Cirrus@Austlit

'I want to talk about publishing and writing in Australia today. We have an old publishing industry that clings tightly to some of its early twentieth-century etiquette while dealing with a world in flux. Many of our evergreen habits are likely to be gone soon. We’ve spent years now debating the future of the book and what it might look like in e- and p- formats but we haven’t spoken about enough of the future, really, such as the sale or return policy we extend to our bookseller colleagues in the age of online selling. Or the advance/royalty system we conduct with our authors, 90 per cent of which is largely symbolic and an act of faith rather than a proper financial exchange after the first year or two. Thankfully, we’ve started to stop the waste of excess print runs so as to get unit costs down but that’s because the technology has improved.' (Introduction)