A ripple in the vast, soundless mud

Wednesday, 6th May 2009

One Sydney novelist is proposing a subscription model to alleviate our perpetual publishing crisis, says Ross Fitzgerald

But there are certain traditional categories of book with a committed readership that currently are not being supplied. Quality fiction is such an area. It has always been so. At the height of their powers, novelists like Henry James and Joseph Conrad were often selling no more than 1,000 copies of a new book.

Hence there are opportunities for publishers who can work with such modest print runs. They may not make a lot of money, but they need not lose money either. In the past, publishing houses run by individuals like Victor Gollancz, André Deutsch, George Weidenfeld, Peter Owen, John Calder and Alan Ross published books because they believed in them. Their companies have all been absorbed by the conglomerates. Now may be the time for that individual touch again, an enthusiasm for books that are worth doing because of their quality.

Press On is an initiative by the Sydney novelist Michael Wilding to intervene actively in the publication and promotion of new fiction in Australia. Wilding has been there before. In 1973, with Pat Woolley, he set up Wild & Woolley. The previous year, only 19 novels had been published throughout Australia. Wild & Woolley, Morry Schwartz at Outback Press and Frank Thompson at University of Queensland Press set about improving things and rode the exciting new wave of the revival in Australia’s fictional fortunes.

The immediate aim of Press On is to publish new works by Peter Corris (author of the iconic Australian Cliff Hardy private eye novels), Phillip Edmonds (a road novel about Henry Lawson, Leaving Home With Henry), and Michael Wilding himself. Inez Baranay’s novel, With the Tiger, set in India, has just been published there by HarperCollins. But the vagaries of global conglomerates are such that the Australian branch did not pick it up. So she too has joined the Press On list.

These are all established writers. Their work has product recognition that will get them into the shops. Once the Press On brand has made its mark, it is planned that new writers will feature on the list. Similarly, once the subscription model and the bookshop distribution is established, other delivery models are planned: the internet, print on demand, maybe even the possibility of having a novelist come and read to you over dinner, or when there’s nothing captivating on television.

A subscription-based press might be just the sort of endeavour to resonate in 2010. At the very least, it deserves a red-hot go and support from fiction writers throughout the nation.

www.press-on-publishing.net