Book History in since 1950 Katherine Bode

Preprint: Chapter 1, Oxford History of the Novel in English: The Novel in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the South Pacific since 1950. Edited by Coral Howells, Paul Sharrad and Gerry Turcotte. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Publication of Australian novels and discussion of this phenomenon have long been sites for the expression of wider tensions between national identity and overseas influence characteristic of postcolonial societies. Australian novel publishing since 1950 can be roughly divided into three periods, characterized by the specific, and changing, relationship between national and non-national influences. In the first, the 1950s and 1960s, British companies dominated the publication of Australian novels, and publishing decisions were predominantly made overseas. Yet a local industry also emerged, driven by often contradictory impulses of national sentiment, and demand for American-style pulp fiction. In the second period, the 1970s and 1980s, cultural nationalist policies and broad social changes supported the growth of a vibrant local publishing industry. At the same time, the significant economic and logistical challenges of local publishing led to closures and mergers, and—along with the increasing globalization of publishing—enabled the entry of large, multinational enterprises into the market. This latter trend, and the processes of globalization and deregulation, continued in the final period, since the 1990s. Nevertheless, these decades have also witnessed the ongoing development and consolidation of local publishing of Australian novels— including in new forms of e-publishing and self-publishing—as well as continued government and social support for this activity, and for more broadly.

A (Post)Colonial Market: 1950s and 1960s Australia was the largest export market for British books from at least the 1880s to the 1980s. This longstanding trade relationship was produced and maintained by a combination of cultural allegiances to Britain and international legislation. The privileged access of British publishers to the Australian market, provided by the 1886 Berne International Copyright Agreement, continued until, and was more strongly enforced by, the 1947 Traditional Market Agreement (TMA) between Britain and the United States. Under the TMA, as Brigid Magner explains: Australian-owned publishing companies were not permitted to acquire separate rights to British-originated books. A British publisher buying rights from an American publisher automatically obtained rights to the whole British Empire (except Canada); the US publisher was then obliged to cease supplying the book to Australia and could not sell Australian rights to any Australian publisher. (2006, 8) These legacies of colonialism gave British publishers significant influence over the Australian market, including the publication of Australian novels. While some renowned Australian novelists, including and Christina Stead, were first published in America in the 1950s and 1960s, for most, publication meant gaining acceptance in Britain. Cassell, Collins, Heinemann, Hodder & Stoughton, Hutchinson, Macmillan, and Robert Hale were the most active British publishers of Australian novels in these decades. Many had branches in Australia, while Collins, the most prolific British publisher of Australian novels in this period, was also the first to establish an Australian office: in in 1872. Collins published novels by literary authors, such as Eleanor Dark and , as well as

1 bestselling popular fiction by , Maysie Greig, and Catherine Gaskin, among others. The fact that the literary authors were published in Sydney, while the popular writers were published from London, suggests that Collins recognized a specifically local market for Australian literary fiction. Hutchinson was another British publisher with an office in Australia—in —and the division of labour between the Australian branch and the British headquarters encapsulates the power dynamics of publishing at this time. While ‘especially interested in Australian writers’ work’, the Australian branch advised prospective authors that: ‘All final decisions regarding the acceptance of MSS. are made by our London office. We merely read all offerings, select those we consider suitable for our companies’ lists, and send them Home for consideration’ (Australian Writers 1946, 150). Ultimately, ‘selling British books well’, as Hilary McPhee writes, was the primary task of local branches, which received their orders from London, including being ‘told what was best for it and for the Australian market’ (2001, 104). The dominance of such policies led to shortages not only of Australian, but contemporary American, Canadian, South African, and New Zealand fiction in Australia. Access to fiction was also inhibited by a censorship regime described as ‘one of the worst … in the Western world’ (Moore 5), in force until the early 1970s. While most banned fiction was by overseas authors, some Australian novels were caught up in the regime, including Robert Close’s Love Me Sailor (1945), Christina Stead’s Letty Fox, Her Luck (1946), and Gerald Glaskin’s No End to the Way (1965). Despite all these restrictions, in the 1950s and 1960s a local publishing industry committed to Australian writing began to gain a foothold. The Second World War was an important catalyst in this process. At the level of supply and demand, the interruptions to imports meant that local publishers were able to secure licenses to print their own editions of British and Australian books. At a more profound, cultural level, the new sense of nationalism sparked by the War created a belief in the importance of Australian books, and of a local publishing industry to produce them. As Anne Galligan notes, some publishers had pursued ‘a personal mission to publish books by Australian authors dealing with Australian material’ prior to this conflict (2007, 36). The Bookstall Company, ‘the first mass-market paperback venture in Australia’, published ‘over 350 titles in over a thousand reprints from the end of the 1880s to 1946’ (Mills 37). Most of these titles were fiction, and many were by Australian novelists, including Mabel Forrest, Beatrice Grimshaw, Norman Lindsay, Sumner Locke, Jack McLaren, and . Although selling British books was its core business, established Sydney bookseller, Angus & Robertson (A&R), had an active publishing program, producing a steadily increasing number of titles through the first half of the twentieth century. In addition to reprinting bestselling overseas titles, and works by Henry Lawson and A. B. Paterson from its backlist, A&R published both popular and literary Australian novelists, including Frank Clune, Mary Gilmore, Ion Idriess, Walter Murdoch, Vance Palmer, and Arthur Upfield. During the war, publishers such as Currawong and Frank Johnson directly appealed to the nationalism of their readers, not only in their commitment to publishing local authors but in their advertising. Titles in the ‘Currawong First Novel’ series were described as ‘all “first novels” by young Australian authors’, and the back covers of Frank Johnson’s ‘Magpie Series’ advertised, ‘A Series of Selected Novels by Australian Authors: These stories, depicting various forms of Australian life in romance, humour, and thrilling adventure, are by far the finest and cheapest books yet issued in Australia’. This growth in local publishing, spurred by national sentiment, continued even after British publishers returned to the Australian market. In the 1950s and 1960s, A&R significantly increased its publication of original Australian novels, with titles by renowned

2 Australian authors including , , , , Norman Lindsay, Vance Palmer, and Kylie Tennant. A&R also created a number of major series, including Sirius Books in the 1960s, A&R Classics in the 1970s, and Imprint Classics in the 1990s, aimed at bringing back into print classic Australian works. Other established booksellers—namely Dymocks in Sydney, Cheshire in Melbourne, and Rigby in Adelaide— also began publishing original Australian fiction, especially romances, thrillers, war stories, and young adult fiction. Cheshire published Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967), a work that became ‘part of the new wave of Australian writing and creativity which swept through in the late 1960s and early 1970s’ (Thompson 2006, 34) and, especially after the film of the book was made in 1975, an Australian classic. Alongside these established presses, a small number of independent local presses published Australian novels, often with an explicitly nationalist agenda. Georgian House, established in 1943, published eighteen original Australian novels from the late 1940s to the late 1960s, and advertised as specifically ‘interested in manuscripts by Australians and New Zealanders on … Fiction, Biography, History, Travel, Poetry, Juvenile, and those dealing with Australian flora and fauna and the aboriginals’ (Australian Writers 150). The Australasian Book Society was a cooperative publisher established in 1952, which used members’ subscriptions to finance the publication of twenty-nine first edition Australian novels, predominantly nationalist and leftist titles. Sun Books, established in 1965, published some original fiction as well as paperback editions of major Australian novels by Thea Astley, Thomas Keneally, Henry Handel Richardson, and others. In 1957, Ure Smith achieved phenomenal commercial success with the publication of Nino Culotta’s They’re a Weird Mob (1957). Purportedly selling ‘more copies than any other novel published in Australia, at least until Bryce Courtenay’, They’re a Weird Mob demonstrated the strong demand, in Australia, for popular books about ‘Australian English and Australian customs’ (Carter 2006, 26, 28). Despite these signs of success, small local publishers had limited capital and distribution infrastructure, and were operating in a market necessarily restricted to Australia. These circumstances made local publishing a risky financial venture and led to the closure of many small publishers. For instance, in 1968, only three years after it was established, cash flow difficulties forced Sun Books to enter into a publishing arrangement with British company Paul Hamlyn. Three years later, in 1971, the imprint was fully acquired by Macmillan Australia. Even success could bring its own challenges. As David Carter notes, despite the income earned from They’re a Weird Mob, the scale of production required placed such strain on Ure Smith that, in 1965, the company sought and attained a merger with mass- market publisher, Horwitz. The same nationalist urge that underpinned the activities of Australian publishers motivated an institutionalization and professionalization of Australian literature. While Australian literature had been on the curriculum at some Australian universities since the 1920s, in the 1950s and 1960s the argument for such inclusion gained momentum. In 1954, a forum of Heads of English Departments on ‘Australian Literature and the Universities’ was called, with statements published in the literary journal, . A series of seminal critical treatments of Australian literature appeared, including H. M. Green’s Australian Literature (1951), Vance Palmer’s The Legend of the Nineties (1954), A. A. Phillips’ The Australian Tradition (1958), Russel Ward’s The Australian Legend (1958), and the collections Australian Literary Criticism (1962), edited by Grahame Johnston, and The Literature of Australia (1964), edited by Geoffrey Dutton. These titles were influential in creating a national canon that incorporated novelists. For instance, Johnston’s Australian Criticism focused on poets, but included novelists Joseph Furphy, Henry Handel Richardson, Martin Boyd, Xavier Herbert, and Patrick White. Magazines existed to publish and discuss

3 Australian literature prior to the 1950s and 1960s, including Southerly (1939) and Meanjin (1940), but in these decades a number of new periodicals were established, including Overland (1954), Westerly (1956), Quadrant (1957), and Australian Literary Studies (1963). In 1962, the first – and until the 1990s, only – Chair of Australian Literature was established at the . The founding of the Australian Society of Authors in 1963— which, along with the Fellowship of Australian Writers, represented the interests of authors in respect to pay, conditions and recognition—also contributed to professionalizing Australian authorship in this period. In the context of this nationalist embrace of Australian literature, another entirely different form of Australian reading and writing drove growth in local publishing. The 1950s and 1960s witnessed an explosion in the publication of mass-produced, ‘pulp’ Australian paperbacks. While the lack of British book imports during and immediately after the war probably helped local pulp fiction companies to establish themselves, their rapid emergence and expansion was predominantly due to licensing restrictions imposed from 1939 to 1959 on any printed matter from non-sterling countries, mainly the United States. Designed to preserve currency reserves, these restrictions ‘effectively banned’ the import of American pulp fiction into Australia (Johnson-Woods 2004, 74). It was this gap in the market that publishers such as Cleveland, Horwitz, Calvert, Action Comics, and Currawong emerged to fill. In the decades following the Second World War, these companies published thousands of Australian pulp novels for the Australian market. Selling titles predominantly in newsagents, bookstalls and by postal order rather than through bookstores, these pulp fiction companies operated in what was effectively a separate industry and market from mainstream publishers. Some pulp fiction novels offered ‘Australian’ stories: for instance, war novels depicting the heroic actions of Australian troops overseas or crime fiction in Australian settings. But the majority adopted stereotypically American genres, especially westerns and hard-boiled crime, and American slang and settings. The explicitly American-style of these titles shows that the national sentiment underpinning the broader growth in local publishing in this period was at least matched by a desire for popular American stories. This cultural orientation also underpins the success of the bestselling Australian author of this period. Writing as Carter Brown, Alan Yates published hundreds of detective novels, with American characters and settings, through Horwitz. Following a deal between Horwitz and New American Library in 1967, Carter Brown titles were also released in America, resulting in yearly sales in the millions. While licensing restrictions enabled the growth in local pulp fiction publishing, their cessation did not destroy this industry. Some companies ceased publishing in the late 1950s, but the largest Australian pulp fiction publishers – Cleveland and Horwitz – continued to publish many hundreds of novels in subsequent decades, and only ceased publishing such titles in the 1990s (Horwitz) and 2000s (Cleveland).

National Successes and Struggles: 1970s and 1980s In the 1970s and 1980s, the belief in the importance of Australian literature and publishing, growing since the Second World War, yielded what many describe as a ‘local publishing boom’ (Magner 9) sponsored, in large part, by significant growth in government funding for the arts. In 1972, the newly elected Gough Whitlam government replaced the Commonwealth Literature Fund with the Literature Board of the Australia Council, in the process substantially boosting its funding from $300,000 per annum to $1.19 million. Much of this funding was directed to grants for individual authors, with money also for festivals, literary events, and writing organizations. Government support for Australian literature and publishing was also manifested in the introduction of the Public Lending Right (PLR) scheme in 1974. State government

4 funding to public libraries, and their importance for Australian readers, had grown – albeit unevenly across the country – through the 1950s and 1960s. The PLR scheme provided compensation for authors and publishers for the use of their books in public libraries, and offered an important source of recognition and income for these groups. Beyond public libraries, state governments also became more directly involved in funding arts and literature in Australia from the late 1970s. One consequence of this shift was a considerable increase in the number and value of literary awards available. For instance, the major Premier’s Literary Awards – for New South Wales, , and South Australia – were all established in this period, in 1979, 1985, and 1986 respectively. All of these government initiatives had direct economic benefits for Australian authors. Increased government support for literature arose from, and contributed to, what McPhee describes as a broad ‘climate of optimism and activism, and a belief in books and the power of the printed word to change things’ (131). Commentators have also identified various factors contributing to this ‘great awakening’ of Australian culture in the 1970s (103), including an easing of censorship restrictions; demographic changes leading to increased population and cultural diversity; the activism of the post-Vietnam War generation; and the new public conversations this generation sponsored, particularly concerning Aboriginal land rights, women’s rights, and national identity. Specific events such as the creation of the National Book Council in 1973, and the inaugural Association for the Study of Australian Literature conference in 1978, reflected a growing belief in the importance of books for Australian culture. The end of the TMA in 1976—due to an American court decision that granted Australian publishers ‘access to rights for local editions of many US-originated books that had previously been locked into agreements with British publishers’ (Hart 2006, 55)— further contributed to the growth of local publishing. In the context of a broader expansion of higher education, the place of Australian literature in Australian universities was consolidated, with most English Departments incorporating such writing into their curriculum, and academics producing an increasing range of Australian literary criticism. Nationalistic events, particularly the 1988 bi-centennial, further boosted public support for Australian literature and publishing. While local publishing gained a foothold in the 1950s and 1960s, the ‘sympathetic environment’ created by the social changes and governmental initiatives of the 1970s produced ‘an almost immediate and measurable increase in the volume and quality of work produced, and a heightened interest in publishing Australian material’ (Galligan 39). Many local publishers of Australian novels of the 1950s and 1960s, including Rigby and the Australasian Book Society, continued in this field in the 1970s. Despite a series of managerial and financial crises through the 1970s, A&R maintained its leading role in the publication of Australian literary novels, with titles by Thea Astley, Donald Horne, , Thomas Keneally, , and Christina Stead, among others. The significant change in the publishing landscape of the 1970s was the emergence of many new local publishing houses focused on Australian writing, especially novels. These enterprises include Currency Press (1971), Outback Press (1973), Wild and Woolley (1974), Greenhouse Publications (1975), McPhee Gribble (1975), Fremantle Arts Centre Press (1975), Hyland House (1977), and Hale & Iremonger (1977). While the output of these presses was relatively small, ‘it is recognized now’, as Galligan writes, ‘that their activity had a catalytic effect on Australian literary culture’, especially in the high risk area of publishing new Australian authors (40). McPhee Gribble, arguably the most significant small local publisher of this period, published some of the most successful novels of the late 1970s and 1980s – including Glen Tomasetti’s Thoroughly Decent People (1976); ’s Monkey Grip (1977); Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey’s Puberty Blues (1979); Gerald Murnane’s The Plains (1982), ’s In the Winter Dark (1988); and ’s

5 Longhand: A Writer’s Notebook (1989) – as well as a range of nonfiction and children’s books. In 1975, the Australian Independent Publishers’ Association was formed as a representative body for these new local enterprises, changing its name to the Independent Publishers of Australia in 1976. By the 1980s the novel was established as the cultural flagship for local publishing. Reflecting the political tenor of the time, many new local publishers of Australian novels had specifically identity-based political commitments. A number of presses devoted to women’s or feminist writing published Australian novels in this decade, including Dykebooks, Sybylla Press, Women’s Redress Press, and Sisters Publishing. Indigenous presses, Magabala Books, and the Institute of Aboriginal Studies, were established in 1980s. Although these publishers concentrated on autobiography and poetry, Magabala’s list in the 1980s included one novel, John Wilson’s Lori (1989). Regional publishing houses also became prominent, with Fremantle Arts Centre Press (FACP) the largest and most culturally significant in this category. FACP was established in mid-1975 ‘with the aim of publishing and promoting literary, art and historical works by Western Australian writers and artists’ (Denholm 1991, 45). After publishing a range of poetry in the late 1970s, FACP began publishing novels in the 1980s with ’s The Newspaper of Claremont Street (1981). Two successful publications—A. B. Facey’s autobiography A Fortunate Life (1980), and Sally Morgan’s novel My Place (1987)— helped fund the expansion of FACP through the 1980s. In the 1980s, the University of Press (UQP) supplanted A&R as the major local publishers of Australian novels. Founded in 1948, through the 1950s and 1960s, UQP predominantly published criticism, biography, and autobiography. From the mid-1960s, under Frank Thompson’s editorship, it became a major publisher of Australian literature. At first, this agenda focused on Australian poetry, but from the late 1970s, UQP built a impressive list of Australian novelists, including Thea Astley, , , , Barbara Hanrahan, Elizabeth Jolley, Roger McDonald, , and Janette Turner Hospital. The increased interest in publishing Australian novels in the 1970s and 1980s extended beyond local presses to the Australian branches of British publishers. Collins published literary novels by Robert Drewe, Geoffrey Dutton, Xavier Herbert, Thomas Keneally, and Roger McDonald, as well as popular works by Jon Cleary and Catherine Gaskin. Macmillan substantially increased its publication of Australian novels, with titles by Jessica Anderson, Murray Bail, , and Kylie Tennant, among others. As McPhee writes, by the 1980s ‘Australian fiction had come to be considered sexy and fashionable and worth the risk. It was selling well; new and established authors were producing novels in increasing numbers’ (162), and even publishers who, ten years earlier had ‘avoided writers of fiction … were establishing fiction lists of their own’ (237). While the Australian branches of British publishers were keenly aware of the considerable local market for Australian fiction, this recognition was not always shared by British headquarters. This tension—between the desire of local managers to develop an Australian list and British priorities—is well demonstrated by the case of Penguin, the most notable entry of a British publisher into the Australian novel field in these decades. Following the establishment of an Australian branch in 1946, Penguin built up a strong business selling British books, but also publishing some local writing, particularly nonfiction. By 1969, the Australian branch was doing so well that it was in a position to loan the parent company $200,000 at 7 per cent interest— the first of many such loans. That year, Penguin’s Australian branch also significantly accelerated its local publishing activities. Responding to local demand, Penguin Australia increased republication of Australian novels in paperback, including titles by , Eleanor Spence, and Patrick White in the 1970s, and Rolf Boldrewood, Ada Cambridge, and Catherine Helen Spence in

6 the 1980s. From 1979, under the direction of Brian Johns, Penguin Australia sought out and published a large range of original Australian fiction, including novels by Jessica Anderson, Thea Astley, Jean Bedford, Peter Corris, David Foster, Rodney Hall, Elizabeth Jolley, David Ireland, and . By the end of the 1980s, Penguin Australia was one of the two largest trade publishers and distributors in the country. Yet despite this financial success, and highly positive responses of local readers and authors to its Australian titles, Geoffrey Dutton (1996) and Hilary McPhee both describe the London headquarters’ perception of Penguin Australia through an old, imperialist framework, generally dismissing its publishing activities, disparaging the quality of the books and rarely taking copies. Local publishers faced a different set of challenges. While in many ways, local publishing flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, financial pressures and a lack of distribution infrastructure created considerable fragmentation of this industry. Where A&R and Rigby, for instance, maintained their own retail outlets, and the British companies had dedicated national networks, small local publishers were forced to ‘cobble their distribution together state-by-state’ (McPhee 164). This was a complicated and expensive procedure, but using existing distribution networks—controlled by the large publishers—risked the independent’s books being inadequately represented and sold. In the early 1970s, Book People of Australia, a cooperative distribution arrangement for small Australian publishers, was established, but went into receivership in 1979. By the early 1980s, federal government funding for the arts was also significantly reduced. Whereas, in its first year, the Literature Board ‘was able to offer 158 fellowships and 112 special project grants’, in 1980 these figures were twenty-eight and thirty-two respectively. ‘In 1974-75, total payments to individual writers through the Literature Board were $1,027,000 compared with $902,000 in 1980-81 … a real drop of 52 percent’ (Denholm 1991, 8). Already often under-capitalized, this decline in government support for literature greatly affected the viability of local publishing operations, both large and small. Financial conditions worsened further in the late 1980s, when recession hit Australia, interest rates rose to 17.5 per cent and bookstores significantly reduced their orders. The financial challenges facing the Australian industry were further exacerbated by shifts relating to the globalization of publishing in the 1980s. One of these shifts was increasing competition for particular authors, created by the rise of the ‘world book’ or international bestseller. Although there are early Australian examples of this phenomenon— notably Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (1957) and Morris West’s The Devil’s Advocate (1960) the stand-out case from this period was Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds (1977), which was published simultaneously in America, Australia and New Zealand by Harper and Row, and quickly became a bestseller in all these countries. From the publication of his first novel, The Power of One (1989), Bryce Courtenay has been another Australian example of a world author. In the search for global bestsellers, publishers competed for the rights to novels by popular and promising authors by offering large advances, a practice that significantly changed the nature and status of authorship as a profession. While the Australian subsidiaries of global companies had access to these titles, a lack of capital, as well as the international presence required to engage in these negotiations, meant that local publishers were unable to compete. As Galligan writes, ‘By the mid-1980s a strong marketing emphasis had become evident, with publishing … driven by frontlist titles rather than the traditional balance of 80 per cent of turnover being derived from the backlist’ (42). As a result of these shifts, a number of Australian companies were unable to continue as independent entities and were subsumed by multinational conglomerates. In 1970, A&R was sold to Gordon Barton and his Interstate Parcel Express Company (IPEC) before being acquired by News Corporation in 1980; in 1979, building manufacturer James Hardie had purchased Rigby, in the process also acquiring Lansdowne and Ure Smith imprints; and in

7 1987, Australian Consolidated Press acquired Greenhouse Publications before selling that publisher’s list to Penguin in 1988. Despite its leading role in culturally significant publishing, McPhee Gribble struggled to generate sufficient capital for its publishing program and, in 1989, was also bought by Penguin. By this time, however, Penguin itself was part of a larger global publishing conglomerate—Pearson—a transition that had already occurred, or was about to, for most of the British publishers with traditional stakes in the Australian market. When Pearson acquired Penguin in 1970, it already owned Longman, and went on to purchase Viking and Kestrel in 1975, Sphere and Hamish Hamilton in 1985, and the New American Library in 1987, before purchasing Greenhouse Publications and McPhee Gribble. After merging with Hamlyn’s Octopus Publishing Group in 1985, Heinemann was acquired by Reed Elsevier in 1987, which had already bought Rigby from James Hardie. The acquisition of A&R and multiple other imprints by News Corporation was followed, in 1989, by the purchase of British publisher and long-time participant in the Australian market, Collins. Tracking the acquisitions by multinationals such as Pearson, Reed Elsevier and News Corporation of previously independent British, American and Australian, publishers, shows how these Australian mergers, although potentially accelerated by local financial difficulties, were also part of a broader global restructuring of the publishing industry at this time. Other multinationals came to play a significant role in the field in the 1970s and 1980s, not by acquiring previously independent Australian companies, but simply through the global spread of their publishing empires. Through its various imprints, the travel, publishing and natural resources multinational, Thomson Organization, published a substantial number of Australian novels, including titles by James Aldridge, Thea Astley, , David Martin, and Ruth Park. The company responsible for publishing the most Australian novels in the 1980s was another multinational, Torstar, owner of Harlequin/Mills&Boon. (For further details of Harlequin see chapter 2.) While often perceived as detrimental to the Australian novel and local publishing, the entry of multinational publishers into the Australian market was concurrent with growth in local publishing. Where local publishers were responsible for around 10 per cent of Australian book sales in 1970, by 1989 this had increased to almost 50 per cent. This perception of threat also occludes the culturally important Australian fiction published by multinationals, as the Thomson Organization’s output demonstrates. Indeed, Penguin Australia’s celebrated list of local authors was built after its was acquired by Pearson. The debate continues, as I outline in more detail in the next section. What is clear is that in Australia, as Robert Wright describes in the Canadian context, the 1980s marked the end of a postwar period of explicit government protection of both national literature and publishing.

(Multi)National Growth: 1990s to the present In recent decades, successive Australian governments have proposed—and in many cases implemented—policies aimed at globalizing and deregulating the book market. However, this period has also witnessed effective resistance to those moves, increases in some types of government funding, and evidence of ongoing public and publisher support for Australian literature. Likewise, although multinational conglomerates have increased in size and involvement in Australian novel publishing, local activity in this area has continued and, in many respects, flourished. Legislative changes since 1990 have removed many protections for Australian publishing, in ways that particularly impact Australian literature. Scaled down in the 1980s, the Book Bounty scheme, which provided subsidies to offset higher Australian printing costs, was abolished by the Howard government in 1996, a decision that disproportionately affected publications without illustration, such as novels, because most illustrated titles were already

8 printed overseas. In 2000, books were taxed for the first time in Australia when a Goods and Services Tax (GST) on all non-food retail products was introduced. The GST produced what Jenny Lee calls the ‘industry’s nightmare year’ in 2000-01, when sales fell ‘by more than 17 per cent as customers baulked at higher prices and retailers reduced their inventories in response’ (2007, 25). To compensate for the GST, the government introduced a four-year, $240 million Book Industry Assistance Package from 2000. This scheme, however, focused on textbooks and school library purchases, and provided little support for Australian literature. In at least one case, deregulation challenged historical disadvantages of the Australian book market. In 1991, the Copyright Act was amended to reduce Parallel Import Restrictions (PIRs) by introducing the 30/90 day rule. This rule requires publishers ‘to make books available in Australia within 30 days of their release overseas’, or risk ‘losing their right to restrict third-party imports’ (Lee 26), and allows booksellers to import from overseas if publishers do not supply backlist titles within 90 days of those titles going out of stock. While putting some pressure on Australian publishers, this process of deregulation also ended the ‘London bottleneck’ that had remained even after the abolishment of the TMA, and prevented multinational publishers treating ‘Australia as a sleepy hollow’ (Lee 29) by not importing books published in other territories. Further proposals to amend PIRs, which would have reduced competitive advantages for Australian publishers and authors, were successfully opposed. Twice in the 2000s, the Productivity Commission recommended removal of the 30/90 day rule so that third-party imports could compete directly with local releases. The Commission argued that PIRs benefit Australian publishers, authors and, to some extent, printers, but not booksellers or readers, with territorial protection restricting the capacity of booksellers to source cheaper editions from overseas, and of readers to benefit from resulting lower prices. In both cases, the Australian Publishers Association and Australian Society of Authors argued that the 30/90 day rule provides the right balance of protectionism and competition, and removing it would expose the Australian market ‘to the dumping of remaindered books from other territories’ (Lee 27). The first Productivity Commission proposal to amend PIRs was defeated in the Senate in 2003, the second in 2009. In the context of these legislative changes and debates, government funding for publishing and literature has been mixed. Funding for the Literature Board has declined, especially in real terms, from approximately $5 million in 1990 to $4.5 million in 2011. However, Stuart Glover proposes that ‘the general trend in literary funding, with a few blips, has been up’ (2011, 6): where total federal and state government funding for literature and print media in 2003-04 was $32.4 million, in 2010-11 this figure was $43.6 million. Government-funded writers’ prizes have also increased in number and size over this period. Although one of the most lucrative of these prizes – the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award – was abolished in 2012, a suite of state awards remain and, in 2008, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards was introduced, offering $80,000 each in six categories. Since the 1990s, local governments have also continued to invest in public libraries, with Glover estimating that total government spending on libraries is equivalent to the $1 billion spent annually on broadcasting. One outcome of state government support for literature has been growth in the number of writers’ festivals. Since the 1990s, the established festivals—such as Adelaide Writers’ Week, Brisbane’s Warana Festival (now known as the Brisbane Festival) and the Melbourne and Writers’ Festivals—have become ‘larger, and more heavily populated and publicized, then ever’ (Gelder and Salzman 2009, 8). In this period, numerous other writers’ festivals have been established, including in Mildura (1994), Sydney (1997), Byron Bay (1997), and the Whitsundays (2009), as well as the Newcastle-based National Young

9 Writers’ Festival (1998) and the Emerging Writers’ Festival in Melbourne (2004). These festivals exist alongside and benefit from other aspects of a supportive ‘book culture’ in Australia, manifested in publications such as Australian Literary Review and Australian Book Review; and public broadcasts such as Radio National’s ‘Books and Arts Daily’ and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s weekly ‘’ program. Despite these signs of strong public and government support for local literary culture, the overall trend of deregulation and globalization has been concurrent with ongoing growth of multinational publishers and their involvement in the Australian market. The major publishers of Australian novels are now all multinationals, including Torstar, Pearson, Pan Macmillan, News Corporation, Reed Elsevier, Bertelsmann, and Holtzbrinck. In most cases they have entered the market by acquiring previously independent Australian companies, and this trend continues: Fairfax acquired Text Publishing in 2003, and in 2005, Time Warner bought children’s book publisher Lothian Books before selling the imprint to Hachette Livre in 2006. This growth in multinational involvement has had both negative and positive consequences for Australian literature. Some commentators, such as , have expressed concern that the ‘shaping of the national literary culture’ is now ‘in the hands of interests that have no commitment to that culture … only [to] profit and tax minimisation’ (1999, 64). This trend has been associated, in particular, with an accelerated shift away from backlist and literary novels and towards high-selling, fast-moving titles. Mark Davis describes how the search by multinationals for ever-increasing profits encourages ‘an information-based business’ model, wherein bookstores order on the basis of what is selling, and decisions about whether to publish a particular author are based on past sales. The result, Davis argues, is increased sales of a few titles, with an overall reduction in the number of books published. Yet, rather than destroying Australian literature, many multinationals demonstrate commitment to building Australian lists. Former Penguin Books publisher Clare Forster estimates that 50 per cent of titles published by Pearson’s Australian subsidiary are Australian-authored. Taking all the imprints of this company, Pearson’s output since 1990 has featured titles by an extensive array of literary authors—including Thea Astley, Jessica Anderson, Carmel Bird, Georgia Blain, Robert Drewe, , Helen Garner, Peter Goldsworthy, Rodney Hall, Sonya Hartnett, Elizabeth Jolley, Drusilla Modjeska, Brenda Walker, and Amy Witting—as well as authors of popular fiction – for both adults (including Bryce Courtenay, Nick Earls, Kerry Greenwood) and young adults (including Isobelle Carmody, Victor Kelleher, and Robin Klein. Bertelsmann is another multinational with a strong Australian list, publishing novels by Peter Carey, J. M. Coetzee, Thomas Keneally, Malcolm Knox, Christopher Koch, David Malouf, Frank Moorhouse, and since 1990, as well as leading Australian popular fiction authors, such as award- winning crime fiction writers Peter Corris and . A key reason why multinational ownership of publishers has not inevitably tallied with a decline in Australian fiction is the fluid movement of publishers and editors between Australian independents and conglomerates, and the strong commitment of these individuals to Australian literature. While publishers and commentators may feel trepidation at trends in ownership, for many Australian authors, publishing with a multinational is perceived ‘not as capitulation to imperial cultural hierarchies, but as a conduit to well-subsidized promotion and distribution in international markets’ (Murray 2007, 60). For instance, publishing with Torstar has enabled global sales of over sixty million copies for Australian romance author Emma Darcy (Flesch 2007, 283). Other Australian literary novelists move between publishers, multinational and national, in different markets. For instance, Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America (2009) was published in Australia by Hamish Hamilton (a Pearson

10 imprint), in England by independent publisher Faber, in America by Knopf (a Bertelsmann imprint) and in Canada by Random House Canada (also owned by Bertelsmann), prior to translation into German, Dutch, French, and Italian, and publication throughout Europe by a range of independent presses. As in the 1970s and 1980s, local publication of Australian novels has continued to grow in the 1990s and 2000s, despite the presence of multinationals. Prominent publishers of the 1980s, particularly UQP and FACP (which changed its name to Fremantle Press in 2007), have continued to play an important role in promoting Australian literary fiction, and to receive state government support in this endeavor. Since 1990, UQP has published novels by David Brooks, Peter Carey, Vivienne Cleven, Janette Turner Hospital, and Dorothy Porter, while Fremantle Press has published award-winning Western Australian novelists such as Heather Grace, Philip Salom, and Brenda Walker. Both presses have encouraged the publication of Aboriginal authors – UQP most actively through its Black Australian Writers series and David Unaipon Award (established in 1989) – and the increased investment of dedicated Aboriginal presses, such as the Institute of Aboriginal Development (IAD) Press and Magabala Press, in publishing novels has further promoted this trend. Despite heated debate regarding the status of Australian literature in schools and universities over this same period (see, for example, Kirkpatrick; Neill), the launch of two classic series of Australian works from university presses—UQP’s Academy Editions of Australian Literature (from 1996 to 2007) and Sydney University Press’s Australian Classics Library (since 2003)—and the University of ’s strong involvement in publishing Australian novels since the early 2000s, demonstrate ongoing institutional support of Australian literature. Of the new publishers that have emerged since 1990—Text Publishing (1990), Spinifex Press (1991), Brandl & Schlesinger (1994), Black Pepper (1995), Giramondo Publishing (1995), Duffy and Snellgrove (1996), Ginninderra Press (1996), and Black Dog Books (2008)— many show a specific commitment to Australian literary fiction. Giramondo’s select list includes novels by Brian Castro, Gerald Murnane and , while Text has become renowned for its high-quality works of both literary and popular fiction. Although acquired by Fairfax in 2003, a ‘joint publishing venture with the Scottish publisher Canongate’ enabled Text to ‘resecure its independence and gain access to a global market’ (Gelder and Salzman 3). In 2013, the company launched its own ‘Text classics’ with Patrick White’s Happy Valley (1939), Nino Culotta’s They’re a Weird Mob (1957), and David Ireland’s The Glass Canoe (1976) among the first titles. While the vibrancy of local publishing is indicated by the number of new presses, its health is signified by the emergence and consolidation of Allen & Unwin (A&U), which has become not only ‘one of five major trade publishers in the Australian marketplace’, but ‘one of the biggest independent publishers in the world’ (Poland 2006, 93). Established as a branch of the British parent company in Australia in 1976, A&U predominantly published educational and nonfiction titles until the early 1980s, when its involvement in the newly established Vogel/Australian award for an unpublished manuscript helped launch the company into fiction publishing, with titles by Brian Castro, Peter Corris, Kate Grenville, and Tim Winton. In 1990, as HarperCollins purchased the parent company, the Australian directors organized a management buy-out, acquiring the Australian branch and the global right to the Allen & Unwin imprint. From this point, A&U significantly expanded its publishing activities, and now issues around 220 new titles per year, including a wide range of literary and popular novels. For instance, in the 2000s A&U published -winning novels by Andrew McGahan, and as well as Kerry Greenwood’s popular Phryne Fisher Mystery series. In recent years local companies have continued to face the challenges that come with publishing in a country with such a widely-dispersed population as Australia’s. In addition to

11 Text, some smaller companies have been forced to change their operations or cease publishing entirely. For instance, Duffy and Snellgrove closed in 2005 while Spinifex Press announced that, from 2006, it would no longer publish original fiction. Yet a number of local publishers have expanded into new markets. Fremantle Press and Spinifex Press are two that have successfully ‘internationalize[d] their operations and [broken] into burgeoning [overseas] markets’ (Brown and McQueen-Thomson 2002, 189). Likewise, in 2012, Scribe Publications announced that it would establish a London office in 2013, and sell its fiction to the British market. A&U, which also has an office in London, runs ‘a thriving business in translation rights and exports’ (Poland 2006, 105). Alongside this increasingly globalized local industry, a final trend in Australian novel publishing since 1990 has been an explosion in various forms of self- and subsidy-funded publication (where self-publishers fund and organize the entire production and distribution of their work, subsidy-publishing companies charge a fee for services such as editing, design, legal advice, printing, distribution, publicity, and sales). This trend has been associated with the growth in creative writing courses. However, new computer technologies, and the ‘lower cost of entry’ they allow into publishing (Webster 82), have also clearly played a significant role. Self-published authors can now create their own websites—in some cases essentially indistinguishable from those of small presses—and sell titles to readers directly. There are now substantial Australian subsidy publishers, including Seaview Press, Sid Harta Publishers, and Zeus Publishers, which use technologies such as print-on-demand to lower the cost of publication, and sell globally to readers online. Complementary to this growth in alternative forms of publishing is the emergence and popularity of online literary blogging, which extends criticism of Australian literature beyond traditional academic and general periodicals. At present, the focus of these self- and subsidy publishers on online sales mean they operate, in large part, separately from the established publishing and retail trade. This separation may change, however, as consumers increasingly buy books online. In fact, Davis argues that, as mainstream publishing emphasizes high-selling titles, ‘do-it-yourself’ publishing will play an increasingly significant role in the production of Australian fiction, especially literary fiction. Other new forms of technology—particularly ebooks—are also poised to change the industry, and the way readers access Australian novels. While commentary on Australian publishing since 1990 has included a strong measure of doom and gloom regarding the fate of Australian literature at the hands of multinational publishers, as in the earlier decades discussed in this chapter, actual trends in government funding, public sentiment and ownership demonstrate a continuing tension between, rather than a clear victory of national and non-national influences. If the past predicts anything about the future of this field, it is that the relationship of local and global is always changing, multifaceted and complex, and that the Australian novel exists and prospers not on one side or the other of this divide, but through the dynamic interplay across it.

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