Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Publishing

Chris Flynn and Peter Carey on the challenging times for mid-list authors

by •
October 2011, no. 335

British author Glen Duncan released his eighth novel this year, the title of which, The Last Werewolf, is fairly self-explanatory. Although a much more philosophical (and entertaining) read than one might imagine in our current supernaturally-dominated ‘box-office’ novel landscape, Duncan’s book was a marked departure from an author better known for h ...

Final Proof: Memoirs of a publisher by Peter Ryan

by •
July–August 2011, no. 333
Sue Ebury reviews 'Final Proof: Memoirs of a publisher' by Peter Ryan

‘Thank God I have done with him!’ – the words uttered by Dr Johnson’s publisher when he received the final proofs of the dictionary from its author – might well have been Peter Ryan’s own in 1988 when Manning Clark confessed that he had changed his mind about the character and career of Robert Menzies. No longer did Clark consider him an ‘imperialistic booby’. Melbourne University Press was about to publish the final volume of Clark’s History of Australia, and the book was printing as the author confessed that he no longer believed his own, uncomplimentary text. This, for Clark’s publisher, Peter Ryan, was ‘the last straw’ in their tumultuous publishing relationship of twenty-six years. He boycotted the launch, and five years later he let fly in the pages of Quadrant with a critical attack on the press’s most profitable author, his methodology, and his work.

... (read more)

Patrick White's Papers

by •
December 2010–January 2011, no. 327

It’s not often that literature makes the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald, but on 3 November 2006 the lead story was a report by David Marr about the National Library of Australia’s purchase of a collection of Patrick White’s papers, previously thought destroyed. Other media, both in Australia and internationally, picked up the story. The T ...

Merchants of Culture: he Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century by John B. Thompson

by •
February 2011, no. 328
Terri-ann White reviews 'Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century' by John B. Thompson

Since well before the global financial crash of 2008, there has been pessimism about the future of the book in an age of new paradigms: electronic transmission and gadgetry, all thus far untested, in a screen culture age. This uncertainty still hovers, like a pungent doom-cloud, despite the furious conversion of new and backlist files into multiple formats in publishing houses everywhere in readiness for the e-revolution. This is expensive and time-consuming work, done in good faith as an investment for the future. One by-product has been a chilling realisation that file archiving is poorly managed by many houses and that finding print-ready files of backlist books to convert to e-format isn’t as easy as was anticipated.

... (read more)

'Alpha and Omega' Nathan Hollier on the establishment of Monash University Publishing

by •
October 2010, no. 325

 On 8 September 2010, in the foyer of the Robert Blackwood Hall at Monash University, beneath the beautiful ‘Alpha and Omega’ stained-glass window created by Leonard French and connoting humankind’s endless striving for achievement, Monash University ePress became Monash University Publishing. It was very appropriate that the press should be launched by B ...

An interview with David Musgrave

by •
June 2010, issue no. 322

Why do you write?

It’s not really a choice, but a necessity. Usually, it is the pressure of an idea or an emotional state that only seems to be satisfactorily released as words on a page. Sometimes, if there is a choice involved, it is in choosing not to write.

Are you a vivid dreamer?

Yes. A lot of my work originates in dream. Glissando began as a transcription of a dream I had longer ago than I care to admit.

... (read more)

Arts Of Publication: Scholarly publishing in Australia and beyond edited by Lucy Neave, James Connor and Amanda Crawford

by •
December 2008–January 2009, no. 307
Jay Daniel Thompson reviews 'Arts Of Publication: Scholarly publishing in Australia and beyond' by Lucy Neave, James Connor and Amanda Crawford (eds)
The ‘publish or perish’ mantra is familiar to all academics and postgraduate researchers. Arts of Publication is aimed at these readers. The text emerged from a 2004 symposium on academic publishing, and sheds considerable light on this fascinating and frustrating field. ... (read more)

The World of the Book by Des Cowley and Clare Williamson

by •
December 2007–January 2008, no. 297
Ian Morrison reviews 'The World of the Book' by Des Cowley and Clare Williamson

The World Of The Book is an offshoot of the State Library of Victoria’s permanent ‘Mirror of the World’ exhibition, which uses major works from the SLV’s collections to present a global history of books and ideas. The exhibition itself is a testament to the depth and diversity of the SLV’s collections, and the book is thus part exhibition catalogue, part ‘Treasures’ book.


... (read more)

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

by •
December 2007–January 2008, no. 297
Richard Walsh reviews 'Making Books' edited by David Carter and Anne Galligan

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.

... (read more)

The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish authors and their publishers in eighteenth-century Britain, Ireland and America by Richard B. Sher

by •
October 2007, no. 295
Graham Tulloch reviews 'The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish authors and their publishers in eighteenth-century Britain, Ireland and America' by Richard B. Sher

The Enlightenment gave birth to our modern world. Within this broad movement, spread over many countries, the contribution of Scotland was of pre-eminent importance. We all know the names of Adam Smith and David Hume, and we recognise their influence today, but how did their ideas get out into the wider world? Of course, there were books, Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40) and Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) amongst the best known. But where were their books published? Who printed them? Who published them? How were they marketed? These are questions which we have probably never posed to ourselves, but they are vital to our understanding of how writers from a small country on the edge of Europe came to play such an important part in this international movement. As Richard B. Sher points out, we know the writers but we don’t know the publishers and printers without whom their books would never have reached the public. In this book he sets out, amongst other things, to redress the balance.

... (read more)
Page 4 of 6