Monday 24 July, 2006

Book diet

The Australian ran a fairly extensive interview with Michael Webster, the creater of Bookscan on the weekend. It's scary to see where a purely market driven approach to publishing gets us (cleaning spots of carpets, dieting, and reading The DaVinci Code, basically).

'In an unguarded moment, Webster tells Review: "I don't think we owe it to writers to publish their work; they've got to meet the criteria of the market." This raises the question: can quality literature thrive in a publishing industry that is increasingly in thrall to the market?'

Which is, of course, the same issue that was raised by the Patrick White rejections a couple of weeks ago. This brings to mind Tim Winton's desire to see his books under the Pan Macmillan (as opposed to Picador) imprint when he joined that company. Now there's an author who could see the writing on the wall. Being called literary these days gets you nowhere in the market place - yet it's a label many authors (yes, me too) crave. I was interested in the comment made in the article that literature was a genre like anyother. The issue is, as Mark Davis asks at the end of the article, is it a genre of greater value? He - like many writers, academics and critics - thinks yes. And it's possible that the general public thinks so too. But that doesn't mean they have the time to read, or the money to buy, 'literary' books in the quantites that are needed to sustain those writers or the publishers who publish them.

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