Are you a Minnow?

The Arts Minister Simon Crean has announced that the new-look Prime Minister’s
Literary Awards will open on 10th January. Entries must be received by the Office for
the Arts by 5:00pm on 2nd February 2011. Thinking of submitting your self-published
book for consideration? Don’t bother – the guidelines clearly state that ‘self-
published works are not eligible’

The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards are meant to “recognise the importance of
literature to our national identity, community and economy”. So why do they believe
that Australian self-published authors are incapable of producing literary works which
contribute to these areas?

Let’s start with National Identity. It seems ironic that the Australian trade book
industry revolves around seven major publishing firms – six of which are Australian
branches of global conglomerates: Pearson (including Penguin), Random House,
Hachette Livre, HarperCollins, Scholastic and Pan Macmillan. The only Australian-
owned firm among the big seven is Allen & Unwin. Obviously, these publishers will
only be nominating Australian authors’ books for the Awards, as per the guidelines,
but at least self-published books are published by Australian authors who are also
Australian publishers!

I wonder what the Prime Minister’s vision of Community encompasses. Only 3798
people identified their primary occupation as ‘author’ in the 2006 ABS census, but a
2007 ABS study estimated that some 244,000 people (about 1% of the Australian
population) were engaged in writing books. Thousands of authors are members of
Writing Centres in each State and Territory as well as local writing groups and clubs.
In January 2011, two new bodies are coming into being to promote literary
endeavours within the community – Australian Poetry and Writing Australia. Both of
these are being supported by the government body, the Australia Council for the
Arts. Does the government think that all of the writers and poets in these national,
State and local writing groups are published authors? Or maybe the new bodies are
only meant for the 3789 authors.

So, what about the contribution to the Economy? As outlined in my blog dated
January 7th, there are many self-published authors in the US doing very nicely, thank
you from the sales of eBooks. There is huge potential for self-published authors in
Australia to sell eBooks (new titles and out of print titles) to the rest of the world. The
ability to overcome the tyranny of distance for Australian authors in control of their
own content is HERE and NOW! Australian companies such as Palmer Higgs
provide services to enable authors to sell their book globally (eBook or POD) and
retain the majority of their profit in Australia. Even selling their books through
Amazon means that the Australian author ends up with more money in their pocket
than through the majority of Australian (read, branches of global conglomerates)
publishing contracts.

The University of Melbourne Book Industry Study 2009 (UMBIS) estimated that the
self-publishing market was growing at a far faster rate than traditional publishing in
Australia (8% compared to 3%). However, in the same report they also discounted
the 2,782 publishers that produced only one title (i.e. self-publishers) in 2007 by 95%
because they “do not use a separate business name”. In other words, in their eyes
only 139 of these 2,782 titles were by ‘serious authors’ (the actual words in the report
are “after the minnows and incidental publishers are winnowed out....” )

I’m sure that by now the number of self-published titles being produced is much
higher than 2,782. Of course I don’t believe that every single self-published book is a
literary masterpiece but I know from working with many self-published authors that
95% of them are not to be discounted.

Let’s hope that one of the outcomes of the Federal Government Book Industry
Strategy Group will be that self-published authors will finally be classified as an entity
of potential rather than a mass of worthless individuals. And let’s hope that the Arts
Minister reconsiders the guidelines for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards next
year.