Talking shop
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A tough sell
While mine is a unique pathway to publication, the length of time it’s taken, the number of rewrites I’ve completed, and the thinly (and sometimes not-so-thinly) veiled racism that I’ve experienced are not unique when it comes to the journeys of authors who are First Nations and People of Colour (FNPOC).
The drifting Miles Franklin Literary Award
The Miles Franklin Literary Award, circa 2025, is a chicken parmi and pint of lager at your local pub: dependable, familiar, decent value, filling. Each year, the Miles completes its…
The marketing is still crap
Today’s onslaught of available content (not just in books and writing) and the concurrent impossibility of wading through it all to select the new or the significant or the simple exploding pleasure of language (remember that?) is likely part of where the current malaise began, and not just for me. So much is on trend these days, with great swathes of the population all reading the same book simultaneously, and so much of this is generated by the star-making machinery of billion-dollar multinational publishing houses with gigantic marketing budgets.
Undervalued and overlooked
Western Sydney is home to half of Sydney’s population, and 10 per cent of the population nationwide. In other words, at least 10 per cent of the nation lives in a metropolitan area with almost no bookstores. But the real kicker is this: in Western Sydney, it’s almost impossible to buy books by authors who write from and about Western Sydney.
Behind the bestsellers
The argument that independent and small book grocers have a more impressive and widespread range has held for a long time, but in May, Big W was awarded the prestigious Book Retailer of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs)… Recognition on this level legitimises the sales of books for half their value.
Calling it out
But the best thing about an intriguing new call-out is that it’s near impossible to not write something new if you want to submit. You can’t jam your shitty old story no other journal wanted into a niche call-out about the pleasure of weekend garage sales. Whether that journal accepts your work or not, at least you’ve got a new piece to play around with at the end.