Getting published in Australia.(Literature)

IN SPITE OF ALL the dire forecasts of the death of the book, we live in an era in which there are more books published than ever before. CDs, the internet and the fabulous e-book hand-held computer screen were supposed to have consigned books together with the dodos and the dinosaurs to the dustbins of history. But rumours of the book's death are premature. What will you buy for your significant other for Christmas? A good book to relax with over the holidays.

This all sounds very up-beat, but there is a catch. With globalisation have come huge conglomerations of multinational publishers who swamp the limited Australian market with seductive and alluring and imposing publications from the USA, the UK and Europe. In the Free Trade Agreement with the USA we seemed determined enough to protect our local television and radio programs from being obliterated by tsunamis of Yank pop culture, although we are already drowning in tidal waves of Hollywood glossies in the cinemas. But what exactly are we doing to protect Australia's home-grown product in books?

Some will argue that we already have too many books. But can you have too many books? After all, no one is forcing you to read them all; you have a choice. Certainly there are too many books being produced to be fitted into the crowded shelves of even the new super-bookshops in our capital cities. And there are too many books for more than a minute fraction to be reviewed or even briefly noticed in the metropolitan media. But that's just a matter of supply and demand. You can always take your self-published book around to the country pubs and camping grounds and win yourself an alternative audience, can't you? It's just a question of how determined (or how entertaining) you are.

Beyond this question of commercial viability of books is the more important matter of continuing to produce books that are uniquely, even if quirkily, Australian. Actually, it is not too difficult to do this when it's a question of publishing books about Australia's history and heritage, and producing books that document our regional social history and the extraordinary life stories of our unique outback. Small publishers, like myself at CQU Press, form creative publishing partnerships with state museums, shire councils and local government and state departments of the arts. This eases the financial burden of producing a minimum 1000 copies of a book and allows us to make a precarious living.

It is also possible to invent alternative promotions and marketing strategies. If the metropolitan book distributors and the three big bookstore chains are reluctant to do direct business with small publishers, then you have to find other ways to sell books. One of the most rewarding is to do multiple launches of regional, bush and outback books in the country towns where they belong and where they are greeted with enthusiasm. The launch of a book of regional history or biography in Longreach or Cooktown or Charters Towers is almost as popular as a rodeo. Residents and the regional media are ...