A Sydney author – I'll call her Rebecca – vowed never to write another book after the deranging experience of publishing her first. She's using a pseudonym because one day she might change her mind; the notoriously small Australian publishing industry does not tend to look with favour on authors who complain. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
When Rebecca was proofing her debut – a work of nonfiction published by one of the big five – she discovered that a pivotal chapter had been cut. "I thought it was a mistake, that it had somehow been left out of the papers they'd sent," she says. "Turns out they'd deliberately excised it and thought I wouldn't notice."
The proposed cover art for the book, which was set in one country, featured an animal native to another – and when the book went to a copy editor, the questions Rebecca got back were "absolutely out of touch". References to hunting were queried on the basis they might offend vegetarians. Big mistakes slipped through the first print run and needed to be corrected in the second, including the name of a major character, which changed suddenly halfway through. "I'd assumed the publisher would take care of these things," Rebecca says. "It felt like they were trying to shove me out the door and get the book out."
Her story is alarming but not uncommon in Australia's publishing industry, which on the whole seems hellbent on getting books to market as quickly as possible. Some authors, like Rebecca, get stuck in a production schedule that makes no sense to them. "There was always the next deadline looming," she says. "I felt like they were trying to pressure me to just roll with it."
Other books get on the fast track to take advantage of Christmas sales or the news cycle – but not many go to market faster than The Mushroom Tapes did last year. Erin Patterson was found guilty of murder in July 2024 – the same month it was announced that Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein were working on a book about the trial. Just four months later, The Mushroom Tapes was published. As with many nonfiction books that are chasing a news cycle, the authors probably spent more time touring the book than they did writing it.
Media attention was lavished on The Mushroom Tapes, which remained on prominent display in bookshops months after release – but most authors aren't so lucky, struggling to make their books visible in a crowded market.
"I felt sorry for my editor. She was clearly stressed out and dealing with the expectations of her managers," Rebecca says.
Alan Sheardown of Perth's New Edition Books acknowledges that the problem of an overcrowded market is not a new one. "If anything, I'm being shown slightly fewer books than I used to … but I'm always shown more books than I could possibly stock. I have to make decisions about what I want to support, and what I think can sell."
Prize listings, BookTok and reviews help him sort through the boxes that arrive, and he and his staff read as many as they can but it's impossible to keep up with them all. His impression is that it's harder for "new and unusual voices" to break through because of the enormous economic pressures bearing not just on Australian writers but everyone working in the local book industry.
Those pressures are multifaceted. While the establishment of Writing Australia offered overdue support to a chronically underfunded industry, printing costs continue to rise even as book prices remain largely the same; it's no wonder we've lost so many independent publishers. We've lost a lot of independent bookshops too, which can't compete with the prices of Amazon and big-box discount stores. Prominent figures in the industry, including Richard Flanagan, have been calling for government intervention in the form of the price-fixing measures that are common in Europe.
In an industry under strain, product tends to be prioritised over process. I've been working as a critic and editor in Australia for more than 20 years and the story I hear from people who work in the industry is that they are being asked to do more with less, and to do it more quickly.
"Writers are never paid for our labour. We're paid instead for the product," says author Jennifer Mills.
NielsenIQ BookData provided to the Guardian in December recorded more than 9,400 Australian print books scheduled for publication in 2024 – that number includes spiral bound-books, self-published books, textbooks and foreign imports rereleased with an Australian ISBN. What it doesn't include are self-published ebooks, an area of huge growth. According to Nielsen, that 2024 number was actually down 7% on the average over the last 10 years – but there's something close to consensus in the industry that we are still publishing more books than we should, and pushing them out so quickly that the quality of Australian literature is being eroded.
Talk to authors, talk to prize judges, talk to critics and to editors and you hear versions of the same story: wonderful books are being written and published in Australia but many more go to market too early. What might have been excellent books are marred by shoddy copy editing, flat-out errors, cursory proofreading – and, in some cases, an obvious lack of revision.
"I felt sorry for my editor," Rebecca says. "She was clearly stressed out and dealing with the expectations of her managers."
Alice Grundy, the managing editor of the Australia Institute Press and scholar of Australian publishing, says the experience of Rebecca and her editor is not unusual. She has tuned into complaints about publishing.