Cirrus@Austlit

'Most Australian books ever written are now out-of-print and unavailable to readers. That includes local histories and memoirs, beloved children’s titles – and even winners of our most glittering literary prizes.

'Untapped is a collaboration between authors, libraries and researchers, working together to identify Australia’s lost literary treasures and bring them back to life!

'We’re digitising culturally important out-of-print Australian novels, histories, memoirs, poetry and more. They’ll be licensed into public libraries around the country, and our library partners will promote them so everyone has an opportunity to rediscover these engaging, enlightening texts. And most of them will be made available for sale as ebooks too!

'This project will create a new income source for Australian authors, who currently have few options for getting their out-of-print titles available in libraries. And it supports arts workers affected by COVID, who we’re hiring to assist us with the proofreading necessary to get the scanned books up to library quality.

'It will also support vital research into the economic value of out-of-print rights for authors, the value of libraries’ book promotion efforts, and the relationship between library lending and sales.

'The results will be fed into public policy discussions about how we can best support Australian authors and literary culture. And we’re hopeful that this new investment and attention will cause some of these important books to get another look from commercial publishers too.' (https://untapped.org.au/)

'Authors are always put at the centre of Australia’s copyright debates, grounding claims for more rights or fewer exceptions. Despite that, our law has no explicit rights to protect authors in the case of unfair, unclear or outdated contacts. I criticised this state of affairs in the last spring issue of Overland, making a case for Australia finally joining the majority of the world’s nations by granting authors appropriate baseline protections.'  (Introduction)

'Who makes the money in publishing? Nobody. This often repeated dark joke highlights a serious issue. The most recent figures show that Australian authors earn just $12,900 a year from writing work (the median, at $2,800, was even worse). Indeed, authors can gross less than $5,000 for Miles Franklin-nominated titles that took two or more years to write.'  (Introduction)

'But the bullshit I’m interested in right now is that populating Australia’s copyright reform debates.

'A great deal of this bullshit is motivated by good intentions – most notably, the desire to sustain writers’ incomes in an era of precipitous, disastrous decline.' (Introduction)