QUILLBLOG

Up north and down under

Their toilet water may drain clockwise when flushed, but otherwise there are some remarkable similarities between Australia and its Commonwealth cousin, Canada, especially where the nations’ literary scenes are concerned. According to a think piece by Aviva Tuffield on the website for The Age, Australia’s national literature is suffering a remarkably similar malaise to our own, and seemingly for the same reasons. In spite of a number of international hits over the last few years, Australian fiction is not selling like it used to, both at home and abroad, causing many publishers to trim their lists and devote more resources to the non-fiction market and the fiction authors they still do publish. The multinational publishing houses who dominate the Australian scene have come under the heaviest fire for this abandonment of the country’s fiction authors. The reasons for this retreat? Tuffield lists a number of them: “a myopia about an author’s potential to build a reputation over a number of books; the abandonment of mid-list authors whose sales are now entirely transparent thanks to accurate recording by Nielsen BookScan; a refusal to do smaller print runs that may be most realistic for the Australian market; [and] a slavish devotion to their sales and marketing departments, which often have to meet targets originated by overseas head offices, to whose vast infrastructure costs the local subsidiaries need to contribute.” Sound familiar?

Related links:
Read Aviva Tuffield’s piece on theage.com

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