It's all doom and gloom in the publishing industry these days. Two of the biggest commercial publishing houses, Random House and Penguin merged in 2013, to the alarm of authors and small publishers alike. "Random Penguin", as we like to call it, now controls a quarter of the world's total book publishing, a monopoly that could push smaller publishers out of the market. Added to that is the continued loss of jobs in publishing, the ongoing drop in sales for physical books, and the looming threat of huge retailers like Amazon, which are slowly strangling book stores the world over.
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But here in the fertile ground of Canberra, independent publishers and small press are popping up all over the place, bringing innovative and creative approaches to print publishing that I'm finding particularly exciting. Canberra is in a unique position to support indie publishers, precisely because we don't have large publishing corporations crowding our local scene. In fact, relative to the size of our modest writing industry, we are home to a veritable mass of indie publishers and small press.
There's the more established Editia Books, and Black Mountain Books (an imprint of Halstead Press). And in the past several years, DIY indie publishers have been established that challenge the norms of traditional publishing. Rip publishing is one such outfit, founded and run by Farz Edraki, local writer and radio producer, and Yasmin Masri, artist, designer and producer.
The publishing company has a focus on producing participatory and collaborative content that bend the boundaries of what we assume publishers do – take Show + Tell, a project that encompasses live storytelling, online publishing and podcasting. Selected writers share their stories related to an object, and are published on the rip blog, as well as reading their stories at live events. Just last week, rip released the first in the Show + Tell podcast series, taking the idea one step further.
Another indie publisher putting a unique spin on print publishing is Grapple, founded by local writer and one-part of literary collective Scissors Paper Pen, Duncan Felton. Grapple publishes The Grapple Annual, an anthology of prose, poetry, art and comics where each piece relates to a date. The first was launched in October, and features a slew of Canberran writers.
Publishers like rip and Grapple are leading the way in legitimising small press and innovating publishing practices to be more than the simple production of books for sale. Gone are the days of large publishers holding all the prestige, and doling it out at whim to anointed writers to the detriment of new ideas.
As someone who tried desperately to forge a career in the publishing industry (two interviews with Penguin and a two-week stint at an industry publisher before being made redundant was as far as I got), before giving up for a cushy life in communications, this is heartening. Publishing should be about getting quality words to hungry audiences – not trying to extract profit from a slowly deteriorating print system at the sacrifice of unique voices. And if doing this means never making the big bucks, well, that should be encouraged also – smaller budgets are often the catalyst for revolution.
This publishing renaissance in Canberra is something we should celebrate, and continue to nurture. We have a responsibility to champion the voices of Canberra writers because the national stage is often angled away from our small but burgeoning writing scene.
As with any major industry on the brink of collapse, the death throes of traditional publishing are creating a space in the market for new approaches - it's extremely exciting to be at the starting blocks of this new race, and to see rip and Grapple leading the way.
Zoya Patel is a Canberra writer.