The product was there in abundance: a plethora of large illustrated books with little or no artistic, cultural or historical merit, just great chunks of glossy colorful trivia backed by huge advertising budgets and saturation distribution.

Like any shopkeeper I won’t knock back a sale and I stocked and sold some of these books with little pleasure or excitement. It is disappointing that with few exceptions these books are the output of the few large Australian owned publishers such as Angus and Robertson, Lansdowne-Rigby and Currey O’Neill. The bulk of the ‘serious’ publishing is left to the multi­ nationals such as Penguin and Allen and Unwin. The idea of the book as product was perpetuated in a marketing campaign mounted in Victoria before Christmas.

A cute and catchy jingle with a cute cartoon on late night TV exhorted Victorians to take a look at a book in general and then at some specific books. Some of the books advertised were Footrot Flats, Elizabeth R, The Australian Car Owners’ Manual and Hugh Johnson’s Wine Companion. The irony was that a large portion of the reputed $50,000 cost came from the Literature Board of the Australian Council. While the idea of promoting books in general may be laudable, the involvement of the Literature Board in promoting a car manual or Footrot Flats comic books seems somewhat ludicrous.

The Literature Board spends hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in the form of grants to authors and publishers. It does, therefore, have a legitimate interest to see that the books it has been involved in get wide distribution and promotion.

The Children’s Book Council mounts a promotional campaign for Australian children’s books each year centered around its annual awards. As such the campaign serves to promote and reward excellence in children’s publishing. It is also very successful in generating sales for publishers and booksellers and royalties for authors.

The best the Literature Board and the National Book Council could muster was some trite generic advertising tagged with plugs for mediocre Australian and English books. Again the book as product.

When I think of the Christmas best sellers at Readings they are mostly Australian books: Michael Leunig’s Bag of Roosters (A&R), Frank Moorhouse’s collection of contemporary Australian short stories State of The Art (Penguin), Beverley Farmer’s Milk, Robert Drewe’s Bodysurfers and Sarah Dowse’s West Block (Penguin).

A few years ago two book promotions were undertaken in England aimed at widening the audience for both established writers like Graham Greene and for younger, lesser known authors. Both campaigns were very successful and were particularly so in the areas where it had been thought people were not interested.

My colleagues often say that Readings can sell ‘good’ books but that people won’t buy them out in the suburbs, and it seems to me that The Take A Look At A Book campaign was partly based on that assumption.

In 1983 Penguin Australia dramatically expanded its Australian publishing program, especially in the area of fiction. It also came to an arrangement with the small Australian publisher McPhee Gribble to co-publish under a joint imprint. Penguin gained the additional editorial and product­ ion expertise of McPhee Gribble, who in turn gained access to Penguin’s excellent distribution network. Consequently, in December alone Penguin published six original works of Australian fiction. As well as original work Penguin have been actively getting out of print fiction back into print. In March they reprint the first two books in Martin Boyd’s Langton quartet, The Cardboard Crown and A Difficult Young Man. Also, William Dick’s A Bunch Of Ratbags, Australia’s answer to West Side Story, is reprinted in March.

Some people might remember Kevin Mackie’s book The Cure based on the author’s heroin addiction. He has written another book based on his experience in prison and on the criminal fringe. At the moment the book is looking for a publisher. Mackie’s ‘agent’, Richard Lee, says that the manuscript is pretty powerful and may frighten off most publishers.

Peter Mathers, author of Trap and The Wort Papersand a Miles Franklin award winner, has a collection of short stories about to be published by an Adelaide publisher Words and Vision. Peter also claims to have completed a novel, which may be published later this year.

Allen and Unwin publish later this year the papers from the Meanjin conference, St Petersburg or Tinsel Town, examining the differences cultural, political and historical between Melbourne and Sydney. Editor, Jim Davidson, has apparently commissioned a few new pieces and a number of the papers have been specially rewritten for the book. There is plenty of diversity in Australian publishing. I would be much happier if its good aspects got more attention. Of course popular publishing is quite legitimate. If you realize that Albert Facey’s marvellous book, A Fortunate Life, has sold over 100,000 copies, then you understand that good books can be popular too.