“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”
— Samuel Johnson quoted in Boswell’s “Life of Johnson.
I worked on my book proposal for almost a year and a half, under the constant tutelage of my agent, David Miller. David isn't the gum-chewing money-grubber that the word "agent" may conjure up. He is my first reader David Weinberger's New Book via Naked Shel and Robert
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Life is a Random Draw: Dragon Tamers
Damian Kringas reads the riot act to the country's literary elite.
Recently I met an old woman in a bookshop. She was looking through the new release section. "Why is every book over $25?" she asked with a sad face. I don't work in a bookstore, but I instantly felt her pain. Books are far more expensive than they should be.
There is little monetary compassion in the literary world: you're either in the disposable income loop or not. I'm a small independent publisher, so out where I am, you can't even see the loop. Outsiders are regularly ignored, abandoned, laughed at, so I felt her pain. And I took the opportunity to explain why new, mainstream books often find themselves on the ugly side of $25.
One, it's not GST. Two, it's not the internet. Three, modern publishing is unlike most industries, in that products are manufactured solely on the Russian roulette principle. That is, for every six books published one will take off. And the one that works has to pay for all the ones that didn't. It's sort of like having a caravan-load of unemployed relatives over for dinner every night. Every book that sells has to pay for all the flops and slow-movers that end up on sale in the middle of a shopping centre walkway. Four, the consumer is the last in a line of hands which juggle a literary work from idea to shop shelf. First there's the author, then the literary agent, publisher, distributor, bookseller and finally the customer. Everyone before the eager reader takes their sizeable cut.
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