Paper Empires A History of the Book in Australia 1946-2005

" . . . It is highly recommended to anyone who thinks they have a serious interest in the book . . . or would like to discover to discover something of the complexity of the well-springs of the Australian psyche." Biblionews Paper Empires explores Australian book production and consumption from 1946 to the present day, using wide-ranging research, oral history and memoir to explore the worlds of book publishing, selling and reading. After 1945, Australian publishing went from a handful of fledgling businesses to the billion dollar industry of today with thousands of new titles each year and a vast array of imported books. Publishing's postwar expansion began with the baby boom and the increased demand for school texts, with independent houses blossoming during the 1960s and 70s followed by the current era dominated by global conglomerates.

Craig Munro, former publishing manager at UQP, is the author of the award-winning biography Wild Man of Letters: The Story of P.R. Stephensen (1984) and a history of UQP, The Writer’s Press (1998). He won the Barbara Ramsden Award for Editing in 1985 and studied book publishing in Canada and the US on a Churchill Fellowship in 1991. He has been an adviser to the Literature Board of the Australia Council and was the founding chair of the Queensland Writers’ Centre.