Australia is publishing books too quickly – and everyone is losing out

‘Australia’s publishing industry on the whole seems hellbent on getting books to market as quickly as possible.’ Illustration: Getty image Thanks to rushed deadlines, financial pressure and overworked staff, titles are going to market before they’re ready – and then sliding from view immediately By Catriona Menzies-Pike A Sydney author – I’ll call her Rebecca – vowed never to write another book after the deranging experience of publishing her first. She’s using a pseudonym because one day she might change her mind; the notoriously small Australian publishing industry does not tend to look with favour on authors who complain. When Rebecca was proofing her debut – a work of nonfiction published by one of the big five – she discovered that a pivotal chapter had been cut. “I thought it was a mistake, that it had somehow been left out of the papers they’d sent,” she says. “Turns out they’d deliberately excised it and thought I wouldn’t notice.” Best Australian books out in June: a buzzy novel, gripping nonfiction and an extremely unusual debut Read more The proposed cover art for the book, which was set in one country, featured an animal native to another – and when the book went to a copy editor, the questions Rebecca got back were “absolutely out of touch”. References to hunting were queried on the basis they might offend vegetarians. Big mistakes slipped through the first print run and needed to be corrected in the second, including the name of a major character, which changed suddenly halfway through. “I’d assumed the publisher would take care of these things,” Rebecca says. “It felt like they were trying to shove me out the door and get the book out.” Her story is alarming but not uncommon in Australia’s publishing industry, which on the whole seems hellbent on getting books to market as quickly as possible. Some authors, like Rebecca, get stuck in a production schedule that makes no sense to them. “There was always the next deadline looming,” she says. “I felt like they were trying to pressure me to just roll with it.” Other books get on the fast track to take advantage of Christmas sales or the news cycle – but not many go to market faster than The Mushroom Tapes did last year. Erin Patterson was found guilty of murder in July – the same month it was announced that Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein were working on a book about the trial. Just four months later, The Mushroom Tapes was published. As with many nonfiction books that are chasing a news cycle, the authors probably spent more time touring the book than they did writing it. M edia attention was lavished on The Mushroom Tapes, which remained on prominent display in bookshops months after release – but most authors aren’t so lucky, struggling to make their books visible in a crowded market. Alan Sheardown of Perth’s New Edition Books acknowledges that the problem of an overcrowded market is not a new one. “If anything, I’m being shown slightly fewer books than I used to …