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 to whether eBookstores will overrun this model, but it remains relevant, and the article got me thinking, which I like, obviously.

I hadn’t quite got to wondering about how booksellers might feel threatened by publishers’ online sales, perhaps because I never really buy from physical bookstores, and because I currently work in production, which often leaves me feeling quite removed from the whole extra set of steps that are involved in getting books to readers.

I’m becoming increasingly interested in sales though, and Sam’s article tapped me on the noggin and said, ‘Dear naive and idealistic editor, booksellers are very important to you and your job, and your interest in disseminating ideas with literature.’ So I started riffing on how this shifting relationship might weather the rapid market changes that are being pushed along by this here internet thing.

Perhaps an organised partnership between booksellers and publishers could be established to develop a website that aggregates all of their separate marketing and direct-sales efforts. For these purposes (compared to blogging, say) one big website is surely better than many small ones. Australia Council should fund something like this – just as they’ve recently funded the establishment of Literary Magazines Australia.

Another idea that sprouted was whether booksellers could borrow from the idea of subscription publishing. McSweeney’s do this at their online store. You can sign up to their Book Release Club and receive every book they publish over a twelve month period. Maybe booksellers could offer something similar: I’d like to sign up for a package of ’seller picks’, a bunch of random books from various publishers, delivered to my letter box once a month.¹

The other thing that struck me in Sam’s article was the comment from Don Grover, CEO of Dymocks and aspiring booktrade despot slash self-described benevolent despot: suggesting that ‘a healthy industry occurs when everyone focuses on their own area, their niche in the market’ seems like a typically neo-con thing to say, but my understanding of economic ideology is pretty patchy. Am I right or wrong?

My idea of a healthy industry is one that is not dominated by small groups of large, domineering companies controlling those niches, but one where individuals determine what is produced and how they get it. From this perspective, the suppliers are the ones who need to adapt, rather than trying to restrict trade to a traditional structure of publisher through bookseller to consumer. I guess that’s an irresolvable ideological difference, though.

Or not.

Because then Sam speculated that ‘the coin can also be flipped, the spotlight shifted. Will booksellers be forced to become publishers?’ This must be happening, somewhere.² Curiously (considering my aversion to Grover’s suggestion), this got my hackles up, with its suggestion that booksellers could just whip up the infrastructure required to produce quality books, as if it’s just a matter of pressing the go button on the the Espresso Book Machine.

Thinking about infrastructure, resources and expertise made me realise a more convincing reason publishers should be wary of ‘wading into booksellers’ waters’ (Don Grover’s defensive phrase), and it’s not because they’re not ‘customer-centric’ (also Don’s words). This suggestion denigrates the motives of publishers: does he think we make these books because they look pretty on our shelves? That’s only a secondary reason.

Okay, back to trying to be objective: I’d say a more convincing reason book publishers should be (and, sometimes, are) wary of prolapsing their resources on marketing and direct sales is that they operate in an ailing sector of the economy (especially small-press, literary publishers), within which they have barely enough resources to get their books to print, let alone invest in a serious marketing, sales and publicity strategy.

It’s also possibly true that such print aficionados feel drastically uncomfortable in the online world, and speaking into what seems like an echo chamber a lot of the time. If anything needs to change, I would suggest that booksellers, who will go down the eBookstore path or perish, are in a much better position to drive the development of a collaborative business model that focuses their own, and book publishers’ marketing, sales and publicity efforts. Booksellers and publishers need to share their resources, infrastructure and expertise, so that each is free to work on what they are proficient at, either bookmaking or bookselling.

It’s not as cut and dry as Dan Grover implies, but then, neither is parallel importation, and that didn’t stop him from pushing that wheelbarrow around in the dark.

The rest of the comments in Sam’s article, from all sorts of industry figures, are spectacularly reasonable, and well presented by Sam. A great spectrum of ideas, and all strung together with such clarity and concision. Check it out!

Meanwhile, do you know of examples of this type of bookseller/publisher collaboration? It would be great to keep this dialogue underway about how this changing relationship might morph into something weird, like an Imprints blimp parachuting books to customers in response to sign language made visible by wearing those massive foam-rubber hands.

1. NB: By googling ‘Book a Month Club’, which I thought was the name of McSweeney’s book-subscription service, I found this, The Book of the Month Club, and then I realised that this idea, which I thought was quite novel, is not novel at all, and then I remembered how much I used to bug Mum to join these, but she was savvy to their swindling ways, with which I now sympathise. And anyway, it’s still a better than Don Grover’s idea, which I’m getting to.
2. *googles ‘booksellers turn to publishing’, finds this, is not surprised*

Sam Cooney has an article about literary awards in the current issue of Voiceworks, and the critical take on such a holy grail inspired me to continue the conversation. I’ve touched on manuscript awards once before, and am regularly vocal, to people who ask, against wholesale acceptance of prizes as a wonderful and highly sought after accolade – it’s something I’m very much interested in.

Sam reckons that literary prizes pick books and raise them up as symbols of our ‘national consciousness’, which gives them inordinate cultural weight. He uses a lovely Lion King metaphor – think:

I agree, and would go on to say that a culture heavily influenced by such a top-down, arbitrary and selective approach cannot be representative of the broader public’s diverse reading tastes. This is why I’m so interested in literary prizes – they are at odds with my interest in promoting the self-determination of our literary culture.

Chris Flynn made the point once, when I got angry about Tim Winton winning the Miles Franklin again, that prizes don’t have to be relevant to everyone, because a culture of alternatives exists. This would be fine if the general reader had as proactive an approach to reading as Chris, who is so passionate about literature that he publishes his alternative source of literature that he likes.

Maybe we should just leave the award crowd patting each other on the back for sharing the same impeccable sense of taste and go make/find our own literature. The large publishers and other cultural institutions that run these prizes make it difficult to do this by using their considerable market share to drive trends around by putting stickers on adult books, like decals on a racecar. Sam quotes Ann McCulloch on this:

McCulloch herself deems panels and the public as ‘a malleable beast that will generally move towards “winners”, even if non-winners are writing some amazing books’

If people do gravitate toward award-winning literature when deciding what to read, then the determination of what qualifies as award-winning does lend inordinate cultural weight to certain books. If the public’s vision of culture (which, to some extent is derived from the literature they read) contributes to the way culture is actually realised in Australia, then if we change the literature they read (by awarding different literature with relevant accolades) we alter the nature of the culture that is realised and we all have to endure. As in, cultural agency needs to be distributed more equally among the reading public. Surely someone with a serious name has written about this.

When we charge judging panels with this responsibility of concentrated cultural agency, it becomes especially concerning to read that ‘ideological soundness’ has so much as been uttered in the same room as a judging panel – Sam quotes Michael Meehan, novelist and judging panelist:

at the outset we all agreed to put forward the books we liked best – to put forward his or her own personal preferences on quite a subjective basis. Otherwise … you can get into some pretty sterile formulas – which novel best embodies national themes and current issues, or worse, which novels are ethically and ideologically the most ’sound’.

If this culture permeates our cultural agencies, and if enough readers base their bookstore decisions on gold stickers, literary prizes become ideological mechanisms of the institutions that run them. A government institution, whose independence is constantly in question, should not wield this sort of control over the marketplace.

Their power undermines individuals’ power to determine the good books and places this power with a handful of individuals. Of course, if individuals were left alone in the market to ‘vote with their wallet’, a lot of worthwhile literature would remain unpublished. A model for subsidising and awarding quality literature needs to be designed and implemented by interested planners – government as well as private funders and lobbyists – with a view to generating greater diversity when determining who receives the funding, who receives the awards, and what constitutes both.

Unfortunately Sam pulls his punches in the conclusion of his column, but if prizes are dodgy, we need to continue to question their virtue, and amend the way they are delivered: have more readers’ choice awards, such as the Inky Awards; reconsider the dividends – get the right mixture of publication contract and prize money and maybe a prize that encourages audience engagement with the text, especially the more obscure awards and the manuscript awards; use the prize money to financing marketing, advertising and publicity campaigns.

If these books are being awarded such accolades as being in possession of ‘the Australian voice’, as many Australians as possible should know about who is speaking on their behalf, and what they’re saying. Meanwhile, the longer literature represents and appeals to an elite, privileged sector of the community, the longer people go wanting for good literature, and the more likely it is that people will move away from literature altogether – if it is neither entertaining nor insightful in a way that is meaningful to you, why would you bother?