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!

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.

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”.

There’s also an excellent thread on Making Light.

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?

OMGWTFFROTFLMAOLOTRROTK!!!

I’ve only just realised that the A&R rep responsible for sending out the letter is called Rimmer!

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.

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!!!

Few people actually bother to think this one through from the publisher’s perspective.

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.

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’.

the question remains unanswered as to why shouldn’t booksellers be able to pick and choose their clients and customers?

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.

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.

“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.

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?

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.