Bookmarks

The Age

Saturday December 13, 2008

Jason Steger

We all live in tremulous times, and for publishers home and away it is no exception, with staff cuts, pay freezes and scrapped projects. But it's not all a sorry state of affairs, writes Jason Steger.

Paper cuts, coups and plaudits

DARK days in the world of US publishing. Last week's item about Houghton Mifflin Harcourt taking a break in acquiring new books was followed by the news that HarperCollins is delaying pay increases until after July 1 next year while Penguin Group boss John Makinson announced a freeze on pay increases for anyone earning more than $US50,000 ($A76,000) or its equivalent in any of the group's companies. (That includes Australia, presumably.) Simon & Schuster is axing 35 jobs across the company and Thomas Nelson is cutting 10 per cent of its staff. At Random House a restructuring is leading to the departure of a couple of top publishing executives.

Twilight year for US

US BOOKSELLERS may not share their Australian counterparts' confidence (as reported in Bookmarks last week). Sales at the three major chains - Borders, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million - are down 3.6 per cent in the first nine months of the year. But Christmas is coming and US bookshops got something of an appetiser over the Thanksgiving week with sales up 6 per cent. The strongest gain was in young adult fiction - a jump of 33.7 per cent - thanks to strong performances by all of Stephenie (Twilight) Meyer's titles. In the week to November 30, US bookshops sold 16.25 million titles, but adult non-fiction sales declined by almost 9 per cent.

Parallel importation worry

THE University of Melbourne Book Industry Study is in the throes of gathering information about the local industry, about which there seems to be an alarming lack of up-to-date facts and figures. Nearing the end of the first year of a three-year study, co-ordinator Jenny Lee says that the local industry is most worried by the threat of parallel importation. According to Lee, the introduction of the 30-day rule in 1991 (which meant that books had to be published here within 30 days of their publication overseas otherwise competing editions could be brought in) was responsible for the rise of the independent publishing sector, which was thereby emboldened in buying rights to overseas titles and selling titles confident of the strength of territorial copyright, and the interest of the major publishers in the development of new distribution procedures that allowed them to form alliances with those independents. She says that globally the independents have expanded significantly and made publishing here and overseas a more competitive business. It seems that while the current Productivity Commission inquiry into parallel importation goes on, there is significant nervousness among publishers. According to Lee, if the current legislation is retained, 58 per cent of publishers expect sales to increase by at least 5 per cent in the next three years. But if parallel importation is allowed, that optimism evaporates.

To Sylvan's defence

THE local book industry people - Australian Publishers Association, Australian Association of Authors, printers, literary agents and unions - who complained about Louise Sylvan's role as one of the commissioners inquiring into the issue of parallel importation for the Productivity Commission have finally received a reply. You may recall they objected to the fact that Sylvan was previously boss of the Australian Consumers Association and advocated the abolition of the 30-day rules. In his letter to Australian Publishers Association chief Maree McCaskill, commission chairman Gary Banks, AO, dismisses industry concerns, saying Sylvan's views were expressed a decade ago and in a different context. "It neither presents a conflict of interest, nor diminishes Ms Sylvan's ability today to serve impartially."

Sussex's Black Dog days

THE tough times have already been blamed by publisher Black Dog Books for the cancellation of one project with writer and critic Lucy Sussex. Her book about 19th-century travellers in their own words was cancelled by Black Dog's adult imprint, Red Dog Books, and the blame put squarely on the economic climate.

Schlink coup for UQP

YOU might have read the fuss - beat-up, really - about Kate Winslet's nudity in the film of Bernhard Schlink's novel The Reader, his bestseller about second generation attitudes to the Holocaust and the role education can play in the development of moral awareness. Next month, the University of Queensland Press will publish his Guilt about the Past, six essays about the nature of collective guilt. It's a bit of a coup for UQP to have snapped up world English language rights. According to non-fiction publisher Alexandra Payne, one of UQP's academic literary scouts attended Schlink's Weidenfeld lectures at Oxford University on which the essays are based and was so impressed that he asked Schlink about them afterwards. He had not been approached about publication so UQP signed him up immediately. The book's out next month.

Iremonger gong for Gray

STEPHEN Gray has won this year's Iremonger award for A Sorry State of Affairs. The prize is for writing on public issues and given in memory of Allen & Unwin publisher John Iremonger. Gray won the Vogel Award in 2000.

© 2008 The Age

Back to News Index | Back to Home