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The Father of All Media

by
December 2007–January 2008, no. 297

Making Books: Contemporary Australian publishing edited by David Carter and Anne Galligan

UQP, $39.95 pb, 416 pp

The Father of All Media

by
December 2007–January 2008, no. 297

Until the last decade, there has been very little serious scholarly interest in Australian book publishing. Indeed, when I began lecturing in this discipline in 2001, there was no historical or contemporary overview that could be recommended to my students beyond the entry in the Australian Encyclopedia. However, with the recent dramatic growth in Communications courses, and spurred on by projects such as the History of the Book in Australia (HOBA), this situation has suddenly changed. UQP has already published two of the three promised HOBA volumes on the history of Australia’s print culture. Now we have, from the same publisher, a new collection of scholarly articles, which is undoubtedly superior to Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia 1946– 2005 (2006), the HOBA volume that dealt inter alia with contemporary publishing. Making Books: Contemporary Australian Publishing is less impressionistic and more systematic in its approach.

Richard Walsh reviews 'Making Books' edited by David Carter and Anne Galligan

Making Books: Contemporary Australian publishing

edited by David Carter and Anne Galligan

UQP, $39.95 pb, 416 pp