Posts Tagged ‘ industry ’
I’m in the kitchen at the café, scraping the detritus of some asshole customer’s food into the bin and the radio starts playing that song I can’t stand. I suddenly can’t tell what I hate more: the fact that I just stuck my finger into a pile of half-eaten and probably now disease-carrying scrambled eggs, [ READ MORE ]
Over at Virugle there is a mostly-one-way discussion being had about how terrible Australian Book Review is for deciding not to award the inaugural Young Calibre Non-fiction Prize – an essay prize that matches their esteemed Calibre Prize, but for writers under 21. Unfortunately, apart from a questionable call for transparency, I don’t get a [ READ MORE ]
In my last post about Nic Low’s manuscript I described ‘Tailings’ as ‘a beautiful duck, wearing a tiara … bobbing up and down on [the sea of mediocrity] … that results from the seemingly indiscriminate publication of some 12 000+ books per year in Australia’. I now realise that’s a bit harsh: Australia has a proud [ READ MORE ]
Sam Cooney republished an article he wrote for Bookseller+Publisher about, well, the relationship between booksellers and publishers – and how this relationship is changing as publishers embark on direct-sales ventures, which, I guess, have the potential to undermine the traditional business models of booksellers. On the surface it seems like a superfluous debate, when compared [ READ MORE ]
Something that especially inspires me about the young people I know in publishing is that they are, mostly, and for want of a better word, ’social justice natives’. Perhaps not in the strong sense that today’s teenagers are ‘digital natives’ compared to people my age, who can remember a time before computers could be bought [ READ MORE ]
I’ve been reading about marketing recently, because I joined the committee of Wet Ink magazine as Marketing Dude, and understanding what marketing means does not come as naturally to me as understanding how to edit a manuscript does. This seems to be a common sentiment in the small-press sector: there is an immense amount of production [ READ MORE ]
It’s time to give this blog a kick in the guts, by making it useful. I’ve been digging in at work and making the most of the cold summer I was welcomed with, and I’m ready to start soliciting book proposals or manuscripts, maybe, depending on the proposal. In particular I’m interested in challenging non-fiction by [ READ MORE ]
An exciting opportunity has come up for young writers at one of Australia’s most prestigious platforms for the discussion of literature, ABC Radio National’s The Book Show. They are looking for five young bloggers to write about book culture on their new blog. I will certainly be applying, and I encourage other young book lovers [ READ MORE ]
In the same week that I gored myself, I accepted a job offer from Wakefield Press. I’m visiting Brisbane for Christmas, then I’ll be heading to Adelaide to resume a seat at my old desk, to make books full time again. I won’t be needing any presents this year. This may come as a surprise to [ READ MORE ]
I emailed a couple of Melbourne agencies this week, chasing work experience. I got two hits back, one from Curtis Brown telling me they don’t take work-experience kids. I’ve canvassed this way before, when I was getting into production in Adelaide, and the pattern was much the same. I expected one response to be straight and [ READ MORE ]