Publishing or perishing

Over the last few years Australia has undergone a nationalistic cultural renaissance. Just as manufacturers have discovered that the addition of the Advance Australia logo has added a healthy percentage to retail sales, so too the ‘manufacturers’ of popular culture have discovered a more receptive home market, which has helped them weather the recession better than other industries. Television producers and programmers have found the preference for Australian programmes so overwhelming that they are using it to seek the removal of Australian content regulations, saying that no broadcaster could expect consistently high ratings without Australian originated programmes. At the same time Australian movies have moved from the fringe to the mid-city cinemas where they are rivalling Hollywood spectaculars for box office success. The $630 million publishing industry (retail sales) is neither as large nor as flashy as either television or films, but in the realm of popular culture and ideas it rivals them both in importance. Australians have always been big book readers and buyers, but the publishing industry is currently also benefitting from the nationalistic cultural renaissance. Last year, for the first time since records were kept (the publishing industry has been notoriously under observed by both the industry and the government), sales of Australian originated and published books exceeded the sales of imported books. Sales of Australian published books exceeded sales of imported books by $4,704,000 (invoice figures) during 1982 according to the annual industry survey prepared by the Australian Book Publishers Association (ABPA), released in mid-August. The significance of this one per cent lead by Australian material can be seen in dollar terms by comparison with sales figures over the last two decades (not adjusted for inflation). In 1960 Australian book sales totalled $2 million, in 1970 $14.1 million, and in 1983 $147.4 million. Although ABPA director Sandra Forbes is excited by this trend, she cautions against over enthusiasm and misinterpretation of the figures. ‘Australian books for the first time have exceeded imported books by one per cent in dollar terms. But there was a different mix of companies this year in our survey as we lost members some big mail order companies which could account for one per cent of sales. But nevertheless it is heartening and sales of Australian books have increased’, she said. Of the ABPA’s 142 members 119 responded to the one-page survey in both 1981 and 1982, but the mix of companies was quite different. The 1981 figures, which showed Australian books with 46.3 per cent of the market, and imported books with 53.7 per cent, included responses from three big direct selling houses – Encyclopaedia Britannica, Field Educational Enterprises, and Grolier. These companies had resigned from ABPA by the time the 1982 survey was distributed, seeing their interests better represented by a direct-selling organisation than a publisher[’]s organisation. Because of the annual variations in who responds to the survey the ABPA has a control group from which it seeks more detailed information, and to use as a base for comparisons. When the ABPA began these surveys in 1979 it included twenty companies in the control group, ranging across the breadth of the industry. But now as a result of takeovers and industry reorganisation the number of companies in the control group has dropped to eighteen and its representativeness is in question. Sandra Forbes is now talking about possibly including the thirty companies which have responded to every survey since 1979 in the control group for more detailed comparisons. In the 1982 survey the control group included: Ashton Scholastic, Associated Book Publishers, Australian and New Zealand Book Co., ANU Press, William Collins, Dove Communications, Horwitz Group Books, Jacaranda Wiley, Longman Cheshire, Lothian Publishing, McGraw Hill Book Co., Oxford Uni. Press, Penguin Books, Pitman Publishing, Primary Publishing, AH & AW Reed, Rigby Publishers, and University of Queensland Press. In dollar terms sales by the control group rose from $77.4 million in 1978 to $115.5 million in 1982. For the control group however export sales only increased from $2.9 million in 1978 to $3.4 million in 1982, three per cent compared with a rise to six per cent of export sales across the whole survey. Although the control group showed a substantial and sustained increase in new educational titles published between 1978 and 1982 of 287 to 709, new general titles have slumped during the same period. In 1978 the control group companies published 798 new general titles and in 1982 they published only 460. This reflects the abolition of general lists in some of the houses in the control group rather than a national trend. Despite that huge drop between 1978 and 1982, the number of new general titles published in 1982 was twelve more than it had been in 1981 and the number of general title reprints soared from 143 to 210. Sandra Forbes said that in this area particularly the control group was at variance with the general trend: Initially the control group included 20 companies which represented size & types of ownership, general and educational publishers, and those who we knew would respond to the very detailed questionnaire we send them. Two companies dropped out, Cassells (U.K.) was bought by Associated Books and the Victorian Commercial Teachers Association withdrew from ABPA. So now the control is too small. McGraw Hill is no longer publishing general books and nor is Australia and N.Z. Book Company, and now AH & AW Reed has been taken over by the Straits Times of Singapore and they will stop publishing new general titles in Australia. Although Australian published books appear to have a narrow lead over imported books in the entire market, the market for general books, which is everything except educational titles, is still dominated by imports. The sales figure for imports in 1982 was $105,372,000 compared with $82,224,000 for Australian originated books. It is impossible from the data collected by the ABPA to deduce the numbers of books sold. Forbes said that ABPA members were most reluctant to divulge ‘units’. In 1982, 1,251 new Australian general titles were published and 764 reprinted. This is a slight decrease on the numbers of new titles reported in the 198l survey – 1,305 – and reprints – 618 – although this is skewed by the different respondents. It is in educational publishing that Australian originated books have an unassailable lead. The healthy domestic sales in this area are enhanced by substantial export sales, bringing the sales of Australian educational books to $49,851,000. This represents slightly over seventeen per cent of the total book market. Another twelve per cent of the market is held by imported educational texts, with sales of $37,345,000. This trend is largely accounted for by books published for the primary and secondary school markets; over ninety per cent of the books used in primary schools are now originated in Australia. In 1982, 1,181 new educational titles were published and 1,630 Australian educational titles were reprinted. The rate of educational reprints according to both the control group and all respondents remained high in 1982 after slumping in 1980. Of the 2,432 new educational and general titles published in 1982, eighty-eight per cent were completely originated and produced in Australia. This eighty-eight per cent accounted for thirty-six per cent of total sales last year. This figure gives a rather better idea of both the scope of the Australian editorial and publishing production industry and the acceptability of Australian books to the book-buying public. Over recent years a number of the bigger publishing houses have been actively expanding their Australian lists. During the l970s the publishing boom spawned a number of smaller houses which did well with innovative Australian lists including Wild and Woolley, Hale and Iremonger, Outback Press, and others. This market is now being tapped by some of the bigger houses. As a spin off of the increased acceptability of Australian books at home, a number of Australian publishers are also reporting greater success in overseas markets with Australian books. It has always been a problem for Australian publishers that the home market was not large enough to establish real economies of scale, thereby limiting print runs and pushing up prices. The export market is still small but it is growing – in 1982 it represented about six per cent of total sales. By comparison exports account for about forty per cent of the UK publishing industry, with the major proportion of the South East Asian and African markets. Lansdowne has had particular sales success with two of its books; the Complete South East Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon and the Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook by Tessa Mallos both have approached six figure sales (in ‘units’). In addition books receiving critical acclaim in Australia are being published and as importantly also being promoted overseas. A striking example was Rodney Hall’s prizewinning novel, Just Relations, published in Australia by Penguin and picked up by Viking, one of Penguin’s sister companies in the United States. As well as locating overseas markets for Australian books, the Australian subsidiaries of overseas based publishing houses are finding greater enthusiasm for Australian books in their parent and sister companies abroad. In part, this is due to the success with which the Australian publishing industry has weathered the world recession. By comparison with other industries in Australia and with publishing companies elsewhere in the world the Australian industry has continued to perform well. The reasons for this relative success include the slump which the publishing industry sustained in 1978 and 1979. Publishing had boomed throughout the 1970s but by 1979 the market had gone flat here and was showing danger signs overseas. More books were being produced than ever before and production was substantially outstripping demand. At the end of 1978 Rigby Ltd reported a loss of $761,000, the first loss for twenty years by the Adelaide based company. This was followed quickly by a loss of $643,000 by the British-owned, Melbourne-based, Thomas Nelson (Australia), and a drop of thirty per cent in the profit reported by William Collins. These losses sent a chill through the industry which then began to tighten up – staff numbers were trimmed, lists reduced and in some cases cancelled, internal management systems put in place, and publishing and marketing judgements were more rigorously scrutinized. Forbes like many industry observers believes that at the end of the 1970s there were ‘just too many books being produced worldwide’ and the shakeout has left quite a different industry, an industry better prepared to cope with the recession of the early 1980s than many others. A consequence of the pre-emptive tightening is that the sales of books in Australia have bettered the rate of inflation between 1980 and 1982. Over that period the Consumer Price Index increased by 23.4 per cent, but book sales rose by more than twenty-seven per cent, and royalties by 37.7 per cent. Over the same period salaries paid to those working in publishing have increased by 24.9 per cent (average salary in the control group was $15,877 in 1982), but the number of employees has fallen by four per cent (from 1,404 to 1,348). The smaller workforce in the control group in 1982 obviously reflects the rationalisations within the twenty companies, but is also indicative of a trend towards greater reliance on freelance and contract staff. Just as the structure of the publishing industry in Australia over the last five years has changed with rationalisations and takeovers, so too has the international industry. Internationally the financial structure of the publishing industry has changed over the past decade. In both the United States and United Kingdom book publishing companies have become, and are continuing to become, subsidiaries of non-publishing conglomerates. In a submission to the Fraser government last year the ABPA said it feared that this trend would result in less independent publishing in future. Coupled with the nationalistic cultural and corporate renaissance Australia has been experiencing is an awareness of the high levels of foreign control of the Australian economy. The publishing industry is no exception. Most of the biggest publishers in Australia have a parent company overseas. The ABPA is particularly sensitive to the suggestion that some of its biggest members are ‘just other multinationals’. This sensitivity is heightened because of the cultural and political significance of books and their ideas. Sandra Forbes volunteered a defence of the integrity of the publishing industry. ‘Australians are a bit paranoid about being dominated by multinational companies, without assessing the contribution they make. Although some publishers are multinationals they are not real multinationals … the turnover of any big publishing company in Australia in a year would be about the same as Myer in a week before Christmas’, she said. Of the 142 members of the ABPA, forty-three have turnovers of less than $50,000 a year and fifty per cent have turnovers of less than $1 million. Only eight members of the association have turnovers of more than $8 million a year. Nevertheless, according to the 1982 survey Australian companies have the greatest commitment to publishing new Australian titles with 57.1 per cent (1,390) of the new titles. British-owned companies were second with 30.9 per cent (751) of the new titles and US-owned companies third with 10.4 per cent (252) of new titles. By country of ownership, British companies published the most new educational books, and Australian companies the most general titles. When sales figures and market shares by nationality are calculated, UK companies lead with 44.3 per cent ($120,086,000) of the domestic market, followed by Australian companies with twenty-nine per cent ($78,751,000), and US companies with twenty-six per cent ($70,645,000). US-owned companies operating in Australia however have 65.8 per cent ($12,293,000) of the Australian export market, largely due to a particularly successful educational export to New Zealand by a mass market publisher of books and magazines. These high export sales mean that the total market divides up with 42.3 per cent ($122,675,000) held by British-owned companies, followed by US-owned companies with 28.6 per cent of the market ($82,938,000), and Australian companies with 28.4 per cent ($82,401,00) of the Australian market in 1982. Australian book-buyers according to these figures appear to have responded to the tougher judgements being made about what to publish in Australia. Some observers believe that by comparison with the 1970s quality has now overtaken quantity, and therein may lie the end of the cultural cringe as Australian books are produced for both domestic and international markets. The challenge now lies in breaking into the international market.

Julianne Schultz

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