Showing newest posts with label value of book publishing. Show older posts
Showing newest posts with label value of book publishing. Show older posts

Friday, May 8, 2009

Legal Matters Seminars Sydney and Ballarat

Sydney, 22 May 2009
Ballarat, 29 May 2009

A typical day at the ASA brings questions about contracts. There are queries about terms, rights, digital contracts, and of course the legal jargon. A different publisher will present a different contact, and you need to clearly understand your obligations and entitlements. Be informed before you sign. Prepare yourself for the legal challenges involved with getting published at this customised workshop. In addition to contracts, other topics covered in this half-day workshop include:

• Who owns copyright? Intellectual property rights
• Copyright protection and moral rights, copyright territories
• Copyright permissions
• Reaching other markets: licensing your rights
• Winning negotiations with your publisher
• Services to the creator – PLR, ELR and CAL
• Avoiding defamation: being clear and careful.

The ASA’s popular Legal Matters workshop has been held in various capital cities and regional venues. Here are some participants’ comments on the benefits of a Legal Matters workshop:

‘You can read things till you're blue in the face, but sometimes they don't strike home till you're part of a discussion about them. The interactive nature of it and the differing concerns of other authors was a big plus for me.’

‘More confidence to read and negotiate terms of contracts.’

‘Lots of good solid information!’

‘Adds to understanding of a very complex area.’

‘Interaction with a variety of writers … made it additionally interesting as different points came up.’

Sydney
Date
: 22 May 2009, 2-5 pm
Venue: Australia Council, Rover Thomas Auditorium, 372 Elizabeth Street (cnr Cooper Street)
Cost: $55 ASA members, $187 non-members. Non-members pay the member's rate plus $132 – the cost of Affiliate membership. We encourage non-members to join and receive all the benefits of ASA membership.
Download your registration form here.

Ballarat
Date
: Friday 29 May 2009, 2.00 pm – 5.00 pm. Afternoon tea provided.
Venue: BEST Community Development Conference Centre, 28 Victoria Street, Ballarat, VIC.
(03) 5329 1500
Download your registration form here.

For further information phone 02 9318 0877 or email Kris Clarke.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Secret Book Business

How did over 5,000 books remain hidden from sight?
In 2003-04, the last period for which the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) collected information on the book industry in Australia, the figures showed that 8,602 titles were published in Australia. The ABS numbers came from 244 publishers, purportedly fully representative of Australian publishing, being both big multi-national and small one-person operations.
However, as Andrew Wilkins reported in the September 2008 Australian Bookseller & Publisher, the Australian Books in print database showed that 14,258 titles were published in Australia in 2007. This is 5,656 more books than the ABS numbers – a whopping 65% increase. At first blush, this suggests the Australian publishing industry has had phenomenal success since 2004. Were it only so. When Wilkins linked titles to the 244 publishers used by the ABS, he found these publishers produced 8924 titles in 2007. This represented a reasonable 3.7% increase on their 2003-04 output. Good, but not fantastic.
Where did the other 5,334 titles come from and why haven’t they been counted before? The answer lies in the fact that Wilkins looked at a bibliographic database, one compiled from the list of all books published in Australia in 2007 with an International Standard Book Number (ISBN), rather than rely on the reported output of 244 designated publishers.
All major publishers use ISBNs, as do the vast majority of small and self publishers. In 2007, Wilkins shows that 2782 publishers were responsible for producing just one book. While one book per publisher is an insignificant output, when combined these books represents 19.5% of the total number of books produced in Australia. This is an output up there with the really big publishers. The Top 20 publishers, just 0.1% of all publishers, produced 4512 titles in 2007 – 32% of the total output. What these means is that over 50% of the books published in Australia come from both the 20 largest publishers and the 2782 smallest publishers, with the rest of the titles coming from “medium” publishers (those publishing from 2 to 100 books a year).
Yet, prior to this study, the books produced by he smallest publishers were ignored as part of our publishing output. Their existence wasn’t acknowledged. They were flying “under the radar”, which is the title of a US Book Industry Study Group into this sector. However, no such study has yet been comprehensively carried out in Australia.
How significant a part of the overall sales of books are these “secret” titles? The answer is we don’t know. Many of the books Wilkins identifies may not sell within the traditional bookshop market. Take for example the works of ASA member Philip R. Rush (www.philiprush.com.au). I’ve met Phil in Tasmania and talked to him extensively about his writing and publishing. Phil produces his books and CDs of bush-flavoured poetry himself. He currently has 15 in print and he reprints regularly – in runs that would make many larger publishers salivate! He sells his books and CDs across Australia, using his own card-based customer management system to rustle up order before he first prints, so most of his first print run goes out to his customers straight away – and as a firm sale! He’s developed relationships with the outlets that sell his books over the years. These outlets are rarely traditional bookshops. They are more likely to be Australiana shops, stock and station agents and other retail outlets Phil has identified.
Phil’s poetry has found a wide audience, but it’s one the mainstream market misses. While Phil writes bush poetry, poetry of all descriptions is making quite a mark for itself outside the traditional publishing marketplace. Wilkins’ analysis showed that there were 302 books of poetry published in Australia in 2007. This represented 2% of the total output of titles. However, the ABS numbers, which have been a benchmark for Australian publishing up until now, put the proportion for published poetry at a much lower rate. This is because most poetry is being produced outside the 244 publishers regarded as the backbone of the industry. The print runs may be small and the sales may be slow but poetry is still a going concern for publishers like Five Islands, Puncher & Wattman, Ginninderra, John Leonard Press and other small outfits.
Some of these small publishers (including the ASA) have banded together to assist each other in marketing and distribution. The umbrella group Small Press Underground Networking Community (SPUNC) represents their combined interests. The group may be representative of some of the smallest publishers in Australia, but these publishers are producing books and other media that are on the cutting edge of Australian literary culture. Their work has gone on largely unrecognised by the traditional publishing industry. Yet in creative terms it is an essential part of our cultural development. The SPUNC publishers also include literary journal publishers such as Overland, Meanjin, Griffith Review, and Going Down Swinging as well as publishers focused on young writers such as Wet Ink and Express Media.
All of these activities show that there is a vibrant publishing culture in Australia that has so far remained secret in terms of official analysis. It has escaped the attention of the ABS and the 244 publishers who are commonly regarded as “the trade”. In the USA, the BISG estimated that the value of the “secret book business” there was in the millions of dollars. We can’t come to any similar conclusions about Australia as the data are so sparse, but what is clear is that the areas that are commonly disparaged as valueless by the book trade are in fact both viable and sustainable, albeit marginal in terms of profitability. Not only is publishing flourishing, but short stories are appearing more frequently in book form, 76 collections being published in 2007.
These publications are also finding readers. They may be small in number at present, but they are sufficient to provide impetus for this publishing to continue. SPUNC provided assistance for its Melbourne members (and most of them are at present) to showcase their authors and publications at well-attended fringe events at the Melbourne Writers Festival. These events involved both readings as well as performances of work.
The sessions I attended were exciting, and indicative to me that they were reaching people who were not attending sessions featuring the latest Tuscan summer memoir or wacky American childhood tale. They featured poets and prose writers focused on the local, keen observers of a world they loved and loathed in equal measure, but accepted without hesitation as their own. Laboratory work, sure, and I was reminded of Frankenstein not only by the processes of creation I could see at work but also by the clothes the audiences were wearing.
So how could something this colourful, this enthusiastic, this damn good remain secret? Oops, I’ve let the secret out – Australian literature is alive and kicking all over the place. But there’s a whole heap of it the official radar has missed. It’s happening at small, intimate readings and poetry slams near you, no matter where you are. Catch it before commercial publishing bashes the life out of it. And buy one of the books on sale. Because they won’t be in the bookshops, even though there’s over 5,000 of them.
Copyright © 2008 Australian Society of Authors/Jeremy Fisher. First appeared in Australian Author, December 2008.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Parallel importation: Cheap books, but at what price?

My book Perfect Timing is about to be published in a Vietnamese translation. It will sell for 20,000 Dong, about A$1.45. I’ll receive 5% of that price on each copy, a princely seven cents, so I’m not about to retire.
But what this makes clear is that books are much cheaper in Vietnam than Australia. I could buy 15 copies of my Vietnamese edition for the price of an average Australian paperback. So, why is the book cheaper? The paper and print quality will be lower than the Australian edition for one. Another is there’ll be several more thousand copies printed in Vietnam than were ever printed in Australia, but the book will still be a tiny blip in a market of over 80 million readers. And those readers are much poorer than readers in Australia. To them, spending 20,000 Dong on a book is a luxury purchase.
So the price of books is relative from one country to another. The return to me from sales in Vietnam will be small financially, but large in the sense that I will have many more readers. I’m assisting with a tiny bit of cultural exchange as well. These are immeasureable benefits with no financial value.
But they’d still be there if I was lucky enough to sell US rights to my book, although the financial implications would be very different. I’d actually make some money – again, not enough to retire on, but enough perhaps for a new computer or new car.
As an author, I can trade my rights in different markets for different reasons. Trading of rights is the commercial basis for life as an author. We can sell Australian publishing rights, rights for translation into Vietnamese or rights to an American edition. This is intrinsic to our continued livelihood. Quite a few authors have different publishers in different markets. Australia, in line with most major book markets in the world, including the United States and United Kingdom, is currently a “closed “ market. Books can only be published here by the entity who holds the rights to the Australian territory. These rights are saleable parts of the bundle of rights that make up an author’s copyright. For example, popular author Jodi Picoult is published by Allen & Unwin in Australia, but by Hachette in the UK and Atria in the USA.
However, there are moves afoot to take some of these rights away from us. The moves are being led by booksellers, particularly, Don Grover of Dymocks (Sydney Morning Herald, September 4, 2008). Booksellers are usually an author's best friends, but not Don at the moment.
Why? Don wants an open market. He wants to take away the right of Australian authors to transact their rights in different markets. His argument is driven by the profit motive of course. Don claims the wholesale price of books is cheaper in the United States through competition. And there is undoubtedly more competition in the US in the book industry than there is in Australia. The US book market is more than 10 times the size of Australia. Don also says books are expensive in Australia because the Australian publishing industry is artificially protected from competition. This is his subtle reference to our Copyright Act and the protection it gives to rightsholders – like authors.
But the US is by no means an open market. Nor should it be. Both the United States and Australia are separate copyright territories, and books are licensed into each territory by their rightsholders. Few Australian books receive much attention in the US. The Australian market is far more competitive than the US market because Australian books have to compete with those from the US and the UK. Under our law as it currently stands, all books published outside Australia must be made available in Australia within 30 days of their publication, or the rightsholder loses their exclusive licence to publish the book in Australia.
Grover’s suggestion is for those rightsholders to lose their right. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) announced at the end of July that it had asked the Productivity Commission to review Australia’s copyright laws so far as they related to the parallel importation of books. Grover is pushing hard to destroy Australia as a distinct publishing territory. In his argument, he ignores the fact that the US and UK are closed markets. He also ignores the fact that book prices in open market territories such as New Zealand and Singapore are equal to or greater than those in so-called closed markets.
His fallacious argument is designed merely to increase Dymock’s profit margins, not to make books cheaper. Dymocks could make book prices cheaper in their stores overnight, if that was their real interest. How? Dymocks receives a minimum 40% discount on the Recommended Retail Price (RRP) on books it buys from publishers so they have nearly half the price of the book to play with in -- and often more when they negotiate bigger discounts. We don’t know how much of the 40% of the price of a book is Dymocks profit, but the company appears to be doing well. And it’s not as if Dymocks is a risky business, like drilling for oil. Their purchases from publishers are on a sale or return basis. What they haven’t moved off the floor after six weeks gets sent back to the publisher for credit.
In contrast, life is bit tougher for the publisher, and much more so for the poor author. When a book is sold by Dymocks, the publisher gets about 12% (at least ABS statistics from 2004, the most recently available, show that) and the author generally receives 10%.
What’s clear from this is Dymocks is in the best position to immediately reduce the price of books by passing on part of its discount to consumers. No need to change our copyright laws. No need to destroy the livelihood of Australian authors and their ability to transact their rights both here and internationally for whatever those markets will pay.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Australian literature's contribution to creative industries economy much more than performing arts or opera

In August, figures from Nielsen Bookscan (as reported by Melissa Kent in the Sun Herald) revealed that trade sales for books in Australia was worth $1, 250 million for the previous year. This represented sales of 63 million books, and an increase of 7.5 per cent on the previous year.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported trade sales of $819.6 million for 2003-04, the last period for which it collected information, with total book sales (including educational books) of $1,353.2 million. Since educational books are mostly excluded from the Nielsen Bookscan figures because the system doesn't pick up sales from educational suppliers, the two data sources appear to corroborate that there has been an increase in sales of books in the trade sector. It is impossible to see what is happening in the educational sector, though.
Nielsen Bookscan data doesn't break out data for Australian books, but the ABS data shows that Australian fiction, non-fiction and children's books (excluding educational titles) had average sales of $438.5 million each year over the four year period 2000-04. This is a major contribution to the Australian creative industries economy and of course a significant proportion of the sales of books in Australia.
Five of the top 10 Bookscan bestsellers in the 2007-08 period were Australian. One, 4 Ingredients, sold over 600,000 copies (this is a self-published title). Another was Underbelly (John Silvester and Andrew Rule, Floradale Press) which had an appeal to the difficult 18-30 year old male demographic.
Unhappily, only one Australian film, Happy Feet, was in the to 50 films for the same period.
My point? Well, funding for Australian literature is pretty paltry. In 2003-05, the Australian Government allocated only $27.6 million to Literature and print media. This included funding for lending rights of around $17 million and amounts offered in grants by the Australia Council. This amount is dwarfed by the enormous sums that flow to major performing arts and opera, arts forms that often fail at a cost recovery basis and offer none of the economic returns that can be seen with literature.
Australian literature is making an enormous contribution to our creative industries economy and this is largely unrecognised. This should not be so.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Parallel importation of books and the income of authors

In a surprise move for Australia's literary creators, the Communique from the Council of Australian Governments’ (COAG) Meeting of 3 July 2008 includes a reference to a COAG agreement on a number of priority areas for competition reform, including parallel importation of books. According to the Communique, the Commonwealth will request the Productivity Commission to undertake reviews of Australia’s anti-dumping system and parallel import restrictions on books.

What, you may well ask, is parallel importation and why is it important for Australian authors? “Parallel importation” refers to importation of products containing copyright material that are manufactured legitimately in the country of origin. In the case of books, parallel importation requires permission from the Australian copyright owner, unless the book was not published in Australia within 30 days of its publication overseas, or the Australian copyright owner cannot supply the book within 90 days.

To ensure Australian bookbuyers had access to the most recent of overseas-published books, the Australian rights up to then to which were often held by a British or US publisher who delayed or withheld distribution of the book in Australia, the Copyright Act was amended in 1991 to allow parallel importation in the circumstances outlined above, following a report of the Prices Surveillance Authority. The Act was subsequently amended to allow parallel importation in more extensive circumstances for CDs, computer software and computer games. There is substantial evidence that this has led to a massive decline in the sales of Australian recorded music, though this is difficult to measure when recording companies first responded to the advent of digital technology with a "head in the sand" approach and lost many sales to unauthorised downloads.

The Australian book publishing industry these days is worth over $1.5 billion. It is Australia's most successful creative industry. Australian books make up nearly 70% of those sold in Australia. The industry has also been very successful in exporting the works of our literary creators, so much so that Shaun Tan and Garth Nix and Nick Earls and Margaret Wild and Tom Keneally and Geraldine Brooks and James Bradley etc. etc. are best-sellers overseas. But they are best sellers in editions licensed to those overseas marketplaces. These licensed editions bring our literary creators welcome additional income. However, if parallel importation restrictions are removed, our literary creators will lose the home market to other editions for which they will receive minimal or no royalties.

The proponents of an open market argue that books would become cheaper for consumers and that 90 days is still too long to wait for a book from the Australian copyright owner. Both of these points are arguable. What the proponents do not point out, though, is that both of the biggest English language book markets, the Uk and the USA, are essentially closed markets in that the sales of books licensed to other territories is prohibited in much the same way as it is in Australia. But both these markets are also many, many times larger than the Australian market. Overwhelming, the books sold in both of those markets are produced especially for each market. It would be rare for a UK edition to sell in the USA and vice versa. But we are being asked to accept an open market for Australia when our market is so much smaller and already much more competitive. This would disappear if all editions were allowed into Australia. It would destroy our publishing industry, which has taken over a hundred years to evolve to the point where the major part of the content sold is Australian and the industry is profitable.

What is more, we would lose our literary culture. And the only people to benefit would be those who are supporting the Productivity Commission review -- and that seems to be primarily the chain bookseller Dymocks. You could be forgiven for thinking that Dymocks are prepared to sacrifice Australia's fragile liteary culture to increase their own profit levels by selling cheap imported editions of overseas books and what would be tantamount to pirated editions of Australian books. But surely that could not be the case when the Hon Bob Carr, former NSW Premier and in that position noted proponent of Australian literature, is on the Dymocks board?

Garth Nix has written a very comprehensive letter about the matter in Australian Bookseller and Publisher. Nick Earls has written to the Prime Minister on the issue. Both of these letters are worth reading, and you can here. They are very balanced approaches to a complex issue, though a simple one for Australia's liteary creators -- their very survival.

This isn't a matter that's simply about the cheapest price. It's about the maintenance of a distinctively Australian culture, about reading our own stories, hearing our own voices. Can you put a price on that?

Authors need to show their opposition to any proposed changes to the current restrictions on parallel importation of books. Take up your pens and write directly to the Prime Minister and the Federal Attorney-General, as well as your State Premier and State Attorney-General. Writing to all of these is necessary as the matter has been raised at COAG and thus becomes a cross-jurisdictional issue.

There will be more on this issue.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Will income ever come to authors from digital sales?

In November, 2007, the US Book Industry Study Group (BISG) met and discussed income from the digital supply chain. Digital issues remain at the core of what BISG is currently focusing on as a new type of supply chain, “a digital supply chain”, is emerging. However, if the sale of digital information is to be successful new standards need to be set and ways to identify digital products need to be developed. The common supply chain model for the digital environment involves the ability to sell pieces of books digitally. This results in an explosion of content fragments that need to be identified so that their sales can be tracked..
Managing fragment sales will be far more complicated than monitoring sales of print books, which have at most two or three editions (hardcover, trade paperback and mass market paperback). The challenge is managing hundreds of thousands of pieces of content. What is needed is a system that can manage not only print editions of a work, but an expanding range of digital products that includes audio, e-book, customized texts and various fragment sales such as the sale of book chapters. One proposed solution is the International Standard Text Code (ISTC), which is expected to be introduced next year and will bring together all the different formats of a piece of content under one identification number.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Authors in Priority Schools Program report

The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Authors in Priority Schools pilot project involved the Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), the Australian Society of Authors (ASA), the Priority Schools Programs of the NSW Department of Education and Training (PSP) and the English Unit, Curriculum Directorate of the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET). A report on the project is available on the ASA website (http://www.asauthors.org/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=ASP0016/ccms.r?PageId=10067).

The report demonstrates that:
• The Authors in Priority Schools project was highly regarded by students, teachers, parents and the authors
• Students’ positive attitudes to reading improved
• Students’ positive attitudes to writing improved
• Teachers gained useful knowledge from the project
• Teachers found the workshops useful in developing materials and strategies for engaging students
• Teachers valued the insights gained from observing an author workshop narrative
• All teachers agreed that the students’ attitudes and engagement had improved.
• Anecdotal comments indicated that participants agreed that the outcomes for the project were achieved. Comments to support these findings included: “Overall, the project has been a great success with tangible improvement in interest, engagement and writing skills of students … Students were extremely proud of their achievements ...(The) staff felt that they were given good ideas”.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Distribution: the key to effective publishing

Distribution is perhaps the key to publishing. Without effective distribution, books do not get into bookshops or online databases. Most publishers rely on this ability in terms of contracting with authors. While independent booksellers are still a major part of the book market in Australia, booksellers recognise that large megamarket chains such as Myer, Target, Kmart and Big W have been able to negotiate big discounts with publishers on titles used as loss leaders. Some of the major bookselling chains demand similar discounts and operate their own marketing campaigns that require a publisher to subsidise the shelf and signage placement for books.
These discounting practices and extra marketing costs have an impact on sales. The success of Dan Brown’s books and the Harry Potter series has been bolstered by the fact that they are available in many locations at discounted prices. Australian author Bryce Courtenay has encouraged his publisher Pearson (Penguin) to offer his books in a wide variety of locations and sales of his books are very impressive.
Online booksellers are beginning to have an impact though. In the case of Amazon, this is a threat to the Australian industry as the sales take place overseas. Amazon also does not pay GST on sales of books online. Since they are also based off-shore, they are unlikely to offer Australian editions for sale, which is not good for Australian authors. Fortunately, the online operations of Dymocks and other Australian suppliers are begiining to match those of Amazon. Independent bookstores like Gleebooks in Sydney also offer very good online facilities.
For authors whose royalties are calculated on the Recommended Retail Price, this discounting should serve to increase their potential earning. However, many publishers are introducing clauses that change royalty rates where discounts in excess of a certain amount (50% is generally the base at present), and this may well have an impact on an author’s potential and real earnings.

Self–publishing
For self-publishers, it is advantageous to have a distribution agreement in place before incurring any publishing costs. This allows self-publishers to cost their books around the most crucial part of the publishing process. Self-publishers should seek distribution options. These may be difficult to come by.
Most distributors (these may be traditional publishers or firms that specialise in placing products in retail outlets) seek to acquire stock for distribution at 30-35% of the RRP. As an example, on a book with a RRP of $24.95 and purchase priced at 30% a distributor would pay a self-publisher $7.49. For the self-publisher to make the equivalent of a 10% royalty, the total cost price of the book to the self-publisher needs to be $4.99 or less ($7.49 minus royalty of $2.50). Total cost price includes editing, typesetting, printing and binding costs.
Distributors will offer the self-publisher's book to bookshops at somewhere between 45-60% of the retail price. Bookshops are unwilling to stock books by unknown authors and will seek the most favourable terms. These terms mean the distributor will make between $3.74 and $7.48 on the self-publisher's book, but in doing so the distributor will incur costs for storage, freight and returns. A distributor may also ask a self-published author to contribute to the costs of marketing. That may mean providing material for sales representatives, cover blurbs, printing of sales material etc. These costs should be outlined in any distribution agreement so that self-publishers are aware of what they are liable for.
Booksellers will sell the book at $24.95 (or perhaps at a discount) and gross somewhere between 40-55% of the retail price. Again, although booksellers are buying on sale or return terms, they will incur costs for rent, labour, stock control etc.
Self-publishing authors should investigate distribution options before they commit to any production process. So-called publishing enterprises that provide editing and book production services without the surety of books being promoted and distributed to bookshops are not offering a bona fide publishing service. These enterprises leave the crucial task of promotion and sale of the book to the self-publisher.
Self-publishing writers seeking to use the services of such enterprises should question them keenly on their success rate in distribution and request evidence that the enterprise has successfully served other self-publishers in delivering sales.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Remuneration in Australian Publishing

It comes as no surprise that publishers are the main beneficiaries from the publishing industry in terms of receiving the greatest financial benefits. However, up until 2002-03, the returns from publishing were not significantly different from returns from cash investment. Between 2001-02 and 2002-03, the operating profit before tax for book publishing businesses increased from $50.2 million to $88.4 million. The profit margin increased from 3.3% in 2001-02 to 5.6% in 2002-03.
In 2003-04, however, this situation changed dramatically. Overall operating profit for that period was $152.1 million or 9.7%. The profit margin for the 20 largest book publishers was 4.4% in 2002-03 but rose to 9.7% in 2003-04. Other book publishers had a profit margin of 10.2% in 2002-03 and 12.7% in 2003-04, which is a very healthy return by any standard.

Salary scales for publishers
At the end of June 2004, there were 5,300 people employed in book publishing. In 2003-04, 3,547 (67%) of these 5,300 employees were employed by the 20 largest publishers. In 2003-04, wages and salaries paid by publishers came to $266.1 million, which represented 19% of publishers total expenses compared to the 6.5% paid as royalties or fees (down from 10.9% the previous years). In 2003-04, royalty payments and fees paid by publishers fell 11% or $11.7 million from $102.6 million to $90.9 million.
In 2002-03, the average salary of full-time publishing employees was $46,554. In 2003-04, this had risen $52,300, an increase of 9% over the previous year. However, only 3972 of these employees were full-time. Therefore, many people working in the publishing industry earn much more. Senior sales and publishing managers may well receive $150,000 to $200,000, or even more with bonus payments and fringe benefits. Sales representatives will have salaries from $50,000. Administrative staff members have salaries starting from $40,000.

Salary scales for editors
Publishers use the term “editor’ with some looseness. “Acquisitions” or “Commissioning” editors may be publishers, and receive payment as such. The term editor here refers to those people who work on a manuscript and shepherd it through the production process. and are covered under the Book Industry Award. Under this award, trainee editors commence on a salary (at the time this was prepared) of $30,600 and the highest grade receives nearly $51,000 plus 9% superannuation. In practice, many publishers pay above these rates and offer fringe benefits.
The freelance rate for book editors currently appears to vary between $45 and $75 per hour. How many freelancers can be assured of this rate however depends on their desperation and the publisher’s powers of persuasion.

Payment scales for indexers
The Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers (ANZSI) recommends a base rate of $55.00 (excluding GST) an hour for its members. The same comment as above applies regarding how many indexers can be assured of this rate.

Remuneration to authors
Authors survive on royalties, payments for subsidiary rights, lending rights payments and payments for statutory reprographic rights (administered by Copyright Agency Limited [CAL]). Even so, the Throsby and Hollister report Don’t give up your day job indicates that in the period 2000-01 writers had a mean arts income of $26,400 and a median arts income of $11,700.
In 2001-02, the proportion of sales of Australian titles of $853.8 million paid as royalties and fees to creators was 10.9%, or $93.06 million. In 2002-03, the proportion of sales of Australian titles of $877 million paid as royalties and fees to creators was 11.7%, or $102.6 million. This amount dropped in 2003-04 to $90.9 million, only 6.5%.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Authors income throughout the world

What is an author worth? What he or she is paid, ultimately. And unfortunately that is often out of all proportion to the work an author must do to create a work.
In Australia, the best data on what an author is worth come from the work of David Throsby and Virginia Hollister for the Australia Council. The 2003 edition of their book Don’t give up your day job states that in 2000-01 the median earned creative income of writers was $4,800, the total arts income was $11,700 and the total income was $35,000. Throsby and Hollister acknowledge that income for writers can come from various sources. The Australian Society of Aithors (ASA) has long championed a range of income possibilities for writers. Payments from royalties from the sale of the published book are the main income stream from a publishing contract, but the exploitation of subsidiary rights such as serialisation, film and other adaptation rights can be quite valuable both on publication and afterwards. As the age of book increases, its potential to earn royalties usually decreases, which is why the ASA has been the driving force for the creation of payments for lending rights and from copying, both of which extend earnings to the author from the exploitation of their work.
Throsby and Hollister took all these income streams into account when assessing authors’ incomes, as well as other types of income coming from public appearances, reading and activities related to authorial activity. This means that the Australian figures on authors’ incomes are relatively comprehensive. For example, Throsby and Hollister found that 42% of writers earned less than $10,000 from their creative and arts-related work, while 18% earned $50,000 or more. When income from all work was considered, this figure dropped to 13% of writers earning less then $10,000 and rose to 35% of writers earning $50,000 or more.
The same isn’t always true of data from the rest of the world so when we compare authors’ income internationally we have to be conscious that what is being measured isn’t always the same thing. Nevertheless, international comparisons are a useful means of assessing the success of Australian authors as income-earning writers.
Let’s consider our South Pacific neighbours first. Using the services of Research International, the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) recently surveyed 355 mid-career and established writers regarding income (New Zealand Author, Oct/Nov 2007) and discovered that “ just 17 per cent of New Zealand writers survive solely on their writing income”.
The New Zealand figures also showed that the mean total of a writer’s income from all sources (but excluding full-time work) was NZ$15,383 (A$12,768). The minimum wage in New Zealand is NZ$23,400 (A$19,422).
The NZSA found that
• 77 per cent of mid-career authors earn less than NZ$10,000 from writing;
• only 9 per cent of established authors earn over NZ$50,000
• only 30 per cent of mid-career and established authors have received a grant in the last four years; and
• 34 per cent of authors say they couldn’t afford to write without the help of family of friend.
As to other income streams, New Zealand authors have not yet achieved some of the successful additional income sources available to Australian authors through the ongoing work of the ASA. As an example, set up in 1973, the New Zealand Authors' Fund acts a bit like Public Lending Right as it compensates New Zealand authors for the loss of income through holdings of their books in New Zealand libraries. Authors may register with the Fund if they are eligible to receive royalties for their books and if more than 50 copies are held in New Zealand libraries. The Fund was meant to allow authors to pursue their writing full-time. The survey showed only 9 per cent of writing related income came from the fund. An overwhelming majority – 78 per cent – of the authors surveyed stated that if the Fund offered more they would be better able to make writing their career, even though over 1400 authors benefit from the Fund.
Tings are a bit more positive in Europe. There, the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), based in the UK, commissioned a comparative study of authors’ earnings from Bournemouth University. They sent out 25,000 questionnaires to ALCS members and two professional bodies in Germany (Verband Deutscher Schriftsletter [Association of German Writers], and Verband der Drehbuchautoren [Association of Scriptwriters]). The survey defined three categories: professional authors, who allocate more than 50% of their time to writing; main-income authors, who earn more than 50% of their income from writing; and audio-visual authors, who work mainly in television, film, radio and the internet. Another category of academics/teachers covered other writers in the educational sector. In the United Kingdom because ALCS is a collecting society which administers some educational licences, the academic/teacher category was larger as a proportion of authors. The German sample, drawn from members of professional writers organisations, saw a much smaller proportion of academics/teachers.

Table 1: Mean and median income for author groups (pounds sterling: one pound equals $A2.26)
Main-income authors Professional Audiovisual Academics/teachers Total
Australia* NA NA NA NA 100%
Mean NA NA NA NA $46,100
Median NA NA NA NA $35,000
UK†* 33% 46% 8% 32% 100%
Mean $A93,080 $A64,048 $A86,131 $A12,434 $A37,360
Median $A51,980 $A28,117 $A33,900 $A3625 $9,040
Germany† 63% 90% 19% 4% 100%
Mean $A42,951 $A31,364 $68,686 $A4,857 $A30,200
Median $A31,188 $A18,713 $A46,782 $A4,678 $A18,713
New Zealand NA NA NA NA 100%
Mean $A12,768
Median NA
*Data from Throsby/Hollister, 2003. Period is 2000-1. Figures are total income.
†Authors could be in more than one category.

For the United Kingdom, writing was shown to be a very risky profession with median earning less than one-quarter of the typical wage of a UK employee. And there is is significant inequality within the profession. The top 10% of UK authors earn more than 50% of the total income. Moreover, when the ALCS 2004-05 figures were benchmarked against the figures collected by the UK Society of Authors in 2000 they appeared to indicate that the earning of a typical UK author were deteriorating in real terms. The median (‘typical’) earning in 2000 were A$14,313. In 2004-05, the same earnings were A$9040.
As we don’t have similar Australian figures, we can only posit that the situation is similar in Australia. From anecdotal reports, it does seem to be so.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Book Reviewing and other matters

At the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards (in Sydney on 24 July), 15 of the 18 awards presented had been voted for by an academy of booksellers and publishers. The Bookshop of the Year (won by Riverbend in Brisbane as an independent and by Dymocks Garden City in Booragoon, Western Australia as a chain representative) and the Publisher of the Year category (won by Allen & Unwin overall and by Black Inc. in the Small Publisher category) were suitably self-congratulatory.
Then there were the awards for the books. The Book of the Year award went to Les Carlyon’s The Great War (Macmillan). The Great War was also the co-winner of the inaugural Prime Minister’s History Prize of $100,000. It was chosen from a remarkable short list that included the following books – Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (Hachette/Lothian), which has also won the NSW and WA Premier’s awards for Book of the Year, Chris Masters’ Jonestown (Allen & Unwin), Barry Jones’ A Thinking Reed (Allen & Unwin) and Alice Pung’s Unpolished Gem (Black Inc.). The list is remarkable because it does not contain a work of fiction. There are two memoirs (Jones and Pung), one biography (Masters), one wordless illustrated book (The Arrival) and one work of history (Carlyon). While The Arrival appeals both to children and adults, the other books are all clearly aimed at the adult market. That aside, all of these books are exceptional and excellent representatives of the best of Australian publishing.
Before the Book of the Year was announced, The Arrival, which is now in many editions internationally, had already won the 2007 Book of the Year for Older Children (7 to 14), The Great War the category of General Non-fiction Book of the Year, Jonestown Biography of the Year and Alice Pung was announced as Newcomer of the Year. They were up against major competition in those categories, too. For example, The Arrival competed with a really tough (and eclectic!) bunch that comprised Melina Marchetta’s On the Jellicoe Road, Maureen McCarthy’s Rose by Any Other Name, Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Ten Things I Hate About Me, and Tim Flannery’s We are the Weather Makers. Jonestown was up against the Barry Jones book, General Peter Cosgrove’s My Story, Helen O’Neill’s biography of Florence Broadhurst and Unpolished Gem.
This list of books, as unrepresentative as it is, clearly demonstrates the diversity and strength of Australian publishing. The children’s books that were shortlisted were equally as strong on their quality and diversity, as were the literary and general fiction titles. And this is excellent news for the health of the industry and for opportunities for authors.
But there is an aspect of the industry of which we need to keep ourselves aware. It has to do with marketing and publicity and book reviews.
Recently, I perused the results of a Dow Jones/Factiva Benchmark analysis by Chris Pash of coverage of books in Australian newspapers from January to June 2007. Factiva Benchmarks measure the amount of media coverage and often how company and product coverage changes over time. Factiva’s tools for this are based on a proprietary text mining technology enabling them to process huge volumes of media data to produce trends and analyses. Of course newspapers are not responsible for all book reviews, so this analysis is not a comprehensive study of book reviewing in general. However, even in this digital age newspapers still remain one of the most accessible forms of information about books and it is interesting for authors to understand exactly what newspapers are communicating to their readers about books and their creators.
The analysis I refer to was presented to the Pacific Area Newspaper Publisher’s Association (PANPA) 2007 Conference in early August. What the research showed was that The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian generated the most coverage of books (The Canberra Times should also be honourably mentioned).
Unfortunately, papers in cities other then Sydney or Melbourne rarely review books. Nevertheless, Melburnians are best off in terms of access to book reviews, with The Age way out in front. Melburnians reading both The Age and The Australian are going to be exposed to the most book reviews, and even more if they read the Herald-Sun. While The Sydney Morning Herald does well, Sydneysiders reading both it and The Australian don’t fare as well for book reviews, and the situation doesn’t improve if they read the Daily Telegraph as well. The Canberra Times performs better on book reviews than the Brisbane Courier-Mail. The Adelaide Advertiser and the Townsville Bulletin are on par in their coverage of book reviews. Tasmanians have to wait for the Sunday paper for their reviews. The Australian Financial Review reviews more books than the Daily Telegraph. But even the Illawarra Mercury and the Northern Territorian rate higher for book reviews that the West Australian.
Not surprisingly, books from the larger publishers -- HarperCollins, Allen & Unwin, Penguin, Random House and Pan Macmillan, dominate reviews. Not all publishers were reviewed evenly. For example, Pan Macmillan receives more attention from the Daily Telegraph than do other publishers. HarperCollins (a division of News Limited) receives top coverage in the Fairfax-owned Sydney Morning Herald and the Age and the News Limited paper the Herald-Sun. However, Melbourne-based small publisher Scribe gained some needed attention from The Age and (less so) the Sydney Morning Herald.
In the category of competitive volume, an analysis of the most significant mentions of books in newspapers, HarperCollins leads the pack, closely followed by Allen & Unwin, then Penguin, then Random House. Pan Macmillan and Hachette Livre drop back in the pack. This is interesting because it is not representative of market position vis a vis sales. Penguin is our largest publisher.
It was the specialisation and language of the book reviewers that most interested me. Pash’s research showed that reviewers have a preference for mysteries and bestselling books. It is a mystery why mysteries receive this attention, but bestsellers surely do not need added attention from reviewers. Authors might hope – vainly it seems – that reviewers would seek to bring unfamiliar books to readers’ attention. Some mysteries may fall into this category, but reviewing the latest Harry Potter rather than, say, Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria does seem a pointless use of a reviewer’s talents. Not many buyers of Harry Potter are likely to be swayed by a positive (or negative) review; potential readers of relatively unknown new Australian works (even Miles Franklin Awards winners) may well be provoked to read or buy a copy by a positive review.
Already, you can tell this research does not bode well for emerging writers of literary fiction or poetry, or for those writers who are not on the Top Ten list! But then the reviewers weren’t that creative when it came to describing the books they reviewed. Reviewers commonly used the words “extraordinary”, “compelling”, “page-turner”, and “stunning”. The mouthful “unputdownable’ appeared nine times in the period under analysis. An author was also often described as a “master” or their works as “masterful”.
Is this the language of dispassionate review or marketing? This is a hard one. Newspaper book reviewers are certainly choosing the easiest course by reviewing a small selection of the top-selling titles, and the language of their reviews also reflects a quick approach to a task that is rarely well remunerated and often regarded as "filler" by editors. But in doing this newspapers are not doing justice to Australian authors and their books – or the potential readers of those books.
A vicious circle indeed.

Parts of this article first appeared in the August 2007 issue of Australian Author. Copyright © 2008 Jeremy Fisher/Australian Society of Authors.

Professional authorship: The key to living from writing

I am often asked to deliver a guest lecture or a seminar to university and TAFE creative writing classes, or a workshop at a writers’ festival. I am always happy to oblige. What I usually talk about is often considered boring – copyright, contracts and conditions. However, my audience doesn’t seem to think what I have to say is boring, since it relates closely to their ability to make a living from their writing.
They ask me detailed questions about the clauses of contracts, rights, subsidiary rights, what they need to do to obtain permission to use third-party works, how they can avoid defamation, the term of copyright in Australia, whether work published on a website is copyright, what is a standard royalty and a myriad other things with which they have never before had any connection in their course, but which they want to know. I hope I do my part.
The reason I am asked to speak, of course, is because I probably know more about these issues than most teachers of creative writing. I’m not a lawyer, but I can assist with the legal practicalities that are very much part of the professional practice of writing.
But it seems a shame to me that this sort of basic professional knowledge does not form a part of creative writing studies. Journalism courses, in contrast, have mandatory legal strands. They may also cover basic accounting practices for journalists who are freelance. Surely, since most creative writers are entering into what is essentially a freelance career, similar knowledge needs to be given to creative writing students to best equip them for the small business world of the professional writer?
I say this as a constructive suggestion for the evolution of creative writing as an academic discipline. As a graduate of writing classes myself, and some very good ones too, but with a background in publishing and an understanding of copyright, I feel strongly that writing students are missing out on a vital part of the skill set they needed to prosper as writers when they are not offered some legal and financial knowledge to help guide them as writers. The ASA is always happy to assist in the regard.
Another area that does not seem to receive much attention in creative writing at present is a sense of the market for writing. It is unfortunately true that the market for Australian “literary’ (I abhor that word) fiction is particularly dire at present. That doesn’t mean Australian fiction isn’t selling. As I write this, there are four Australian works of fiction in the top ten bestsellers: Matthew Reilly’s The Six Secret Stones is at number one, while ASA members Di Morrissey (Monsoon), Monica Mcinerney (Those Faraday Girls), and Judy Nunn (Floodtide) are at fourth, sixth and seventh place respectively and it is terrific to see them enjoying such success.
But students in creative writing classes ought to be aware that their chances of having non-mass market novels published right now is slim. Does this mean that they should not write them? No, but they would be better prepared for life as a professional writer if they had some knowledge of the dynamics of the publishing industry and the market for books in Australia. I try and provide some perspective on this for those who come to listen to me. I show the dismal statistics and break down sales into genres and categories. My information may not be what my audience was expecting to hear, but at least it provides them a degree of reality regarding their chances of succeeding as a professional writer in their chosen area.
One of the other things I suggest to beginning writers is that they should have more than one arrow for their writing bow. The skills of the craft of writing can be used in more ways than one. One of the suggestions I have put forward to the Literature Board of the Australia Council is for a program of residencies for writers within industry. I’d like to see creative writers learning the skills and craft of writing annual reports, press releases, and internal communications. At the same time, they could be sharing their creative writing skills with other employees. If they were employed on a half-time basis, say, they’d have some income to underwrite their own creative writing as well as the ability to learn other writing skills that can assist them through other lean times. I tend to think we have become too specialist as creative writers, particularly with regard to fiction. My November 2005 plenary address to the Australian Association of Writing Programs expands on these issues and can be read here.
This is not so true of creative non-fiction (which also has the largest market share of the book market at present), but often the writers who succeed at this have a journalistic background. Granted, Anna Funder’s Stasiland had its origins in creative writing classes and an ASA mentorship, but books like Chris Masters’ Jonestown benefit from well-honed journalistic skills. Over the years journalists have offered much to the Australian book industry and perhaps this has much to do with their ability to be flexible in their point of view. The leftish journalist Brian Penton wrote a couple of great Queensland novels (Inheritors and Landtakers) in the 1930s before becoming editor of Frank Packer’s Daily Telegraph in 1941 and excelling himself in emulating the outrageous industrial relations of his boss.
But let me leave the last words to the creative writers. Some years ago I was studying under the late, great Glenda Adams at the University of Technology Sydney. Glenda was a wonderful teacher who gently pushed her students towards narrative excellence. It was not her fault that I was too heavy to be pushed far in that direction.
Nevertheless a remark Glenda made in one seminar has stayed with me. Glenda remarked that we wrote, basically, because we were compelled to by our obsessions. She didn’t mean that writers were obsessive. Rather, she meant we were compelled to write because we had something to say. The point she was making was that this was not necessarily enough for our writing to meet a readership. We had to impose the discipline of the craft of writing on our obsessions so that we could most effectively communicate with our readership.
Even more years ago, at Macquarie University, Thea Astley worked hard to imbue me with an appreciation of Australian literature. In her measured fashion, she succeeded very well. Thea taught me to dissect books from the author’s viewpoint. We never discussed obsessions, but in our analysis of Voss, Maurice Guest, The Pea Pickers, To the Islands and Astley’s own The Acolyte this was the not-quite-invisible elephant in the room.
But Thea too concentrated on the art and craft of writing. The obsession was simply the kernel of the author’s desire keep refining their art and craft over thousands of pages and multiple drafts. This hard-working concept of the creative process is the one to which I subscribe. It may be that some people are born great writers, but many need a good deal of training. And all, I posit, need to understand the market they are entering as writers. The fact that a good manuscript receives continual rejections may not mean it is unworthy of publishing – it may simply mean that publishers can see no market for it. This is an unfortunate economic fact of life and we do all aspiring authors an injustice if we do not make this clear to them.

Parts of this article first appeared in the December 2007 issue of Australian Author. Copyright © 2008 Jeremy Fisher/Australian Society of Authors.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Australian Author: Moron or Oxymoron?

I have a confession to make. I am not an Australian. More correctly, I am a naturalised Australian, not one native-born. The sordid truth of my origins is that I was born on a South Sea island and raised as an Englishman. The island was the North Island of Aotearoa. The English bit came from the books I read as a young child. The Just So Stories by Kipling and Captain W.E John’s Biggles were favourite. My Englishness was reinforced by the texts I studied at primary school and the culture I absorbed in the suburbs of a staid Auckland. At school we sang “God Save the Queen” and saluted the flag each day. My father drove a Standard Vanguard. We had a Corgi because the Queen had one and we didn’t think twice about our place in the world.
Then, when I was almost 10, I came to Australia. Australia was not England and definitely not New Zealand. Australia was another country. Mine. It was a very strange feeling to realise one was home when you had arrived at a place to which you had never been before. Perhaps it was something in the books I was reading. Cerainly, the literature I started to read almost as soon as I set foot on Australian soil had much to do with transforming me form an Englishman to an Australia. Ivan Southall’s Ash Road was one of the first books to show me the towns, cities, people and empty landscapes of this magnificent continent. The different, dry air of Australia floated out of its pages. This air had miraculously cured the chronic asthma of my New Zealand childhood. Ironically, my asthma had made me a voracious reader. I read above my age. Soon I was reading Tom Keneally’s Bring Larks and Heroes and Three Cheers for the Paraclete. Through them, I learned more about our convict past and religious divisions than history lessons could ever teach me.
As I grew older, I studied the works of Kenneth Slessor, Judith Wright, Randolph Stow, Bruce Dawe and even the dreaded Patrick White without question. Why wouldn’t we want to know the words of these great writers? Studied along with Yeats and Eliot, Wright shone because she spoke to us with a language and imagery that was our own dialect. I’m quite happy to slouch towards Bethlehem, but I’d like to do so beside my heavy shouldered team of bullocks.
Then Paddy gave us my personal favourite of his works, The Vivisector, and Tom gave us The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, both written in the same dialect, albeit with their own accents, Paddy’s ironic and patrician, and Tom’s passionate and forgiving. A year after Jimmy Blacksmith was published I was at university studying Australian literature. I was fortunate to have Thea Astley to guide me in this subject. Thea made us read Ralph Rashleigh and The Pea Pickers, tore Frank Hardy’s structure apart and made us appreciate that good writing was good writing no matter where it came from and some of the best was from Australia, and Thea herself was one of the best. Years later, I read Drylands wet-eyed at the beauty in every sentence and the luminosity of the complete book.
Admittedly, university and I are now many years apart. A lot of books have been published since those days when Thea taught me Australian literature with no doubt in her mind that it was something worth teaching. Many of those books are what I would consider “Australian literature”. But apparently that phrase now is academically on the nose.
Why? Cultural theorists regard it as too specific, or too amorphous. In the post-modern world of textual studies, the word “literature” is a dirty one anyway. Now, literature is replaced by “communications and culture”. It is understandable that the academy should study more widely than the worlds of books and writing, but surely this does not mean literature, especially the stories that nourish our culture, should be totally ignored?
Over the past 30 years, the Australian publishing industry has developed into Australia’s most profitable and self-sufficient creative industry. It has done so on the basis that Australians wanted to read books about themselves. These books have been novels, but they have also been histories, biographies and cookery books. Bert Facey’s A Fortunate Life, Sally Morgan’s My Place, Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion and Margaret Fulton’s Cookbook are as much a part of our culture as any Miles Franklin Award winning novel. They are worthy of the attention of academia, too.
But books like these don’t appear to be under threat at present. It is the stories of our imagination which have difficulty, first, in finding a publisher, and, second, in finding a readership. Many first novels struggle to sell 600 or 700 copies. Such sales make publication very marginal and few publishers want to take the risk without some support. The Literature Board of the Australia Council assists with funding to defray production costs, but it is still up to the publisher to market the book, distribute it to bookshops and promote it to the industry. Some small publishers like Giramondo have done this well. Others have been much less successful. And less fiction is being sold. The 236 or so publishers identified by the ABS published 1347 works of fiction 2002-03 and 1367 in 2003-04. But sales dropped to from $43.92M in 2002-03 to $38.44M in 2003-04.
The window of opportunity for first-time novelists is very small given the small sales of first novels and their brief shelf life. They are soon out of print and forgotten. They rarely make reading lists for schools or universities, let alone get reviews.
This has a flow-on effect for our culture. As Josie Emery of the Literature Board of the Australia Council wrote in the December 2006 issue of Australian Author “literature is the mother of the narrative arts”. Without literature, we would not have films, television and other forms of story telling. Australia’s film industry is in crisis at present. Most of it exists as a form of cheap labour for Hollywood. A film like Happy Feet, as good as it may be, can’t really be claimed to be part of Australian culture. Its director, George Miller, noted as much recently when he announced his desire to make another Mad Max movie (very much part of Australian culture) when funding made it possible. He has since argued about the funding given his "Wolverine" project.
However, without literary narratives being read and absorbed much as I did with Ash Road so many years ago, we risk losing our special cultural identity, the one that took me in its embrace when I came here as a 10 year old.
And as for that South Sea island I left, well, it is now a bilingual nation very proud of its Maori and pakeha heritages and with a wonderful literature of its own. For evidence, read Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, which was the 2007 South East Asia and South Pacific winner of Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2007 and winner of the 2008 Kiriyama Prize.
But why has the country where I have made my home turned its back on its own stories?

Parts of this article first appeared in the April 2007 issue of Australian Author. Copyright © 2008 Jeremy Fisher/Australian Society of Authors.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Prime Minister's Prize for Literature: A welcome gesture

The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) congratulates the new Rudd Labor government on the announcement on December 4 of two major new literary prizes. In 2008, there will be a Prime Minister’s Literary Prize for fiction and a Prime Minister’s Literary Prize for non-fiction.

The annual awards will be worth $100,000 in each category, with a further budget of $100,000 to be spent each year on promotion and administration of the prizes. The ASA is pleased to note that the prizes will be awarded tax-free, a policy the organisation has been encouraging the government to adopt for all awards and grants to creators.

The Prize will be the richest in Australia, and will rank among the top literary prizes in the world. Some details are still to be confirmed, but it is anticipated that the award will be open to Australian writers working anywhere in the world, and writing on any topic. The award will be run through Arts Minister Peter Garrett’s office.

Some commentators have criticised the Prize, arguing that funding should be spread more broadly. I don't disagree that we need more funding options, but the Prize represents a welcome recognition that Australian culture is to be valued under the newly lected government.

Literature is a crucial part of Australian culture. I would go so far as to say it is the wellspring for all the other narrative arts — drama, film, television and so on. Whether it is fiction (in all its myriad genres), poetry or non-fiction, literature is the means by which we as Australian portray ourselves. But the coat our literature weaves is one of many fabrics and, like cotton or silk, each fabric evolves in different ways. It is crucial for our culture and our literature that we nurture each of the ways those diverse fabrics evolve, even the rough hessian and the smooth nylon that we might otherwise discard for snobbish reasons of one form or another. Nylon, after all was once highly sought after. And hessian will still keep you warm on a cold night. This means we need many ways of manufacturing fabrics. It also means we may (I trust we will!) be manufacturing some that literary purists will consider inappropriate. In this context literary prizes are one way we can provide authors with the means to sustain their writing. But they are by no means the only way by which the fabrics of our literature can be encouraged and produced. Writers centres, readings, festivals, creative writing courses and organisations like the ASA all help research new or variant fabrics, and they must be allowed to continue to do so.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Google print and remuneration for authors

We all know Google as the search engine we’re most likely to use on our computers, as I do several times a day. Google is also a public company, making its stock market debut in August 2004 when 19.6 million shares were sold at US$85 (A$113.77) raising US$1.67 billion (A$2.24 billion). Today, Google is worth roughly US$90 billion (A$120.5 billion), making staggering profits through its online advertising programs. For the third quarter of 2005, Google reported record profits of US$ 381 million (A$510 million) on revenues of US$1.6 billion (A$2.1 billion) and sales of US$1.05 billion (A$1.4 billion). Google is no charity.
Recently, the company announced the Google Print project. On the face of it, Google Print is an excellent use of internet technology. If you haven’t used it, check it out at http://print.google.com.au. You’ll find you can search an online database of thousands of books and view sample pages. For example, I used the search term “Australian Society of Authors” and in seconds I had a list of publications in which this term appears. The publications included a tremendous variety of works a considerable number of which were by past and present ASA members including works of Anthony Barker and Anna Funder. The only thing these works had in common was that somewhere in their text was contained the term “Australian Society of Authors”.
With the next mouse click Google Print took me directly to an electronic copy of the page where that term appears. In the case of Anthony Barker, the page was from the index where the ASA was listed. For Anna Funder, I found myself looking at the acknowledgements section of Bruno Amato’s Italian translation of Stasiland, the novel published after Funder’s ASA mentorship with John Tranter. I could look at a number of pages either side of the one I was first taken to, as well as the copyright page and the contents pages. I was unable to print out any of the book pages. Google claims this is impossible, as it also claims it is impossible to access an entire book through this means. However, I suspect some smart hacker is already working on ways to outwit the protection technology Google has in place.
The books I uncovered in my search had been licensed into Google Print by their publishers. Google Print is aimed at publishers, although it will deal with self-publishers. It invites large publishers or small presses to think of Google Print as a free worldwide sales and marketing system that matches people who are looking for information with the relevant words and phrases inside their books.
A number of publishers, such as Cambridge University Press, still have reservations about the system and they require users of Google Print to enter additional information before they can view the pages of their books. For these publishers, users are required to register to use the service. Some other publishers list only their books and restrict access to any pages from their books, even though the content remains searchable. That is, a user knows the information is in the book but can’t read it on screen. Other publishers allow users to search non-fiction works, but not fiction. As an example of this, I searched using Miles Franklin award-winner Andrew McGahan’s name. An impressive list of his titles appeared and I was able to view front and back covers, access ISBNs and read copyright information but nothing else. It was enough to give me a taste of the books. Amazon offers a similar service for many of the titles it offers for sale and displays front and back cover, contents copyright information and a little snippet of text.
Google argues its business model will attract new readers and boost book sales, allow publishers and authors to earn new revenue from Google contextual ads, and to interact more closely with customers through direct links back to the publishers’ websites. It is certainly a service of benefit to serious and casual researchers, and it’s much less confronting than asking a stupid question of a librarian or bookseller. Indeed, booksellers should be worried about this model as it has the potential to remove them from the supply chain.
Potentially authors can gain not only extra sales but additional subsidiary income, provided of course their publishing contract allows for them to share extra revenue from Google Print or in fact permits the publisher to licence an electronic facsimile of their book into Google Print. Questions about such grants of rights may well become issues between authors and publishers in the future, as is currently the case with aggregators of online content. Even so, Google Print seems like a sensible move into the digital environment. Google’s competitors think so. Yahoo, in partnership with Hewlett Packard, Adobe and the universities of California and Toronto, has announced plans to offer searchable, digitised texts as well. Yahoo, like Google, obviously scents money. Unlike, Google, however, Yahoo plans only to digitise works that are in the public domain or for which it has the rightsholders’ permission.
It is Google’s plans to digitise works without the permission of rightsholders that has earned the wrath of both the Authors’ Guild and the Association of American Publishers. Both organisations are suing Google. The issue is Google Print’s abuse of authors’ rights through its digitisation of books held in various US libraries in a project known as Google Library. In doing so, Google shows no respect for copyright. Rather, Google is claiming it has a fair use exemption that permits it to ignore the rights of authors and publishers.
Google’s seeming concession to rightsholders is to offer an “opt out” facility. Google says it will not digitise the works of those who voice their objections. Google also says it will remove works already digitised if rightsholders – and that means authors like you and me – tell it to do so.
Sounds reasonable, says Joe Public. Sounds like daylight robbery to me. Google has no right to steal the digitisation rights of authors. It is acting like a thief in this regard. It is no defence for a thief caught with stolen goods in his hands to say “oh, is this yours? Sorry, I didn’t mean to pinch it. Here, have it back”. It’s no defence for Google, either, but nevertheless Google is trying it on.
Respect for copyright, and the creative effort it is intended to reward, is a vital concern for both authors and publishers. It is the basis for the contracts into which authors and publishers enter.
Google’s digitisation of books in libraries ignores this. Google proposes to digitise hundreds of thousands books in their entirety without seeking permission from the authors of those books. Theft is theft is theft. And yet it doesn’t have to be this way. Google could licence the content and not act as a pirate, raiding library collections without regard for rights. With an appropriate licence system in place even more material could be made available to users. This is not a difficult problem to overcome. Businesses sign licence agreements every day.
Obviously, Google sees profitable outcomes in its investment in Google Library. Both Google Print and Google Library are intended to bring more visitors and profits to its website and ancillary services. However, in the case of Google Library, the profit comes from the works of authors. Those authors – you and me -- should be properly compensated.
Nothing more, nothing less.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Australian publishing and decreasing opportunities for authors

There are some worrying trends in the sales of books in Australia. Sales of books declined by 19% after the introduction of the goods and sales tax (GST) in 2000, but GST cannot be regarded as the only as sales also fluctuated downwards by 20 million or 15% in 1997-98. They surged back in 2001-02, but operating profit for publishers continued to decline, particularly for the top 20, and sales again declined in 2002-03. The value of sales, however, has increased year by year, except in 2000-01 when GST was introduced, until 2003-04. The proportion of Australian books making up these sales has also increased to 64% in 2002-03, a proportion much the same for consumer books as education books (the figure is about 1% lower for educational books), but the figure dropped in 2003-04 to 60%. Sales of educational books also declined and sales of Australian fiction plummeted.
There are some in the publishing industry who look at these figures with alarm and argue that publishing is in decline, under threat from electronic competition from DVDs and computer games. But it should be remembered that the number of books published in Australia plummeted 20% in 1981, with consequent loss of sales, and the market recovered, even under the threat of videos. Books have shown remarkable resilience, even as the level of readership appears to be decreasing. What is remarkable is that readership levels maintain a relatively high standing despite the increased demands on leisure time provided by electronic alternatives.
Even so, there is plenty to be concerned about regarding the publishing of books relevant to Australia’s literary culture. The sale of Australian-originated books declined by $50 million in 2003-04 after healthy increases in previous years. The industry has only been subject to this degree of analysis since 2000, but the ABS does not propose to continue to survey the industry in such detail any longer, so this snapshot, inconclusive as it is, may be the only information retrievable on the state of Australian-originated publishing. The Australian Publishers’ Association, whose membership is dominated by large, overseas-owned corporations, interprets this information differently in the September 2005 APA Update. The APA records “the news is pretty good” and so it is for overseas-owned publishers. Profitability increased in 2003-04, a result of lower costs, even though sales dropped $18 million on those in 2002-03 and the hardest hit part of the market was Australian-produced books.
The publishing of Australian originated fiction publishing appears to have reached a peak of $125.2 million in 2001-02 when the category outsold imported fiction ($102.5 million) and is declining. Only $73.1 million in sales of Australian fiction were achieved in 2003-04 compared to $116.6 million for imported fiction. Generally, figures show mass market paperbacks have the highest sales value compared to trade paperbacks and hardbacks. Because the unit price of mass market paperbacks is much lower, however, the return to an author per copy is much less, assuming that all authors receive a royalty of 10% of recommended retail price (and publishers like Penguin are trying to drive the royalty rate even lower).
The decline in sales of Australian-originated books is reflected in the fact that royalties and fees paid by publishers in 2003-04 declined 11% on the previous year.
Sales of the nonfiction category, which covers cookbooks, self-help, and a diverse range of other subjects, is increasing. This is supported by data from Nielsen Bookscan which shows that nonfiction titles make up 53% of the market for books while fiction makes up 28% and children’s book make up 18%. ABS data show non-fiction books, both Australian and imported, were worth 59% of general content sales in 2003-04.
Sales of Australian originated childrens’ books increased in 2003-04, but this market segment is still dominated by imported books.
Of concern to all authors is the fact that the average selling price of Australian titles dropped from $11.36 to $9.10 (a 20% decrease) between 2002-03 and 2003-04. For royalties calculated on the selling price, this represents a drop in income for authors. In contrast, the average salary of a publishing company employee rose 9% to $52,300. Editors also had an award increase.
The market share of imported books is also a threat to Australian authors. The increase in non-fiction is not compensating for the drop in sales of fiction.
While the number of new titles in 2003-04 is marginally greater than the previous year, these titles appear on the face of the sales information to have lost market share.
More information is available in my publication Current Publishing Practice.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Australian Literature in the NSW English Curriculum

The Hon. John Della Bosca, Minister for Education in NSW, has called for the Board of Studies to review the amount of Australian literature in the NSW English curriculum (see article in the Daily Telegraph by clicking on headline above).
This is a sensible move, even if it seems odd. Think of any state in the USA and the English curriculum in that state -- it would be unthinkable for that curriculum to contain works which were not American. Yet here in Australia there is argument about whether or not Australian literature is good enough or even interesting enough to find a place in NSW schools.
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) welcomes moves to strengthen the study of Australian literature in NSW classrooms.
The ASA has long advocated the study of Australian literature as a means of providing a sense of cultural identity, insight into our diversity and knowledge of our unique place in the world. Without our literature, we have no stories of our own. We cannot then make film, television and other narratives.
Also, our authors are world class. We have nothing to be ashamed of in teaching our literature. Our children’s writers and illustrators are already being exported and widely translated. Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks’ Fox won the German Children’s Literature Prize in 2004. Shaun Tan’s The Arrival is currently a bestseller in France and Germany. Contemporary adult authors like Michelle de Kretser, Kate Grenville, David Malouf and Peter Carey regularly win prestigious international prizes. Les Murray was in the running for this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Australian Publishing: Don't forget the authors

Australian publishing industry exports have increased markedly in the past few years. In 2003-4, the export of Australian books, titles and rights was worth more than $195 million.
This fact alone makes the publishing industry Australia's leading creative industry. But, like almost all creative industries, it is the creators themselves who are least likely to benefit from the success of the industry.
Some Australian authors certainly do well, but publishers do better. It is important for authors that publishers makes profits so they can pay royalties, but surely it ought to be as important to publishers to ensure authors share in their success.
Apparently not.
Publishers like to place clauses in their contract that reduce royalties for reprints of 1000 copies or less, even though they will have made back their investment on the first print run. Another trick is to reduce royalties rates for other than the initial version of the work, say a mas-market edition, again flying in the face of publishing economics in that further editions maximise the earning for the publisher. That's the way publishing works, after all. And I say that with over 30 years experience in the Australian publishing industry as a publisher.
In the success of the Australian publishing industry, there seems to be some darkness for authors.
But we have to remember our past and learn from it and seek opportunities where we can.
The years 1940 and 1941 were dark indeed for Australia. Japanese forces moved steadily southwards, Darwin was bombed, the Brisbane line was drawn.
But in this darkness a benefit emerged for Australian writers. The Australian government, needing to maintain capital reserves, imposed an embargo on American imports, including books and paper. Suddenly, Australian writers were being sought to produce detective fiction, Westerns and other novelettes published to meet public demand. Writers no longer had to hawk their wares to London publishers. One of the writers who found his detective books being published locally was Alan Yates (“Carter Brown”), who later became a member of the ASA’s Committee of Management at its second meeting in September 1963.
Jon Cleary, who is still an ASA member, began to be published in Australia in the early forties, along with other early ASA members such as Morris West. The restrictions on imported books remained until 1959. A book bounty was introduced in 1969 to encourage printing in Australia, but by that time a pattern of reading Australian writers had been established.
Still, Australians’ literary diet today is spiced with writers in English from India, Canada, the UK, the US, and occasionally New Zealand, as well as Australia. Unfortunately, that means the competition for Australian writers in their own market is actually greater than that for American writers in theirs.
Australian writers are further disadvantaged by the fact that most of the 20 largest book publishers in Australia are divisions of multinational corporations whose accountants are based in New York, Paris, London or Berlin. The corporate eye is on return on investment, not, as in the days of Brian Johns at Penguin, the development of a thriving Australian publishing industry. A new author now is required to be instantly successful, able to sell the same number of books as an author who has crafted a reputation over a significant period of time. Authors whose books fail to meet these sales expectations are brutally dispensed with.
But sometimes we can spend too much time lamenting what’s wrong, and miss opportunities to improve our situation. Again, we can turn to history for guidance.
In 1905, the United States was in a similar situation to that which it is in today in that it had a Republican President (Theodore Roosevelt) who intervened in foreign countries (Panama) for American benefit.
Australia was quietly developing its newly won nationhood. Secure within their newly-federated island country, the citizens throughout Australia were placing plaques in churches and town halls to commemorate those who had served in the Boer Wars. Ten years later, the same people were counting more war dead, a count that would continue until late in 1918. Hugo (Jim) Throssell, husband of Katharine Susannah Prichard (a member of the ASA from 1964), was one of the lucky survivors of World War I, but survival did not ensure happiness. In 1933, he took his own life while his wife was travelling overseas.
Well before this, towards the end of 1905, Miles Franklin began planning a trip to London, of two minds about the success of My Brilliant Career. It had sold well, but most royalties were on “colonial sales” (copies sold in Australia) and earned only half the rate of those sold in the UK.
Nearly 60 years later, colonial rates was one of the issues that led to the formation of the ASA in 1963. The first Australian writer to have this anachronism removed from her contracts was Dymphna Cusack, an inaugural member of the Council of the ASA. The first issue of Broadside, the ASA’s first newsletter, reported that at least six British publishers had agreed to negotiate colonial rights, and, thanks to the ASA’s work, these unfair royalties have disappeared.
Regardless of the political situation in Australia or internationally, regardless of the waxing and waning of literary fashion, the ASA continues to stand for increased returns for writers and to argue for more channels of remuneration. There will always be some sad circumstance for us to lament—that is perhaps why some of us write—but nothing should stand in the way of writers achieving the right to maintain a living.
The ASA has achieved a great amount over the past 40 years. It also won Public Lending Right and achieved success with Educational Lending Right. The ASA was also instrumental in the establishment of the Copyright Agency Ltd (CAL), which now provides another income stream for writers, especially those in the education sector, for the photocopying of their work. It has also established minimum standards for book contracts.
But despite all this work there is still much to be done. In my office I have in front of me a contract from a publisher that asks the author to assign copyright to the publisher, which would spell the end to any additional remuneration -- such as a CAL payment -- for the author. As well, the contract offers a flat fee upfront and royalties only after the sale of 3200 copies, which may have an impact on the author’s right to Educational Lending Right (ELR).
These are issues of core interest to writers. The everyday task of improving the ability of writers to be able to make a living remains central to the ASA.
The publishing industry might be successful but the fight for authors to make a living from their writing continues.
Some of this material has previously appeared in Australian Author. Copyright © 2007 Australian Society of Authors/Jeremy Fisher

Friday, October 12, 2007

ELR funding confirmed

The Minister for the Arts, Senator George Brandis SC, confirmed that funding for Educational Lending Rights (ELR) had been confirmed past 2008 on 8 August 2007 (see his press release here).

The Australian Society of Authors was instrumental in establishing ELR. The ELR program provides payments to eligible Australian creators and publishers on the basis that they are missing out on potential royalty payments when their books are borrowed from educational libraries rather than purchased. The Public Lending Right program (PLR) provides the same support for works held in public libraries.

ELR was established in 2000–01 as an element of the Book Industry Assistance Plan, offering compensation for the imposition of the goods and services tax (GST). It received funding of $35 million for the period 2000–01 to 2003–04. Following a review of the programme in 2003, $44 million was provided in the 2004–05 Budget to continue the scheme for the next four years. Further funding has now been confirmed. The Australian Labor Party has also made a commitment to further funding for ELR in its Arts statement.

The ASA calls for the capital pool for ELR to be increased to at least $16 million to allow for increases in the number of books to which it applies as well as to compensate for the static level of funding for the previous four years. The ELR pool should also be subject to the same indexation applying to the PLR pool (the ASA also calls for an increase of the PLR pool to $10 million).

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

2007 Federal Election

When this entry was created, the the 2007 Federal election was yet to be called.

On 8 October, the Government announced it had committed to funding for Educational lending Right (ELR) past 2008, although there was no mention of the level of funding or whether the ELR pool would be indexed.

This may have resulted from the fact that, in August, the ASA put three key positions to all parties standing for the Federal election. The first related to a recommendation to fund class sets of Australian literature (where in line with curricular practice) for the teaching of Australian literature in secondary schools. The second called for a tax-free awards and grants (including those from the Australia Council) to authors. The third related to continued and increased funding for Lending Rights. To date we have received the following replies:

The Greens
Class Sets
The Australian Greens support a very significant increase in funding to public schools to enable improved resourcing of all areas of the curriculum including English.

The Greens believe curricula decisions are best made by experts including teachers and not politicians. The provision of class sets of Australian literature in schools would receive in principle support from The Australian Greens if such a decision was made in the context of an overall resource funding increase, and that relevant curricula decisions made by boards of education or a national curricula body, if one comes into existence, informed such a decision.

Tax liability of prizes
Removal of tax liability for literary prizes is one way of improving the level of financial support to Australian writers. The Greens support the principle although the scope and extent of such an exemption would need to be examined. Grants from the Australia Council would obviously be prime candidates for such an exemption.

Educational Lending Right
The Greens believe the existing public lending right and the new Educational Lending Right scheme is crucial to maintaining a viable Australian literary industry. We support additional funds directed towards the schemes and the placing of ELR on a permanent footing with guaranteed increases to funding in line with CPI.

The Australian Democrats have responded to the ASA and their position is available here.

ALP’s arts policy released
The ALP’s Shadow Minister for the Arts, Peter Garrett, released the party’s policy paper on the arts in September. While the document is short on detail, it does commit the party to retaining Educational lending Right (ELR), though there is no indication of increased funding or indexation.