But hope eternal ever springs within the bookish breast. The ABC have now announced that a new show The Book Programme will air nationally starting on Monday 5 May at 10 pm. The programme will be for half an hour with the emphasis on recently released or about-to-be-released Australian books. I hope that the Publicity Managers of every Australian publisher are jockeying for position, drawing large petty cash advances to woo even with taxed lunches the programme producers and research co-ordinators. The opportunity is there to provide hard facts and controversial programmes, and carry our consuming interest in writing to a wide market. This is exactly the opportunity that writers and publishers and booksellers have been looking forward to. Let it not be wasted.

[DROPCAP] The gladiators have been warring in the dusty arena of the literary debate. Starting in Adelaide and continuing into the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald Carmen Callil, Managing Director of Chatto and Windus and Laurie Muller, General Manager of the University of Queensland Press are locked in classic confrontation over the rights and wrongs of an Australian author being ‘nurtured’ by a local publisher or ‘exploited’ by a London publisher. There is no right and no wrong. There is an author anxious – indeed desperate – for publication. There are publishers here and publishers there. The author or that author’s agent will contact in descending order of attraction as many publishers as possible, hopefully sequentially. The author undoubtedly receives numerous rejections and then in the literary lottery may attract a publisher who is confident enough or game enough to take up that author. It is not a simple question of nationalism or culture or overseas control, it is a question of chance, or random selection, and of market place reaction.

A cursory examination will reveal a confused picture. Morris West is published overseas by Hodder and Stoughton in the UK, Patrick White likewise by Jonathan Cape, Tom Keneally started with Angus and Robertson, published one title with Corgi paperbacks, went to Collins and is now with Hodder and Stoughton. Australia’s impact on the world of tourism and literature is attributed by many to the acquisition by the United States publisher Harper and Row of the rights to publish The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCulloch. Allen and Unwin the feisty Australian arm of a UK publisher has developed with panache and courage new Australian novelists, through the structure of its Vogel awards. Hard battle lines should not be drawn up between Australian publishers and UK or USA based publishers. In many cases the corporate labyrinth makes such definitions useless. The most important factor in the whole controversy is the writer, his or her quality, persistence, and development. Publishers are only as successful as their authors.

There is a law of the jungle which says that the fittest survive. If we provide the right diet for our authors, the right combination of grants and professional publishing infrastructure, if we really can develop export markets, then authors will seek out the best publishers. We should remember that writers are individual crafting artists, not modern-times manipulators of an assembly line. They are the life blood of our industry. We have to transfuse that blood into a growing body of public awareness. To ‘publish’ originally means to ‘make known’. We should perhaps be more aware of the basic role in the publisher/author relationship.

In the talk and the turmoil creativity, risk-taking and commitment have their rewards. The phenomenal publishing success of Albert Facey’s A Fortunate Life is now largely due to the superb publicity and marketing effort of Penguin Books. But the decision to publish Facey was taken by a small West Australian publisher. A Fortunate Life originally appeared under the Fremantle Arts Press imprint and the first copies sold by booksellers in Sydney and Melbourne arrived meticulously and speedily from Perth wrapped in newspaper and love. Such minor miracles, the discovery of a Facey, the emergence of a Carey or a Grenville, are the stimuli which keep writers writing, publishers publishing and the booksellers bookselling. The stimuli must also be developed to keep more readers reading more.