AUSTRALIAN PUBLISHERS BEWARE!

Saturday 20th Feb, 2010

The other day a piece came on the news about Australian Publishers and how they've allowed themselves to fall behind the times. A bloke from Faber and Faber UK (I think it was) was giving a talk to a gang of publishers, agents - the usual suspects - at a conference and the news clip showed him telling them that ebooks loaded down onto Kindle and the like are the go. He said the paperback is safe, but they have to get their acts together and move with the times. (Hurrah!)

What he didn't say and what I believe is that the resistance of publishing companies to take on new authors is killing them. I know from trawling bookstores (and haunting the library) over the years, that few people give a flying fuck about who wrote a book. Sure, they'll search out their favourite authors - who doesn't? - but if a cover looks interesting and the blurb on the back sucks them in, they'll likely as not buy it, borrow it or steal it.

The reading public in the final analysis don't care that a new author has written a book. They'll read it and if they enjoy it they may or may not, look at the name of the author!!!

So this crap about not taking on new authors because no one will buy their novel is just, IMO, an excuse not to put themselves and their marketing team to any trouble or expense over a new author. Sooner or later, the "old" authors are going to kark it, and then what will they do? Hold lengthy seances?

My rant for the day!!

I nearly wasn't going to write this next piece, but it suddenly came over me as something I need to say.

Today would be my brother's birthday - if he had not died in 2002 of a massive heart attack.

He was one of those men who is always lean and active. The sort who can eat cream cakes for years and not get fat. He played competition tennis all his life, was a fabulously green-fingered gardener, loved animals and was a terrific husband and father. Okay he was 70, but one wouldn't have known it on casual acquaintance.

We were both adopted, Robert when he was a baby and me when I was just over two. He was 12 years older than I, so I didn't get to know him until I was in my teens. I'm sorry I didn't know him sooner, but we were both incarcerated in boarding school.
Robert went on to become a Prefect and Head Boy.

The December before he died, my sister-in-law Glenda rang and asked Andrew and I to join Robert and herself in a unit on Queensland's Gold Coast for a week, we'd go halves in the cost. We did, and it was the most wonderful time I've ever had. We didn't do much. Andrew and Robert walked along the beach in the mornings, we wandered the shops, went for drives up into the mountains. When the week was up, we all came back to Boonah where we lived on a small farm with chooks, dogs, Scottish Highland cattle and our mouse circus. We spent another week driving over southeast Queensland, talking and enjoying each others company. Again, a time I shall treasure.

That was in March. In July Robert dropped dead, literally out of his chair one Sunday lunchtime, while he was having a cup of tea. Glenda said she was sure he was dead before he hit the floor. He'd been persuaded to go to the doctor the next morning because he'd had shortness of breath and a chronic soft cough. What is it about men that they always have to be "persuaded" to go to the doctor? We women run screaming there over everything!

I am so grateful that God chose to take my dear brother that way and remember him with the greatest affection.

Diana