Book Publishing in Australia A Living Legacy

Publishing is an industry steeped in rules and conventions, controlled by laws and contractual agreements, and heavily invested in practices of careful production and reproduction. But it is also currently undergoing drastic change. Digital technologies have reshaped the practices of writing, editing, typesetting, printing, distributing and buying books. And as political movements like #metoo ripple through the creative industries, the social implications of legacy processes of cultural production and valuation are being re-evaluated. This collection of essays draws together contributions from established and emerging scholars and industry practitioners to explore contemporary Australian publishing’s relationship to the past. How does knowledge transfer occur within and between presses? How do gender and race shape participation in the industry? And how can scholars, librarians, and publishers work together to improve and future-proof the industry?

Aaron Mannion is associate publisher at Vignette Press. He is deputy chair of the Small Press Network and co-convener of the Independent Publishing Conference’s academic day. His work has been published in Wet Ink, The Sleepers Almanac, Island and elsewhere. Millicent Weber is a Lecturer in English at the Australian National University. She researches the intersections between live and digital literary culture, and is the author of Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals including Continuum and Convergence and literary journal Overland, and co-edited Publishing Means Business: Australian Perspectives (Monash University Publishing, 2017).