store?
Free choice all around, Razor.
“And why shouldn’t they expect to cop criticism from those who find their choices troubling?”
Totally agreed, tigtog. This blog is as much a part of ‘market forces’ as anything else that influences purchasing decisions. The market is not Nature with a big ‘N’.
‘Market forces’ is an unfortunate and divisive rhetorical term which manages to conceptually separate people and the economy. Diogenes for one has pointed out that the ‘market’ is in fact simply people, the sum total of all the choices and exchanges they make.
This is why I prefer to avoid the term.
Of course there are always niche writing jobs: my first paid position was in fact as a casual/part-time writer for a private investigator. There are quite a number of technical writing jobs out there at the moment, and in my current work (officially, a transcriber/audio typist) I currently seem to be doing one or two small writing tasks (I’m not kidding myself, though - it’s never going to feature heavily in my resume when I leave that job). So writing positions certainly do exist within the purview of private business, and could only be expected to grow, given the growing importance of the ‘information economy’.
I’m being equivocal about your response, CDB, because I don’t really have all that much direct familiarity with the mainstream of the Aussie literature industry. I do know that many writers claim to ‘write for themselves’; many others, under the influence of postmodernism and earlier movements, write less for a wide audience than for a small coterie of friends that may understand them. But it’s rhetorically a bit unfair to attribute all this to the grant system, or to overestimate what it means for Aussie literature as a whole.
I do think the rise of home computers, blogging, home publishing and niche publishing do augur well for publishing and writing as a whole into the future, and to me it seems natural and desirable that the influence of public servants (through grants, restrictions on the publishing market, etc) should be wound back in favour of these new voices.
Few people actually bother to think this one through from the publisher’s perspective.
Tower Books’ response is classic (I think I am right in not seeing it linked here already … )
http://blogs.smh.com.au/entertainment/archives/undercover/014948.html?page=3#comments
Indeed Amanda.
What a masterful rude letter, and how very instructive to read for anyone upthread who thinks this is all about ‘forcing’ a retailer to make uneconomic decisions through regulation. It’s all about a big company making very poor, out-of-touch and arrogant decisions that will bite it on the arse before long. Meanwhile holding back locally published work and reducing the choice available to its customers.
Good find, Mandy.
OMGWTFFROTFLMAOLOTRROTK!!!
I’ve only just realised that the A&R rep responsible for sending out the letter is called Rimmer!
Wonderful to see the cut and thrust of business in action.
Rearguard corporate defence on Crikey today - it’s in the free bit, so viewable on-line.
Not too sure there’s going to be too many more communiques from Mr Rimmer in the future, but surely there’s a place for him in the house on BB08?
Aug 10: Today Chris Burgess, the general manager of Leading Edge Books, has sent out his own letter of financial demands to Australian publishers and distributors. [link]
There’s also an excellent thread on Making Light.
For entertainment value, I think Rimmer’s letter is hard to beat. I particularly liked the offer of a 10 minute meeting (in Melbourne!) to discuss “in more detail”. Instead of “best regards”, he may as well have finished with “Feel free to @#*% off”.
Mr Rimmer has gone from zero to hero on Google this past fews days. His sage business strategies and silken communication skills are being tracked all over the English-speaking world.
His letter will be quoted from like a Monty Python sketch in the world of book retail for years to come.
Well done Mr Rimmer, immortality is thine!