Publishing Means Business: Australian Perspectives

Description

The Australian publishing industry has transformed itself from a colonial outpost of British publishing to a central node in a truly global publishing industry. Despite challenges, including reduced government support for home-grown authors and the arts, small presses thrive and Australian consumers have access to an unprecedented range of foreign and domestic titles. Social media, big data, print on demand, subscription, and new compensation models, are subtly reshaping an industry that now also relies on more freelance labour than ever before. Publishing Means Business examines the current state of this exciting and unpredictable industry, while also asking questions about the broader role of publishing within our culture.

Katherine Day has been working in the publishing industry for over fifteen years. She was an editor at Penguin Group Australia for eight years before freelancing for Penguin Random House, Allen and Unwin, University of Queensland Press, Rockpool Publishing, and Thames and Hudson. She is currently a sessional course coordinator and lecturer in the School of Culture and Communications at the University of Melbourne. Her areas of interest are the business of publishing and the impact of copyright law on the author-publisher relationship. Aaron Mannion is associate publisher at Vignette Press. He is deputy chair of the Small Press Network and co-convener of the Independent Publishing Conference's academic day. His work has been published in Wet Ink, The Sleepers Almanac, Island and elsewhere. Millicent Weber is a researcher in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, where she is part of the Publishing and Communication program and the Research Unit in Public Cultures. She completed her PhD, a sociology of literary festivals, at Monash University in 2016. Her book, Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018.