Letter to the Editor
Alice Grundy
September 20
We don’t publish Letters to the Editor in the print journal, but do so on Spike, when we get them. We’ll be linking to Jeremy’s article in the next few days. In the meantime:
Dear Sophie,
Congratulations on the current issue of Meanjin, I think the cover and matching interior artwork look fantastic. And I was riveted by the pieces about Melbourne, in particular, Rachael Weaver’s piece, ‘The Morgue’.
I wanted to write to you about the Jeremy Fisher article on ‘E-books and the Australian Publishing Industry’. No doubt you’re aware that, with the pace that digital publishing is moving, data on sales and information about platforms changes on a monthly if not weekly basis. As such, I was surprised to see that Mr Fisher’s article quoted statistics on four occasions from 2007 without comparison to more contemporary data. Additionally, Mr Fisher makes the point that: ‘Book sales in the trade market have not decreased appreciably in the face of digital competition–in fact they have increased.’ He then goes on to quote sales figures from 2008. 2010, as any independent or chain bookseller will tell you, has been a very different story. (Although fingers crossed things are on the up after a strong Father’s Day.)
Given the fact that Meanjin has such an active presence in the digital media arena, I thought it unusual to find a piece which seemed out of date.
All the best
Alice Grundy
Our Friends
- Overland
- Alien Onion
- Ampersand Duck
- Andrew McDonald
- A Pair of Ragged Claws
- Arts Victoria
- Australia Council for the Arts
- Ben Eltham
- Bookshow blog
- CAL
- City of Tongues
- Crikey
- darkly wise, rudely great
- David Astle
- Elmo Keep Does Stuff
- The Ember
- Fly the Falcon blog
- Going Down Swinging
- Griffith Review
- Hackpacker
- Harvest
- HEAT
- Island
- Killings blog
- Literary Minded
- Lorraine Crescent
- Lynden Barber
- Mandy Ord
- Marcus Westbury
- Matilda
- Meanland
- Melbourne University Publishing
- Mel Campbell
- The Monthly
- Musings of an Inappropriate Woman
- Oslo Davis
- Paul Callaghan
- Read, Think, Write
- Sleepers Publishing
- Sorrow at Sills Bend
- SPLOG
- Tom Cho
- Virgule
- Wet Ink
- Wheeler Centre
Comments
20 Sep 10 at 12:30
In attempting to define my article as out of date, Alice Grundy offers anecdotal evidence in place of published statistics. I have chosen to go with the numbers. I happily admit that any published piece is out of date as soon as it is set in print, and that change in the e-book market is fast-paced, but I stand by my statistics as representative of my argument. In 2009, book sales in Australia marginally increased. In the USA, they dropped 2%. In the UK they increased marginally. If the numbers for 2010 show a major decrease in Australia, we’ll have to rethink. Alice seems to have missed the point of my article, which was that the change is both gradual and rapid.
...