Vegemite says no

We're doing an Aussie A-Z with the fabulous Heath McKenzie, following on from the mighty The Australian Twelve Days of Christmas.Our A-Z is due out in May. It is one of those childrens books that adults will adore as well

Under "V" we wanted to display Vegemite. Kraft said no! We thought it would have been excellent product placement - so we were surprised, very surprised when the firm "no" came back. Vegemite is now American owned. Would we have got a more sympathetic hearing if it was Australian owned? And Vegemite is also now happens to be a banned import into the US.

An entirely good season (list)

My sister-in-law Janine (former opera singer, now real estate agent) says you can't expect a completely good season of anything, theatre or opera. It's an unreasonable expectation to expect a creative performance group to sustain it across a season. I'm hoping the next season of the Malthouse will prove her wrong. And I'm wondering whether a season is the theatrical equivalent of a publisher's list. What strike rate do you need to have a successful year as a publisher?

2006 has certainly been Michael Heyward and Text's year. Two Booker shortlists. The Weathermakers. Peter Temple, now a best-seller in the UK. The list goes on. Clever strategic quality publishing across the entire list - I saw in Borders the other night that text have republished the much praised "The Dig Tree" by Sarah Murgatroyd. Nice publishing and a perfect fit with Text.

the myth of Melbourne weather

Melbourne gets half the rainfall of Sydney, fewer rainy days than Sydney or Brisbane and more days over 30° than Sydney. Sydney gets twice as many thunderstorms.

measures of change

As a mark of how rapidly our culture changes, there are now 23,000 Sudanese Australian but a decade ago there were only 2600.

Jindabyne - movie

Stunning.

Like in "My Father's Den", it is a very local story (despite its Carver origins) in the way Lawrence has created it but very much a story anybody could relate to.

I've read the short story, listened to the song, and now I've seen the movie. And I found it a fascination transformation of a story line and I really liked listening to the echoes of the song and short story in the film and the way the film has to fill in the gaps.

One question was: why Gabriel Byrne and Laua Linney? Both of whom I thought were superb. Do we lack the depth of acting talent?

Another question was the girl being Aboriginal. In Shadows in the Mirror we went in the opposite direction. But I felt, although it wavered at moments, Lawrence carried off the waves set off by the aboriginality of the girl.

Halloween

It is interesting in watching and recording how a fast changing culture like ours develops. The gradual seeping into our children's lives of Halloween is a recent change. Halloween was once a ghastly Americanism. Now we keep sweets in the cupboard. I like the American talent of celebrating traditions. I nailed a Christmas wreath to the door this December. A wreath was rarely seen when I was growing up and has really come courtesy of Hollywood.

The Long Tail - the start

I've started to read The Long Tail.( I've just finished Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and I like to have one business book on the go (a slow go) at a time.). Fascinating. And as a fascinating side-note I was interested in how the book idea evolved on Chris Anderson's blog: "I worked through many of the trickier conceptual and articulation issues in public, on my blog at thelongtail.com. The usual process would go like this: I'd post a half-baked effort at explaining how the 80/20 Rule is changing, for instance, and then dozens of smart readers would write comments, emails, or their own blog posts to suggest ways to improve it. Somehow this wonky public brainstorming managed to attract an average of more than 5,000 readers a day." Fascinating as it is showing how the publishing of information is changing and that there is still room for the gravitas of the book.

more accidental spam poetry

speciously
it may be turned,
and however puzzling it may be to answer it,
found one print from a famous design of Carlo Maratti,
who died about entertained by the majority of the company.
This foolish, and often of a gentleman's dancing.
But the greatest advantage of dancing well is,
knowledge, to answer me point by point.
I have seen a book, entitled picture, drawn by yourself, at different sittings
for though, as it is young men who if they have wit themselves, are pleased with it,
and if
and respected,
is not meant by the words GOOD COMPANY

Triguboff

Australia is an interesting landscape to be publishing in as it is fluid and changing. There was a comment in a recent Fin Review from Harry Triguboff criticizing the English language test for migrants:

"We need workers here. These are people who do the work we don't want to do. If we start making them do tests, we will bring the same sort of people as ourselves. That worries me."

My great grandfather in the early 1930s was involved in using the dictation test to prevent Egon Kisch landing In Melbourne. Australia is a very different place now. Many countries expend effort to make themselves more like themselves. I like Triguboff's idea of optimistically look for change.

I'm also interested in the way the Spanish (having lost the battle) are winning the war in North America as the average American would rather not do without a gardner or a hotel maid.

accidental spam poetry

I'm enjoying the Ern O'Malley poetic quality of the words put into spam to get through the filters. Here is a sample:

presume,
too various and extensive
to be much attended to:
and may not am neither of
a melancholy nor a cynical disposition,
and am as willing expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries
and by saying WELL,
AND opinion of one's own
whereas it is only the decent and genteel manner

Ahmet Ertegun (founder of Atlantic Records) story from the NY Times

David Geffen once asked Mr. Ertegun how to make money in the music business. Ertegun got up from his chair, hunched over and shuffled slowly across the room. Mr. Geffen didn’t understand, so Ertegun did it twice more. Finally he explained: “ ‘If you’re lucky, you bump into a genius, and a genius will make you rich in the music business,’ ”

Geffen recalled. “Ahmet bumped into an awful lot of geniuses."

cork dork

I came across this phrase in a Michael Harden column as in " a wine list with little to dazzle the cork dork".

is careful generosity an oxymoron?

In the WBN report on Christmas sales Peter Blake offered a very measured generosity to the broader publishing community:

"Penguin sales director Peter Blake is happy not just for Penguin, and for the other publishers distributed by United Book Distributors"

Jaws the first blockbuster

Rather than being opened in only a few theatres and then more and more as it succeeded, Jaws was opened in many theatres at once. And it was the first film to be supported by extensive advertising. And it worked. And it was the first Blockbuster. And it is interesting to ponder (like Pooh) on how the blockbuster style has influenced publishing (though no where near to the extent it's influenced Hollywood). It's getting to be a case of sell big or don't sell at all. People are reading more of fewer books. Though curiously publishing output hasn't shrunk. And of course out goes the successful mid-list author for the big publishers, which gives the independents opportunities.

Tom Shones's Blockbuster is worth a read by anybody in publishing I reckon. And it comes with a neat subtitle: How Hollywood learned to stop worrying and love the summer.

MUP breaks away from bookshop!

Always interesting reading in the Oz (last Saturday not this)

Apparently, MUP "broke away from the university bookshop" in 2003, foregoing the funding contribution that came from the profits of the bookshop and instead, in a bold move, embraced generous funding direct from the university and made its own accounting more transparent - even the losses. Kind of a reverse strategy to that of Milo Minderbinder, who was condemned for taking a contract out on bombing his own aerodrome - until he threw open his books and showed that he was making a profit.

Oz lit

We now have only one professor of Australian literature according to the Oz on Saturday, and students aren't interested in doing honours in Oz Lit. As mentioned, in passing, many of the students who would have been doing honours in Oz Lit are now in the creative writing courses. It's better to do than to comment but I do think the cultural cringe is back. Too often, too much of the time, we're looking over our shoulder to see what's happening over there.

graffiti

I am a fan of graffiti. I like the idea of the city as a canvas, with someone offering something for the creative enjoyment of others without expectations of fame or pay. I like the quirky oddness of it, the unexpectedness:









Fitzroy is fortunately rich in street art.

good titles through translation

The following title translations appealed to me from some not so recent international bestseller llsts:

From Sweden there was a title that translated as "Better Self-esteem!". It seemed to be that the promise of the book might have been understated in an admirably Scandinavian way.

Then in Spain there's "Sabine en came viva" which has been translated as "Sabina in Vivid Flesh".

Melbourne Weeky's article

There's a good article in the Melbourne Weekly this week on independent publishing (in Melbourne) in which we got a small mention in the side column headed "independent success stories". Well that's rather nice. It's interesting reading with many quotable quotes and much food for thought. One thing that struck me was Text's Michael Heyward's focus on the writer's rather than the reader's end of the spectrum. He says "we won't be doing the right thing by all the talent in this country unless we have a vigorous range of publishers. The more we publish, the better it is for Australian writers." And he talks about the Canongate partnership as being for "the benefit of writers". Our emphasis tends to be at the opposite end - on the readers. The differences between the independents, in fact the differences between publishers, are a good thing. It means we're all offering something different. But I also wonder whether there is a difference because black dog is a children's publisher and in children's publishing the reader comes first. I'm sure it's not because Michael doesn't value readers and we certainly do value writers (immensely) and strive to house a writing community, but the difference in emphasis is interesting.

Kalbacher Klapperschlange

Carole Wilkinson's Dragonkeeper has won the Klabacher Klapperschlange the only German children's choice award. The children's awards don't come with a cheque for the author nor have a huge impact on sales for the publisher, but are sweeter for all that. Dragonkeeper won in the KOALA awards and was short-listed in the YABBA and Garden of the Purple Dragon won the WAYBRA but special congratulations to Carole for also reaching out and touching the hearts of German children as well. The award was given on the 11 November in Kalbach, a small village in the Rhein Main area. Here's a link to the website

And here's the German cover:



PS Klapperschlange is rattlesnake in German

Bachar Houli

According to today's Age 18-year-ol Bachar Houli is the first devout Muslim to sign up for an AFL club (Essendon). It is an interesting and hopeful sign of how Australia is changing. As a 12 year old, Houli didn't tell his parents he was playing football till he'd won three trophies, in his first season. The AFL draft camp happened during Ramadan and Houli after consulting his sheik broke his fast for a few days. Maybe one day the camp will be deliberately scheduled outside Ramadan.

I did wonder seeing the Ages careful use of the words "devout Muslim" if there were any Muslims who had played or were playing for the AFL who were not devout

Further to flying saucers

The French version of flying saucer is cigare volant, or flying cigar. Bonny Doon Vineyard in California has a red that it has named "Le Cigare Volant" in honour of a French vine growing village. Here's the story:

This particular wine is Graham Randall's tribute to Rhone Valley's Chateauneuf-du-Pape. where the winemakers, who in 1954 had an ordinance passed to prevent flying cigars from flying over or landing near their vineyards. Any flying cigars that did so would be impounded.

As I recall the story is written on the back of the label and can be read through the glass, but it is a long time since I drank the one bottle I once brought back from a visit to Bonny Doon. I can also recommend Bonny Doon's ice wine as an effective way of leaving a tasting four sheets to the wind. Randall doesn't wait for California to freeze he just puts the grapes in a big freezer.


They also have a website I lke a lot.

Malouf and Shakespeare

I liked the echo that reading Malouf's article produce from my reading Wood's biography "In Search of Shakespeare". Malouf is lucid and insightful, as always. Having been taught Shakespeare as great literature, and not enjoyed it, it is a pleasure to learn that Shakespeare didn't treat it as such. Jonosn was laughed at for publishing his plays — as "works"; Shakespeare's poetry was what he thought worth publishing. To quote Malouf: "Playgoing in the 1590s was like cinemagoing in the 1930s, cheap popular entertainment with no pretensions to being more. Hollywood in the '30s, with its studio and star system, might be as good a model as we can light on for the Shakespeare worked in. Plays rapidly produced week in, week out, to serve a regular audience; most of them got together by groups working in collaboration; most dispensable and soon lost."

The article is from David Malouf's speech to the World Shakespeare 2006 Congress and is rich reef of literary insights and it is reprinted in full in "Best Australian Essays 2006", edited by Drusilla Modjeska, Black Inc, $27.95

the Republic

in 1960 more Australians believe in flying saucers (35 per cent) than favored a republic (28 per cent).

business plans

Henry Rosenbloom of Scribe after building up and selling a successful printing business, now eschews business plans for Scribe. We seem to be going in the opposite direction. We're doing more planning and budgeting as time goes. We feel we need to be a successful and profitable business to thrive as a publisher. The planning and budgeting is like weeding the garden. But we don't want to loose that flexibility and intuitiveness that's an independent publishers competitive advantage.

La Mama

I'm in an old-news-cutting space. Frank, actor, author and scriptwriter, sometimes masquerading as the black dog accountant, hand me the Age 4 November this morning with an article by Alison Crogan about the threat to La Mama funding from Oz Co. La Mama;'s $170,000 funding has been put on notice. It seems absurd when multinational publishers get grants that the innovative bedrock of our culture can be threatened to be gouged in such a way. From a funding point of view it may be unfortunate that innovation has gone hand in hand with political dissent. That leaves a conservative government with little reason to invest in the arts and labor governments able to take the arts for granted.

quoting Michael Kantor

"Theatre has atrophied." While there are 3.5 million Melburnians only 25,000 of them consider themselves theatre goers. "We are not offering or selling entertainment, we are selling theatre. Getting into the cultural imagination of those people is a long process. … We have to back risk because risk is at the very heart of theatre. Your build strategies that cushion and support the main purpose, which is the artistic endeavour on the stage.

So risk defines artistic endeavour and also happens to define business.

ABC

I ripped out an article from the Australian which I've just rediscovered scrunched in the bottom of my bag. It is Christopher Pearson's "ABC's vehicle of invective" from the November 4-5. According to Pearson, ABC Books has "unfair advantages, the capacity to skew the market and perhaps to cherry-pick particular authors". But then on Pearson's figures the ABC is a very small percentage of the Australian book market at $1.58 million. So though he is going in to bat for the commercial publishers the ABC doesn't seem to be much of a threat as it comprises such a small percentage of the publishing marketplace. I would think that publishers see ABC Enterprises as another outlet through which to sell books rather than as a threat, and ABC publishing adds diversity to the market place. which is something Australian publishing can always do with.

Oz story telling on TV - the difficulties of mapping the culture

CSI cost $US4 million to make for each epidsode but only $80,000 for 9 to screen; but McLeod's Daughters costs the network $500,000 per episode. Says it all really.

pollies language

I hadn't realised that Rumsfield was a master of the American language in the tradition of General Westmoreland and Dan Quale:

"I believe what I said yesterday; I don't know what I said, but I know what I think … and I assume that's what I said."

"I would not say that the future is less predictable than the past - I think the past was not predictable when it started."

"There will be some things that people will see. There will be some things people won't see. And life goes on."

"There are things that we know that we know. There are known unkowns … things that we now know that we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

And here's a nice link for some Qualisms

internet marketing

It failed for Snakes on Planes (the description of building the campaign sounded really good, it just didn't sell tickets). But it seems to working for Borat. Interesting.

12 Days reveiw from The Courier Mail

I loved this review. It hit the nail on the head as to why we wanted to publish the book:

THERE is not a frosted window, a sleigh ride or a mulled wine in sight in a new release children's picture book about Christmas. What a relief.
Every Christmas season, we are presented with books about the festive time for our children featuring flannelette pyjamas, hot cocoa and songs about mistletoe and snow. When the mozzies are buzzing, the sun biting and the dinner table features crispy salad and cool drinks, these tales might be lovely, but are hardly the ticket to getting into the spirit of the season.
A book by young illustrator Heath McKenzie is a timely Australian Christmas gift. The folk song The Australian Twelve Days of Christmas is cheekily, colourfully illustrated with a deft paintbrush and a keen sense of humour.
There are several variations of the Australian Twelve Days of Christmas, but this one includes ``On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a kookaburra up a gum tree''. The kooka is joined by critters including four cuddling koalas, 11 emus kicking (AFL balls), seven possums playing (PlayStation) and eight flies a feasting (on pie and plum pud).
The result of reading this picture book to a little one is sure to be more than a single giggle.
McKenzie, who has illustrated five books published in the past nine months, has cleverly included snappy, interesting facts about the animals included in his countdown list at the back of the book, so that children are informed as well as entertained.
Jane Fynes-Clinton/Courier Mail

Bloom report quote

"It's never been easier to publish a novel, or harder to sell one - and, hence, never more difficult for publishers to take a risk on unknown authors." Bloom partners www.bloompartners.com.au

crappy sounding English

A billboard ad for a major Melbourne private school reads …"I love the subject choice" next to a photo of a student. Apart from being not very believable, it's crappy sounding English. Surely the idea that is to be conveyed is that the student will love the (large) choice of subjects they have to choose from rather than the particular subjects some administrator has chosen to include in the curriculum. And it sounds pompous.

Many writers (and publishers) frown on the present tense.

Princeton Professor emeritus Robert Fagles's new translation is in the present tense: "I think it's a poem about heroism and empire, about the glory of imperial hopes and the pain of having imperial hopes dashed.... I wanted to convey something about the modern understanding of war, and then about a man, an exile, a common soldier left terribly alone in the field of battle," Fagles says. "Aeneas is like Clint Eastwood, like Gary Cooper, a warrior and a worrier. He changes into the heroic tragic man, duty and endure, endure and duty."

sayings

a new saying I heard recently: "don't be part of the crowd, be your own act"

An independent - criteria by ARIA

"Solo artists and groups are eligible. Album and single recordings are eligible. The nominated recording must be released by either an ARIA Levy II Member or a Member, provided that such member is not part of a multinational corporation.

Recordings for which the production costs are funded either:
(a) by a Levy Member; or
(b) by a local license or distribution deal; or
(c) through an overseas licensing or distribution deal are not eligible.

Distribution in Australia must be undertaken by an independent ARIA member. For the sake of clarity, this excludes Levy Members or any members that are part of a multinational corporation."

ARIA

It was entertaining watch the ARIA awards. The whole thing was a lot of fun and nicely Australian. A couple of personal thoughts:
The Hill Top Hoods: who thanked the stations who played Australian music becasue they wanted to not because they legislatively had to.
Bernard Fanning: "a creative artist needs self-doubt" statement. Food for thought.
I wondered what the definition of independent was, and how it stacked up against the way it is used in the book trade (both for bookshops and publishers).
Liked the "breakthrough" awards.
Congrats to Eskimo Joe among others: Nice work guys.

Maybe we can have book awards that match the style of these one day.

just in case anybody has missed a reference to this link

and go to Truth About Publishing 2nd Edition

In the bestseller lists

We're in the Neilsen bestseller lists for the first time, well at least the first time in month of publication. Heath's Australian Twelve Days of Xmas is number five on the children's list. 'Course I think it's a little beauty. It's a very entertaining and clever piece of cultural mapping and its very very funny. That boy has such a sense of humour.

Flaubert quote

I like this quote from Flaubert: "style is the lifeblood of thought" - and the idea that playing with language helps us tackle difficult and complex thoughts.

Aboriginal kitsch

From the Sydney Morning Herald: Paul Keating has called the naming of East Darling Harbour as Barangaroo (after Bennelong's wife) as Aboriginal kitsch, with it's unfortunate echo of kangaroo. Rejected alternatives were Cadigal Cove, Eora Bay. The name the place earned in the Great Depression was the Hungry Mile.

KOALA awards

Congratulations to Carole Wilkinson for winning the KOALA older readers award last Friday. I went up to Taronga Park Zoo for the announcement on Friday and stayed for lunch. The spontanous cheer from the audience when Dragonkeeper's win was announced left Carole almost speechless. This book has an extraordinary power to reach out and touch people's hearts. It's a book without pretention and the more powerful for it.

The event was humble (in the better sense of the word) and humbling, It was superbly orchestrated - I've not seen a book event better done, or prepared for. I was impressed when Val Noake started with an acknowledgement that we were on traditional Aboriginal land and paid respect to the elders, past, present and future. That heralded the humility and the inclusiveness of the event. Every school in the auditorium was acknowledged and every school let out an affirming cheer as their name was read out. There were lots of authors and illustratos lining the front row. Matt Dray had flown down from northern Queensland with Dougal. There was a Hall of Fame for the books that had appeared many times on the short list but never actually got over the line for a gong. A neat way of acknowledging those really consistent performers. Felice persuaded the kids to do an exquisie slo-mo of a crowd cheering one of their own on to do a slow mo specky. (Morris Gleitzman was a bit of smart arse about it when he came up next but that's Morris.) It was excellent to catch up with Richard Tulloch. We went to the same school and during a brief stint at Penguin I assisted Mr Biffy's Battle along its way through the publishing process. He's spending half his time in Amsterdam. All up an excellent event.

an interesting juxtapostion of quotes I found on the web

If I were in this business only for the business, I wouldn’t be in this business.
- Samuel Goldwyn

If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.
- Irvin S. Cobb

Dragon Moon

Georgina (13) has just finished reading the draft of Dragon Moon, the sequel to Dragonkeeper/Garden of the Purple Dragon. We were supposed to cooking together (at her instigation) but I'd realise I was doing all the work and I was alone in the kitchen - she was back in the bedroom reading, "but Dad I'm just at a really good bit." She finished later that afternoon. When I told her this was the last story about Ping, she said, "But that's so sad."

It's a corker of a story.

Macbeth postscript

Somebody to me in conversation that David Stratton had suggested that one of the flaws of Wright's Macbeth was the Worthington was too young to convey a sense of a good man tempted and gone bad. And retrospectively that resonated with me.

Macbeth

I went to see the Geoffrey Wright's Macbeth with my friend Chris. Fabulous production values. Very gritty and sexily grubby as you expected from Geoffrey Wright. And I was delighted by the idea of Macbeth being translated to Melboune. And it was very Melbourne. But for me I didn't enjoy it as much as I was trying to. I was always one step behind the actors figuring out the dialogue and for Shakespeare to work as a production I've got to be in it.

Chris who is in the film industry says that we lack the gravitas as actors. The English can somehow pull it off and who knows what the magic ingredient is. Heritage? Voice projection? (There's just too much shouting in Australian production of Shakespeare for my taste.)

Yet we do fabulous of humor + tragedy - in films like Kenny and Priscilla. We need dry, laconic and ironic

buying

I've started to come across "buy" as an operative word in publishing:

"You have to buy a lot of books in order to have some success. When you have success everyone forgets all the books you bought that didn't work."
Bill Massey, new editorial director of Orion's trade list, in an article in The Bookseller with a line under the heading that reads in part, "Bill Massey is back … and buying for Orion."

And from the Age, a little while ago:
"Heyward said that publishers had 'lost their way' by not buying, editing and selling Australian fiction to the extent they should."

Broometime

I've just finished Anne Coombs and Susan Varga's Broometime. I started it in Brrome and I've been stringing the reading of it out to stretched out that holiday feeling. Maryann worked on Adland with Anne when Mary was at Reed. I think I may have even done one of the proofreads, anyhow I remember reading it in proofs, and I was looking forward to Broometime but it was pulled off the market almost on release. Anne and Susan had mentioned the names of some Aborigines who had recently died and the Broome Aboriginal community were unhappy. The corrected edition seemed to just leak back on to the market. So the book was handicapped on release.; the publicity knee-capped. So maybe it has never done as well as it should have. I don't know how Anne and Susan resolved the problem with the community. People who are dying and have recently died are still mentioned in the revised edition. Have they changed the names? Used psuedonyms? It's an awkward issue to resolve graceful. It's given me a sense though, in a small way, of how different the Aboriginal approach can be and the challenges of this sort of writing and publishing where communities meet.

racy language

I just came across this lovely piece of racing language: "favourite by the length of the straight".