How Australian Publishing Won Its Way Against the Odds

LOGOS 9(3)2nd mb 31/10/06 8:12 pm Page 141

LOGOS How Australian publishing won its way against the odds

John Curtain Today more than half of all the books sold in Aus- tralia are published in Australia. Only thirty years ago, the few original Australian titles published by a struggling publishing industry were seen as second-class products both by Australian booksellers and Australian bookbuyers. The Australian book over these three decades has had a difficult birth and a turbulent adolescence before its now vigorous Before becoming Associate maturity. Professor and Head of the When I entered the Australian publishing industry in 1966, I had no idea that it was so new. Department of Communications It seemed settled, established, as if it had always Studies at RMIT University been so. As a teacher, I had become familiar with Melbourne, John Curtain Non- educational publishers through their school repre- Fiction publisher at Penguin sentatives. Now I was changing my career, having been hired by one of the doyens of the Australian Books Australia. Earlier in his book trade, Doctor Andrew Fabinyi, to join career he had been a secondary Cheshire Publishing in Melbourne as Education school teacher. Curtain entered Editor. publishing in 1966. He has also The industry seemed to be flourishing. As a young new entrant, I was offered spontaneous been an animation film camera friendship, collegiality and encouragement by col- operator and production leagues in the Australian Book Publishers Associa- manager; Managing Director of a tion. I did not realize that another well-known jigsaw factory; research assistant publishing house in Melbourne had been founded to a senator; and coordinator of by another major figure in the trade, Lloyd O’Neil, only in 1960. The Brisbane-based Jacaranda Press the Please Don’t Tax Books was only six or seven years old. The prolific Rigby Campaign for the National Book of Adelaide, publishing 100 titles a year, only ten Council. He is founding editor of years earlier had been publishing a mere seven. And the journal Publishing Studies, only in 1961 had the University of Queensland Press been resuscitated by Frank Thompson. co-editor of the third volume of Most of the leading British houses had the forthcoming A History of the Australian branches, and those who managed or Book in Australia, and Chairman worked in them were part of the Australian scene, of the Advisory Board of his even if they were privileged by occasional visits to England and privy to important publishing visitors university’s press. from the UK, who seemed to be more frequent around the time when the Australian and English national cricket teams were battling for “The Ashes”.

John Curtain

Fabinyi had written in a 1958 article that this agreement, Australian booksellers, unlike their Australian book publishing showed no signs of colleagues in the UK, were able to set the prices at development. Yet in 1963, the Melbourne Age had which British books were sold in Australia. devoted a twelve-week series of profiles of compa- Through the “Statement”, British publishers were nies enjoying “the publishing boom of 1962”. Who committed to withhold supply from booksellers who was right? sold below the prices agreed by the cartel. Signs were not long in coming. In the This happy arrangement ensured that month I joined Cheshire, Frank Cheshire sold his bookselling in Australia was profitable. Books pub- company for over $1m to a joint venture of a Mel- lished in Australia, sold at domestic discounts sim- bourne printer and London’s International Publish- ilar to those prevailing within the British book ing Corporation. For several years, this change of market, were unpopular with some Australian ownership seemed to have little effect on what we booksellers, who could see no financial benefit to did. In 1969, however, both Fabinyi and O’Neil left themselves in the development of an Australian the group. I stayed on for another two years, man- publishing industry. aging the educational imprint. Then the company The situation was summed up by George was sold to Xerox, marking the end of a period of Ferguson of Angus & Robertson, who wrote in tenuous home-grown success. 1975: Despite the boom in the book market of the ’60s, we publishers knew that white Australian “I spent the years 1931 to 1939 in various culture was essentially British culture. Australia still departments of the old Angus & Robertson book- shared the interest – and the print runs – of what shop at 89 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, except for had been the Empire market. The home book mar- one year in London. During that period I han- ket in Australia has always been, and indeed dled and sold many thousands of books in vari- remains, precariously marginal. But there was no ous categories – fiction, general literature, indication that the findings of a 1947 Gallup poll – reference and practical books, technical books, that 65% of Australians preferred British national- educational books and others. These books had ity to a separate Australian one – had changed, and two things in common. The first was that practi- the book market reflected this. Australian children cally all of them were imported; and the second of my generation had been brought up on Peter was that the prices at which we sold them were Rabbit, Enid Blyton, Biggles and Sir Arthur Grim- determined by the Australian retail book trade ble, published by revered British imprints such as and not by their publishers. I do not know what John Murray, Eyre & Spottiswoode, Longman, the proportion of Australian books to total books Oxford and Ward Lock. Penguins and Pelicans were in those days was, but it could hardly have been brought from “Home” by the boatload. more than 10%, if that. Apart from the publica- Aiding and abetting this British domina- tions of A & R itself and of the handful of half a tion were two trade cartels. One was the 1947 dozen or so publishers of the day, there were no agreement between British and American publish- Australian books to sell. And when you did offer ers, known as the Traditional Markets Agreement, one to a customer you were always prepared for which divided the English-speaking world between a disdainful refusal. In those days, nothing Aus- them, and placed Australia in the British orbit. tralian could possibly be any good.” The other cartel was the Australian retail bookselling trade. Australia in those days absorbed The provenance of the Australian pub- 10 to 15% of all books published in the UK. This lishing industry was the education market. The led to a so-called “Statement of Terms” agreed post-war improvement in school retention rates, between the Australian Booksellers Association the population surge consequent on the baby boom and the British Publishers Association. In effect, and greater spending on education by an affluent this was an agreement to protect the booksellers’ society all created an educational market for margins and their monopoly on distribution. Price locally-developed books. With the encouragement competition was forbidden. With the mechanism of of state governments, both booksellers and publish-