Posts Tagged ‘ things that might be wrong with our literary culture ’

Thoughts From Inside Your Arts Bureaucracy

I just got home from a day helping to select successful applicants to the Write in your Face (WIYF) round of grants offered by Australia Council (OzCo) and administered by Express Media (EM). Those links will tell you more about this whole shebang, but I’ll copy/paste the juicy bit for all our Canadian readers: WIYF grants [ READ MORE ]

If:book Essay: You’re the Voice

If:book Australia is a think-and-do tank dedicated to promoting ‘new forms of digital literature’ and exploring ‘ways to boost connections between writers and audiences’, which is more exciting than I can fully express. They are associated with the Institute for the Future of the Book in New York, and if:book London, and are based at Queensland Writers’ [ READ MORE ]

Which Enemy Will You Sleep With?

After a decent stint in a large publishing house in London, I find myself washed up on the shores of Australia again, without a job or any real idea of what skills I might possibly have to move me in a direction that approximates something I think is worthwhile. So to avoid actually doing something [ READ MORE ]

Freetastic

I have about 9 mailboxes at work, one of which regularly receives email from this guy ben@sprint-mail.com. I think it’s spam, but it could be some r-tarded subscription whose use has long since worn out. Anyway, when I had nothing to do last week I had a flick through the shit he’s sent was really [ READ MORE ]

Optimism is Compulsory

This article on Dave Eggers’ optimism about youth literacy and print books (via @Mean_land) made me think of the title of his unfinished Salon.com serial, The Unforbidden is Compulsory, or, Optimism: for Eggers, it would seem, optimism about print books is compulsory, and should not be forbidden. Elsewhere (almost everywhere else), it seems the trend is [ READ MORE ]

How to Grow a Mullet in 2010

Someone recently asked me to write about my mullet for an independent Adelaide newspaper, and the below ‘column’ is the result. It was accompanied by the terrible Photo Booth job that I’ve pasted in: not sure what’s worse, the ‘haircut’ or the ‘photo’ of the ‘haircut’. Or the ‘column’. Actually I quite like the column [ READ MORE ]

Lunchtime Thoughts on Editor Royalties

I don’t know about this one: ‘The Future for Book Editors: Royalties?’ In this article, Ann Patty (former Harcourt publisher from NYC) argues that editors should receive a royalty on profits because they do so much work on books and then get squat in the way of remuneration or recognition. I’ve rewritten books only for a [ READ MORE ]

I Don’t Care How Much it Fucking Cost, That Tracksuit Makes you Look Like a Chav.

My whole world at the moment is about marketing. Against my will, it’s become increasingly important to my job and my life. Sales figures, profit margins, the whole lot. I know I might have been pretty critical of the way independent publishers don’t use marketing to their advantage, but the more I learn about it [ READ MORE ]

Anti-Saturation: Are Independents Their Own Worst Enemy?

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 ]

Hey There, Blimpy Boy!

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 ]

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