As an intern beginning my career in publishing, I’m worried about the recent announcement for the Book Council of Australia. I think the idea of a book council is great. We should have a unified group that represents every facet of this industry and that is dedicated to achieving great things for literature in our culture. An organisation that can function as an independent champion for publishers (and the various professions involved in the back end), booksellers, writers and readers.
Unfortunately, it would seem that’s not what the Book Council will be. It will be an advisory board to the Arts Ministry instead, aimed at fostering a culture of reading (because that doesn’t exist apparently). In other words, it will be rather toothless. It also won’t represent large swathes of the industry and it won’t make up for the huge cuts to funding for literary projects which have occurred over the past two years.
This concerns me because I love the little books. The books that may go unmade due to a lack of funding. Books that aren’t commercial enough, or won’t get taken on because no one has ever heard of their debut author. These are the people, and the books, that I worry about. It’s already exceedingly difficult for these books to emerge, and these changes to the way literature is funded, and the way literature is championed, in this country won’t make it any easier. If the Book Council were an independent body, it would have more scope to fight for funding for the literary arts and hence for the little books.
At a time where debut and midlist authors are doing it especially tough, this is not the path I want to see taken.
When I say little books, I’m not intending that in a way that is diminishing of those books. It’s simply a fact, in a broader context, that these books are little in terms of their footprint in a commercial, or marketable, sense. That doesn’t make them less important, simply less known.
And here is the problem. There are so many wonderful books out there that may never get the attention they deserve, and reducing the opportunities for those books to come into existence is not the solution. Perhaps if the Book Council of Australia’s mission was to build more diversity into our reading culture, than it might represent something more worthwhile. In its current form, though, it seems to simply be there to advise the Arts Minister on how we can continue without change. This is a shame.
A good story is a good story, and it should not be limited by the fiscal position of its writer, or editor, or cover designer, or publisher. In fact, the most interesting and unique stories are often those that come from nothing. But they should not be left to return to nothing.
I would like a Book Council of Australia with a vision that is more than this. Represents more than this, and achieves more than this.
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