'Starters & Writers' by Mark Rubbo

Round about May each year the American Booksellers Association hold their annual conference and trade fair. It is a huge affair when the American publishing industry plonks itself well and truly into the capitalist heart. Over a thousand publishers display their wares in huge airconditioned barns. Looking through the lists of exhibitors at this year’s fair in New Orleans, I noticed listed at booth 105, just down from Shameless Hussy Press, The Australian Book Source. They were described as a wholesaler of Australian books in the United States and I wondered who and what the Australian Book Source was. Last week the Australian Booksellers Association held their (much) smaller version of the American affair. ABR shared a booth with a number of other small publishers and so I had to spend part of my time flogging ABR, Meanjin and other bits and pieces to booksellers. Some were terrific like Jill Novak from the Mudgee Bookcase, who decided that Mudgee was ready not only for Australian Book Review but also for Meanjin, Scripsi, and Australian Short Stories. Some were depressing like the lady from Ballarat, or Bendigo, who said her customers couldn’t read. After this rebuff I was feeling rather flat. My editor and editorial board colleagues had ignored their duties on the stand. Our editor was sunning herself in Townsville, the chairman was being important, one board member came a day early, and the other had to pick up the kids. So much for my support. Into this fog stumbled another bookseller and in response to my pitch explained in a pleasant, slightly American accent that she loved ABR and subscribed to it, but hers was a mail-order business and not quite right for magazines. She added that her business was in Davis, California. And so, I met Susan Curry, owner and sole employee of Australian Book Source. She was in Melbourne on a holiday and had heard of the book fair and decided to pay a visit. Susan Curry and her husband left Melbourne in 1977 to live in Davis which is home to one of the campuses of the University of California. Sometime in 1983 she decided that she would like to become a bookseller. Davis was well endowed with bookstores and it occurred to Susan that a specialised mail order service might be possible. On a visit to Australia, she was struck by the growth in Australian publishing and was particularly impressed by the Australian children’s books. It was then that she decided to specialise in Australian books. During the visit she spoke to a number of publishers: some were supportive, others sceptical. But she did place an order with Nelson for their children• s books. When the books arrived in Davis, she took them around to local children’s book fairs and sold them to her neighbours. The response was good and the profits sufficient to buy more stock. She then approached the Australian consulates in San Francisco and New York and asked them for the names and addresses of Americans interested in Australia on their files. From these she had the core of a mailing list and produced her first catalogue - an annotated list of about 150 titles. Her first response wasn’t very good, with only about twenty sales. Three years later, the business has grown and is actually making money, although all this profit is being reinvested in stock. Her first big success was a UQP title, Yanks Down Under, of which she managed to sell over one hundred copies. Some of the local colleges have begun to use some Australian books as text. Susan has managed to get Angus and Robertson’s The Daedalus Symposium and Penguin’s The Real Matilda adopted for courses. She has been encouraged by the response and says that, on the West Coast especially, there is a lot of interest in things Australian. Her most popular books are travel guides, big illustrated books, books on Australian films, and horse books. The interest in literary titles was slow to start with but is growing. At present her mailing list is quite small – about one thousand – and she is planning to expand it slowly, by including libraries. A year ago, she was approached by the Australian publisher, Buttercup Press, who package children’s books. They asked her if she would like to become their US agent. She accepted and has so far managed to take orders for 9,000 Buttercup books. Her biggest sale was 3,000 copies of I’m Not A Bear to the San Diego Zoo Shop. She has also shipped Buttercup Press titles to Canada. Her next big move is an arrangement with a large West Coast wholesaler to take the Buttercup books around to US bookstores. This arrangement commences later this year. Susan is happy with the progress of Australian Book Source over its short lifetime and is keen to keep it going. By providing a forum for librarians, booksellers and publishers the Australian Booksellers Conference attempted to unravel the problems facing Australian books. In two intense days the three groups disc cussed the place of books, particularly Australian ones, in the marketplace and in libraries. Two outspoken critics of the acquisition habits of Australian libraries, Laurie Muller and Bruce Pascoe, addressed a crowd of more than 100 librarians and booksellers and emerged relatively unscathed, both sides coming out of the session with a greater understanding of each other’s problems. In a marathon day, leading Australian booksellers and publishers made a valiant effort to tackle the problems facing Australian books in bookshops. The title of the seminar was ‘More Australian Books in Bookshops’, but few of the participants demonstrated much concern for Australian writing, or so it seemed to me. For booksellers such as Nigel Allan from Myers and publishers such as Kevin Weldon the problem is that there is too much product (i.e., books). The number of titles makes the industry top-heavy and inefficient. What interests me is whether Australian writers inevitably face small print runs, or whether the market could be increased. Both Allan and Weldon have considerable marketing expertise, but neither sought to address that expertise to the problems facing serious Australian books. Suburban bookseller Philip Robinson did consider the problem. The market was, he said, essentially conservative but did respond to publicity and promotion. Authors such as Malouf, Garner and Winton now found an audience in the suburban bookshop, but new writers faced a largely indifferent public. Penguin’s Brian Johns noted that a very small percentage of books bought by Australians were Australian in origin. Few developed societies, he argued, allowed their culture to be so dominated by outside ideas. It was therefore absurd to argue that too many books were being published in Australia. Penguin’s publishing program was diverse and growing, but it still remained true that the sales of many Australian books was depressingly small – at least from the author’s point of view. The longer-term prospects were brighter: as Australians developed a greater cultural identity this would be reflected in the kinds of books they would buy – and read. Penguin, too, he said, had put considerable effort into marketing Australian writers overseas with some success. There was no reason why other publishers couldn’t do the same. With so much emphasis being given Australian books, it was not surprising that the representatives of overseas publishers at the conference were feeling a little besieged. At the closing dinner, UQP’s Laurie Muller called for positive discrimination in favour of Australian books in libraries and bookshops. The applause was almost drowned out by the boos and cries of ‘shame’ from the overseas enclave.

Mark Rubbo

From the New Issue

Tremor by Teju Cole

The Buddhist and the Ethicist: Conversations on effective altruism, engaged Buddhism, and how to build a better world by Peter Singer and Shih Chao-Hwei

Thunderhead by Miranda Darling

Expanding Mindscapes: A global history of psychedelics by Erika Dyck and Chris Elcock