Using this figure and extrapolating from the 3500 applicants for Public Lending Right here, there are at least 2100, maybe 3000, people in Australia who have written one book and either have run out of the spirit to write another, or maybe have encountered such frustrations with contracts, editors, and distributors that it is not worth it to write another.

On the horizon there are probably another 2100 Australians who haven’t written that first book yet, who probably do not see themselves as one-book writers, but who are in for some unpleasant surprises.

I think it is to these two groups – intending writers and one-book writers - that The Australian and New Zealand Writers’ Handbook is addressed.

What does the non-professional but serious writer need from such a handbook? Almost all of the twenty-two contributors seem to believe that the writer requires a certain amount of cheering on. If he doesn’t succumb to discouragement, if he assiduously cleans the smudges from his manuscript pages, and if he accepts that ‘authors, editors and publishers are all human beings, with strengths and weaknesses’, then, he is led to believe, he may succeed. None of the contributors to the Handbook encourages the writer to examine his motives for wanting to be a writer, or deals frankly with the humiliations of promoting oneself as a talented person and the rebuffs which can crush talented as well as untalented authors.

But supposing the readers of the Handbook are incorrigible, what are their professional liabilities and safeguards?

The chapters that deal with a writer’s legal life – defamation, contracts, copyright – are the best in the book. But the bulk of this information consists of simple rules and procedures for self-protection that not only writers but any intelligent person should know, and the finer points of the law which apply exclusively to authors are so fine they can­not be explained well in these short, punchy essays. Many of the legal problems which are not raised here but which writers regularly face (such as how to define ‘fair dealing’ when there is a printed source from which one wants to borrow extensively, or how to check whether the title of one’s to-be-published book or poem has been used before) should be discussed in a volume addressed to a more sophisticated audience than this Handbook is.

It is also important that a writer has some knowledge or the way the publishing business works. Oddly. no one in the Handbook offers any informed criticism of publishers, but the book does offer space to three publishers to put up lively defences against the complaints that they imagine authors do have. One publisher admits that critics of the publishing industry are handicapped by the lack of real statistics, but he does not explain that much of this lack is due to the failure of publishers to cooperate when enquiries are made. Most authors crave simple facts like the probable size of the print-run for their kind of book, or the method of distribution of their book (how many will be sold direct to bookstores and how many sold through distributors or wholesalers), or the expected length of its shelf life. But instead these publishers articles offer descriptions of the author/publisher relationship that reek of special pleading.

Gossip about publishers (which ones are strong in certain fields, which are expanding and which are pulling in their belts) and about their varying reputations for composing fair contracts and behaving in a gentlemanly manner, is especially invaluable to writers who are young and green. Publisher and bookseller Alex Sheppard, poet Tom Shapcott, and literary agent Tim Curnow all offer this kind of subjective assessment of Australian publishers, but they do so too offhandedly, as though afraid of being pernickety. No one orients the writer towards the small publishers or tells him how a smaller operation either may disadvantage him or may provide him with particular kinds of editorial attention he couldn’t expect elsewhere. Small publishers are described, in a revealing put-down, as ‘usually interested in new authors, provided they have writing ability and can present their typescripts in a reasonable format’ - implying, I suppose, that they are not in the market for real talent.

New writers not only need to hear reliable gossip about publishers from authors with experience but they also need to know the ‘tricks of the trade’ that Tom Shapcott leaks in his article. Too few writers (and none of the others in this collection of essays) admit that they practise ploys to catch an editor’s attention or to deal with rival writers. Shapcott, for instance, says that he used to send off two poems at a time, one a dud to make the other look better. He advises that, rather than allow copies of their self-published book to moulder unsold in the bookshops, authors should take them home to save until they are old and famous and can sell them at a high price. He says that if you don’t know where to send a poem you have written, browse through the list of acknowledgements in a recent volume of poems you admire and begin by studying those magazines.

One section of the Handbook gives advice on writing for special audiences – Australian theatre, film and television, radio, children, schools, book reviews. Only Stuart Sayers’ piece on reviewing and Richard Wherrett’s on playwriting give any inkling of how limited writers’ opportunities are in all these areas. The authors of the pieces on radio and television playwriting concede that writers must be largely dependent upon ABC commissions, but they do not caution the reader that the ABC has a very poor ratio of plays commissioned to plays broadcast. The reader is advised to listen to ABC Radio programs on all networks. to see ‘quite clearly ... the national broadcasting system’s needs’. But such needs are very difficult for even a serious listener to assess: if the contributor was able to understand them, he should have spelt them out clearly.

No mention is made of ABC-FM’s recent bold ventures in new types of radio drama. Nor is it mentioned that because Australian reviewers pay no attention to radio drama, most radio writers live in obscurity and that obscurity affects their status as writers and their remuneration.

Given the kind of writer who will be a reader of this Handbook. there are several non-technical but important questions which should have been raised – even if they could not be settled. How, for instance, does a writer deal with an editor who seems to be unsatisfactory? Does he go over his head to the publisher? How can a writer bully a publisher into better distribution for his book, and how can he withstand the publisher’s bullying him into remaindering it prematurely? Given a tough ego, for how long and to how many publishers should one try to flog a manuscript before forcing oneself to reconsider it, rewrite it, or bury it? It’s a pity that the Australian Society of Authors, which has shown in its Handbook just how well it can help authors to handle the mundane business of their careers, neglects here to wave any rallying flags. Just why should authors band together? What concerted action is needed to ensure that authors are paid a fair proportion of the book price? Are Australian authors particularly advantaged or disadvantaged, compared to authors in other countries? The ASA is supposed to be the collective voice of Australian authors, but no mention is made of the contentious issues in the Handbook.

This is the second edition of the Handbook. The first, published in 1975, sold 4000 copies. The new edition of twenty-two articles contains three pieces from the old book which have been only slightly updated, a more specific phrase inserted here and sometimes a possibly derogatory phrase omitted there. Buyers of the first edition have every reason to purchase the second edition as well, if only to appreciate the change of tone which reveals a growing tenacity for writers’ rights and a comparable defensiveness on the part of the publishers. If authors are to keep tabs on changes in the balance of power between authors and publishers, the Directory at the back of the Handbook should have listed the best trade journals and the best how-to-write/what-to­write magazines from other English-speaking countries. The Handbook encourages even hobby writers to regard their work as a commodity that should be marketed professionally, but there are many lessons to be learned about playing the market which this Handbook ignores and which are worth further research.