It’s the new year, and with it comes a slew of personal reflections and resolutions. But we can also dream of a wishlist for Ozlit. With this in mind, ArtsHub surveyed a broad range of writers and asked them a provocation: what changes would they like to see in the publishing arena? There was one caveat: the wishes were to be within the realm of reality, and possible and practicable – so no hoping for routine six-figure book advances!
Let’s hope publishers, publicists, festival organisers and others in the industry take note and action some of these requests.
Jump to:
Care and due diligence
Bek Lambert is after more rigorous fact-checking and sensitivity reading, particularly when “we’re living in a ‘free speech and misinformation for everybody’ era with a dash of AI plagiarism for good measure”. She cites the case of Jamie Oliver’s recent incidence of Indigenous insensitivities and cultural misappropriation in a children’s book, and other cases like Belle Gibson, whose cookbook promoted the lifestyle and recipes that supposedly helped rid the blogger’s body of terminal cancer – which later proved to be fake – as well as Pete Evans’ controversial advocacy of a paleo diet for babies outlined in another cookbook.
“This really should be the time that publishers are digging deep on representation, research and making sure whatever lands across their desk isn’t just rubber stamped because the last person said it was OK,” Lambert says. “There needs to be real investment in, not just looking at who sells and what sells, but also what is actually selling in terms of representation, information and cultural distillation.”
Ana Tiwary also mentions a more rigorous understanding of cultural safety and competency.
Better distribution in department stores
“I’d like to see some sensible content legislation for large distribution, such as Big W, Dymocks et al. These booksellers could be legislated to carry a certain amount of smaller press stuff, Australian literary fiction, a small number of living Australian poets, that sort of thing. If they have to give it shelf space, they’ll figure out ways to sell them. This would make a big change to sales and publishing opportunities, with even a small increase of presence in major markets where cookbooks are currently the dominant titles,” says Alan Fyfe.
“It’s about about exposure and getting people reading things across a class divide … chains like Dymocks, QBD, Kmart and Big W make up a big portion of the Australian book market and I don’t think the taste of those consumers can be blamed when they’re not having local literature put in front of them on the whole… They read stuff like Where The Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens) and Sally Rooney novels because that’s what available. There should be more of our work where people from all walks of life can see and afford it; author income is only one part of the equation. We need more readers,” he continues.
Greater focus on reader promotion
Which leads us to Mike Shuttleworth’s argument. “There’s no point pushing out books if there aren’t enough readers to embrace them,” he says. “The viability of writing and publishing depends on readers, so creating sustainable audiences should be fundamental.”
More innovation
Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon points out that having lived in the US for over a decade and seeing innovative content by her American poet friends published, she’s “disappointed by the lack of innovative collections, memoirs and fiction that are published here. I understand the US is a larger market and that publishers can afford to take a chance, but I believe the Australian reading public misses out as we don’t have the volume of avant-garde work published here. Where is our William S Burroughs or e e cummings? It means a lot of our published literature ends up being ‘conservative’, for want of a better word.”
George Dunford concurs, “Greater risk-taking; big publishers are timid and small press takes all the risks in new and diverse writers.”
Diversity … but at what cost?
Deniz Ağraz rails against the expectations of race-based performative writing: “Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) writers are still being pigeonholed and expected to put on a performance of cultural identity to be considered for the so-called ‘diversity/inclusion initiatives’. Yes, I want to be included, but not at the expense of my artistic autonomy. Once you are labelled ‘ethnic’, it feels like you have to ‘perform’ this role in all your work thereafter.”
No more BookScan
BookScan is a system that records cash register sales of (print) books by tracking ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) when a bookseller scans the barcode. Edwina Preston would like it to disappear because “it means previous sales can be used as a marker of the worth of a new book in a way that can negatively affect authors – publishers [are] not signing up new books based on past sales, booksellers[are] not wanting to order new books in numbers due to past sales. Hence, new sales aren’t made. Vicious cycle/circle. Books don’t get to stand on their own merits.”
Transparency
A writer who wishes to remain anonymous tells ArtsHub that she would like more information for authors, “about, how and why decisions are made – whether they are financial ones, choices to publish (or not), decisions around the marketing of certain books and very little marketing of others, sales figures, reprinting (or not)… It’s sometimes baffling and disempowering to know so little about these things.”
Jessica Mudditt echoes this statement, “Not even industry sales figures are public… Why does it cost thousands for a Nielsen subscription just to see it? No other industry is so opaque.”
Administration of prizes
In a similar vein, better governance of literary prizes is on Allayne Webster’s wish list, “Better communication with shortlisted authors. Rather than leaving shortlisted authors languishing weeks or months wondering (agonisingly) whether they’ve won, communicate their unsuccessful status prior to the award’s announcement. If you’ve only been through this scenario one or twice, it’s not a big deal but when you’ve ridden this rollercoaster repeatedly – always the bridesmaid and always walking away without a cracker – some early communication would be a kindness.”
Readability
Melissa Lucashenko’s particular desire for change is to “promote and reward readability at every level of readership – books that you don’t need a uni degree to enjoy!”
Self-publishers count too
Karen Martin would like “government and industry acceptance that self-publishing and independent authors are legitimate creative entrepreneurs and small business operators”, with Amra Pajalić following suit. “With publishing opportunities shrinking, lack of diversity in traditional publishing and the fact that you can’t make anything near a viable income as a trad author, self-publishing is the only viable option. We are smaller businesses and yet are still looked down upon by the publishing industry and funding bodies. So many of my heroes are making six-figure incomes as indie authors, yet are invisible in the publishing industry on any festival circuits.”
Karen Ingram too, wishes self-publishing wasn’t a stigma. “I don’t have time to wait for approval from a publisher because my work doesn’t currently fit with their schedule,” she explains.
Accessibility
Robin Eames champions better digital and physical accessibility for readers, to make “web content screen readable. There are free tools to check if a site is Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)-compliant, but a lot of outlets don’t bother. Some disability-specific projects still publish content incompatible with screen-readers and other assistive technology.
“I’d also love to see more online and hybrid events and consideration around venue and wheelchair accessibility as well as ventilation/COVID safety/Auslan interpretation.”
Back in print
“A more concerted effort to provide access to Australian books that are out of print,” says Peter Matthews. “I was happy to see the Untapped project in 2021 take an initial step to rectify this problem, but it’s not nearly enough. I have almost finished writing a book about Rodney Hall, for instance and nearly all of his work is out of print, including the two novels that won the Miles Franklin. The only way to get them is to track them down on the second hand market. It’s ridiculous and embarrassing that Australia treats its literary heritage with such utter disdain.”
Social media or bust?
Judith Ridge, Heather Taylor Johnson, Bronwyn Stuart and Bek Lambert all agree that talent and merit should be the deciding factor for book publication, rather than fame garnered elsewhere in another industry.
“Actual authors, not celebrities masking their ghost writers,” says Ridge, while Stuart points out, “It feels like if you’re not a TikTok or BookTok superstar, you’re automatically undervalued” and Johnson chimes in with, “Social media has really changed things for mid-list writers. In some cases, follower numbers can make or break you. The writing should outweigh the author’s platform.”
TitlePage
“It would be good to allow the Small Press Network member publishers access to TitlePage, says Tim Coronel. “This is a price, availability and ordering service used by bookshops and owned by the Australian Publishers Association and only available to members. If small publisher titles aren’t on TitlePage they aren’t visible to booksellers and suppliers.”
What about poetry?
Emilie Collyer is flying the flag for the underrepresented art form. “I wish poetry was taken as seriously as fiction and non-fiction in terms of festival presences and best of the year book lists and part of our overall lexicon in a more fundamental way,” she says. “It has helped, for example, having poetry added to the Stella Prize, but the fact that that had to be advocated for speaks volumes to how minimally poetry is seen by the industry and, therefore, the reading public.
Read: Australian literary festivals in 2025
And there’s even more
Beth Spencer would love for there to be no GST on books and a special book postage rate, Lindy Cameron is gunning for bookshops to take on the books of independent Australian publishers instead of just the big distributors and Tim Coronel mentions a need for printing subsidies.
Meera Govil has several ideas on her wishlist: “Publishers need to spend money on discovering and nurturing debut writers rather than spending their big bucks on already established voices. There also needs to be budgets for author events: publicity materials need to be across all genres and especially for upcoming voices. As an indie bookseller I pay very little attention to BookScan and Nielsen data. Each indie should really have its own bestsellers’ list reflecting the community where it’s located. Finally, yes, small presses need to enter their titles on TitlePage.”
Finally, as ArtsHub‘s Reviews and Literary Editor, my pet peeve is publicists who send press releases and/or books to us without first reading the book reviews that are published on our website. ArtsHub is for the generalist arts reader so, for instance, I would not be commissioning reviews on particularly niche, esoteric or academic texts.
A reminder too, is that as a rule we do not run author interviews on their own unless they are integrated into an overall feature story, so another personal wish is for publicists to stop requesting stand-alone publicity-driven interviews for their clients!
