Allen & Unwin: Advice for would-be authors

Allen & Unwin, now Australia’s largest independent publisher, commenced publishing in Australia in 1976 as part of the UK-based parent company of the same name. In 1990, following the purchase of the UK parent company by HarperCollins, Allen & Unwin's Australian directors effected a management buy-out and the company became fully independent, owning the Allen & Unwin imprint throughout the world.
In addition to its own extensive publishing programme, Allen & Unwin is the Australian and New Zealand distributor for ABC Books and Audio and BBC Audio, A&C Black, Bloomsbury, Continuum, Faber & Faber, Granta, Icon Books, Nicholas Brealey and Profile Books.
Allen & Unwin been voted "Publisher of the Year" by Australian Booksellers in 1992 (the inaugural award), 1996, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007. In 2007, the company published 250 titles, encompassing fiction and general non-fiction, an academic list specialising in the social sciences and health, and the Allen & Unwin children's list.
Allen & Unwin is represented in the United Kingdom by Orion (Adult Trade) and Francis Lincoln (Children's); in the United States and Canada by Independent Publisher's Group (Trade) and Paul & Company (Academic); in South Africa by Wild Dog Press; in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines by APD Singapore; in Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan and PRC by Asia Publishers Services; and in Japan by United Publishers Services.
Allen & Unwin currently accepts unsolicited non-fiction and fiction manuscripts. The company does not accept submissions on disc or via email. For adult fiction and non-fiction submissions, send the first 60 pages and a one-page synopsis of the manuscript, printed on A4 paper. Include a covering letter detailing the author’s writing experience, previous publications, work and any relevant life details. If the manuscript targets a specific market, give a brief description of the intended readership. For non-fiction submissions the company also asks for a review of any already published books that cover a similar topic and an outline of how your proposal differs. Check the Allen & Unwin website for further details: www.allenandunwin.com.
Only send copies of your submission (never send the original or sole copy) - Allen & Unwin takes no responsibility for the loss or damage of unsolicited material received. Receipt of your submission will be acknowledged, but the company says it may take 3-6 months for them to fully assess the work.
Send a suitably sized, stamped, self-addressed postage bag for the return of your manuscript in the event that it is rejected. The work will not be returned if you do not send postage. Send submissions to this address: Allen & Unwin, PO Box 8500, St Leonards NSW 1590.

Text Publishing: Advice for would-be authors

Text Publishing began in 1994 based in Melbourneas an off-shoot of the Text Media group set up by former Fairfax executive Eric Beecher. As a book publisher, Text quickly established a reputation for quality fiction and non-fiction, guided by the vision of Michael Heyward. Heyward is a well-known Melbourne literary identity with links to the defunct literary magazine Scripsi and the omnipresent critic of all things literary in Melbourne, Peter Craven. Text has published Shane Maloney, Murray Bail, Anna Funder, Linda Jaivin, Raymond Gaita, Kate Grenville and most recently Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee.
When Beecher sold the Text Media magazine and suburban newspaper interests to Fairfax in 2004, the book company separated under Heyward’s ownership. In June 2004, Text Publishing and Canongate Books of Edinburgh announced an “alliance” which meant that Canongate took some equity in the Melbourne firm. This was important as it provided the financial wherewithal for Text to keep its independent character and continue to publish its eclectic list.
Text is broadly interested in publishing fiction and non-fiction, including upper Primary and young adult, but does not accept poetry or playscripts. Text accepts unsolicited manuscripts. Send a synopsis and three sample chapters to: Manuscript Submissions, Text Publishing, Swann House, 22 William Street, Melbourne 3000.
Send a copy, not the original, of your manuscripts in hard copy (rather than electronically or on disk). This copy must be single sided, with numbered pages and double spaced. Text will not receive you if you call in person with your submission, but they will return manuscripts with a self-addressed envelope and sufficient postage. However, rejected manuscripts not accompanied by return postage are “recycled”. If your manuscript is rejected, you will most likely receive a form rejection letter. That’ll be it. As Text receive so many manuscripts they do not have time for any follow-up.
They also do not send out acknowledgement of receipt of manuscripts, but they say they endeavour to respond to all submissions. Be aware though that assessment may take up to four months.
For all manuscript related queries, please email books@textpublishing.com.au rather than telephone.

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.

Macquarie University Graduate Diploma in Editing and Publishing

I will be presenting a seminar to students in the Macquarie University Diploma of Editing and Publishing course on October 4. The seminar will cover issues relevant to authors and professional issues related to authorship.

The Australian Book Market: A brief economic outline

What research there is on the Australian book industry has been conducted comparatively recently. From 2000-2004, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) assessed the industry as part of the Book Industry Assistance Package given by the current Federal Government as compensation for the imposition of the GST on books. Data in this blog entry comes from the ABS.

The net sales value of the book market in Australia was $1,560.6 million in 2003-04, a slight decline from $1,578.6 million in 2002-03. In 2003-04, there were 234 businesses identified as book publishers and a further 10 identified as major contributors. In 2002-03, the overall operating profit (income, less expenses of $1,487.7 million and a reduction in inventories of $2.5 million) for the industry was $88.4 million (5.6%), but, even with a decrease in net sales value, 2003-04 proved a better year than the previous one with the overall operating profit rising to $152.1 million (9.7%) as expenses were lower at $1,404.4 million and reduction in inventories was $4.2 million. In 2003-04, 133 of 244 publishers were involved mainly in publishing books of general content while 111 were involved mainly with publishing educational books (including professional and reference books).

Just on 60% of the books sold in Australia originate in Australia accounting for sales in 2003-04 of $811.9 million. This is a vast change from 1960, when 75% of the books sold in Australia were imported, and 1980, when 63% of the books sold in Australia were imported.

However, the change in ownership of publishers has been insidiously the other way. Very few Australian companies feature on the list of the Top 20 publishers. However, it is interesting to note that the structure of the industry hasn’t changed much in over 20 years. In 1982, there were 200 active publishers in Australia, compared with 234 in 2003-04. In 1982, no publishers had a turnover of more than $40 million, and only 20% had a turnover of more than $2 million. The majority had a turnover of less than $1 million. This pattern was pretty much unaltered in 2003-04. While there are no publicly available figures on the turnover of most Australian publishing companies because they don't have to report to Australian authorities or are privately owned, it is possible to gauge their size through their reported activities and the annual reports of their overseas owners. As well the ABS has reported (the only year it has done so) that in 2000-01, the 20 largest book publishers in terms of income earned an average of $52 million each, while the remaining book publishers earned an average of $2 million. Overall the 228 businesses involved in book publishing in that year earned an average of $6 million each.

These facts need to be placed in a global context. For example, the international operations of Harcourt Education (purchased by Pearson in 2007), which include Australia, had an operating profit of A$69.6 million for the six months ended June 2004, the 2004 world-wide revenue for McGraw-Hill in 2004 was A$3,050 million with an operating profit of A$432 million, and the 2003 world-wide revenue for Random House (part of privately owned, German Bertelsmann) was A$2,940 million. In other words, the Australian market is a very small part of global publishing, and the global activities of some of the larger publishers operating in Australia are larger than the entire Australian market.

Closer examination of the Australian market reveals that 77% ($1,198.3 million) of the 2003-04 total income for publishers and other major contributors was generated by the 20 largest (in terms of income) book publishers. These 20 publishers were equally as significant in sales, selling 78% ($1,057.8 million) of the value of total book sales and 76% (97.7 million) of all books sold, but their profit margin was lower than that for the overall industry at 9.5% in 2003-04 while it was 12.7% for the other publishers. Mind you, that's not a bad return!

What books sell well in Australia and who publishes them?

Publicly available Australian data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) do not allow much elaboration on the subject areas being published. The ABS data is only broken down by fiction, childrens, non-fiction and educational. Bookscan information is more specific, but only available to subscribers. Non-fiction outsells fiction. Australian fiction makes up around 10% of the market in revenue terms.
The Australian Publishers Association (APA) compiles a list of bestsellers each year in the categories of adult hardbacks; adult trade paperbacks; adult mass-market paperbacks; children’s hardbacks; and children’s paperbacks. Only sales at retail outlets at standard publisher discounts and where the author gets a full royalty are included.
Books by Australian authors sell well. The APA survey in the year up to 30 March 2004 showed the adult hardback Brother Fish by Bryce Courtenay (Pearson/Penguin) sold more than 250,000 copies at an RRP of $49.95, topping that category; the adult trade paperback The Reef by Di Morrissey sold over 105,000 copies at an RRP of $30, topping that category; and the mass market adult paperback Friends to the End by Bradley Trevor Grieve sold more 50,000 copies at a RRP of $14.95, coming in at No. 11 in that category well behind Dan Brown whose books filled the first four positions in this category.
In a year when a new Harry Potter book is published (such as 2007), that book dominates the sales charts. In 2006, Kate Grenville's The Secret River (Text) sold well, helped by its inclusion in the Books Alive campaign. A big seller in 2005-06 was Li Cunxin's Mao's Last Dancer (Pearson/Viking).
In 2003-04, publishers and other major contributors based in New South Wales or Victoria accounted for 94% of total book sales (51% NSW; 43% in Victoria).

Publishing: Is it dying?

The Literature Board of the Australia Council and Copyright Agency ran a seminar on the digital future of publishing in Sydney on 17 July. It was a very good, well-attended seminar, much more useful and relevant than similar ones I have attended over the past 10 or 15 years and perhaps that is because something is finally begin to take shape that we can actually term "digital publishing". But in many respects the views expressed at the seminar continued to repeat the mantra that if we (writers and publishers) do not leap into the digital future we are doomed.

The assumption here is that the future of publishing must be digital and I am not sure that that is true. There are plenty of opportunities to explore in the digital world but I am not yet writing off books and print publications. First we need to ensure we know what the digital world has to offer us. After all it has changed our lives in so many ways already. The fact that I can write this blog is indicative of that.

But I am not earning income from this type of writing (yet). Writers who spend considerable amounts of their time online writing blogs like this are taking time away from writing works that have more potential to give them income. I have two book reviews I need to complete, for example.

The argument put up by the digital evangelists is that a blog like this will give me a presence in the digital world and expand my profile so that I will have more opportunities to earn income from other writing sources. Having a blog like this is said to be part of creating the author as brand name.

I don't know. It is certainly easy enough to start a blog and add links to my writing available on the web. And I think it is as certain that publishing models have changed and will continue to change. Nobody these days is investing in printed encyclopaedias. Journals are more and more likely to be published online. There are advantages to both writers and readers in this. The material can be more immediate and corrections and commentary can be added to the original digital publication.

Educational publishing in general is suffering in the traditional model of print-based text because the consumers -- teachers and students -- can find better resources online or in other places. Already we have seen Thomson Corporation and Reed Elsevier depart textbook publishing, although both companie retain their lucrative online professional publishing operations. They have built themselves profitable online niches.

Pearson has opted to acquire more, as shown by its recent acquistion of the international Harcourt operations. Is Pearson able to re-engineer itself from a traditional publisher to a supplier of digital material in time to beat the critical nexus when print=based income will decline and digital income will not yet be sufficient to replace it? We shall see. It is interesting that Houghton Mifflin-Riverdeep have purchased Harcourt in the USA. Riverdeep is fundamentally a supplier of digital content. It does not ned to re-engineer itself. I'll be interested to see how each of these companies is performing in three years time.