What does the acquisition of iconic Melbourne independent Text Publishing by US-based multinational Penguin Random House tell us about the health or otherwise of the Australian book publishing industry?
In itself, and without the details of the agreed financial terms having been made public, not a great deal.
Text has been for most of its life the personal project and passion of Michael Heyward and Penny Hueston. Individual business owners’ circumstances and priorities can change; corporate performance can reflect particular managerial directions and decisions rather than industry-wide change or development; and the general tendency for larger firms to swallow smaller firms has been going on in the publishing industry, as in other industries, since at least the 1950s.
Moreover, Text has stated that its intellectual and creative independence has been assured through an agreed charter, and Heyward is nothing if not a highly experienced and renowned negotiator. Further, PRH is a very well established firm in this part of the world, is deeply invested in Australia and New Zealand, and its local office could be meaningfully said to be locally run.
So, does a healthy Australian industry require locally owned firms able to compete on roughly even terms with international competitors?
Many of us would answer ‘Yes’ to this question. Including a group of small and independent Australian publishers who, partly for this reason, formed the Small Press Network nearly twenty years ago.
But those of us who hold this view are at odds with Australian federal governments and their Productivity Commission, for which the primary goal for more than a generation has been creating conditions conducive to the lowest prices for consumers in the short term. If this results in monopoly, as deregulation inevitably does, then so be it.
In cultural policy terms, the government of Canada has tended to take the view that, as a mostly English speaking nation existing very much within the economic and cultural shadow of the United States, its cultural industries require particular assistance and protection, even more than is the case for nations speaking languages other than English Cultural Policy | The Canadian Encyclopedia. Our governments since Whitlam, on the other hand, have tended to take the oppositive view, embracing what is generally called ‘globalisation’ and eschewing meaningful investment in local cultural production Cultural policy in an Australian setting – Australian Politics and Policy.
For Australian governments, a tighter and more closely entwined relationship with the US is a better relationship. Policy makers are no doubt mindful of the possibility of Australia breaching its so-called Free Trade Agreement with the US also.
Notions of cultural independence, for our governments if not for the Australian citizenry, have gone the way of now jettisoned commitments to economic and to military independence.
The end of Text as an independent Australian publisher follows on from the takeover of independent Affirm by US-multinational Simon & Schuster in August. Nielsen Book Data reported a slight fall in Australian print book sales numbers in 2024, in both volume and revenue, with the average sale price for books also falling. Six of the top ten selling books in the Australian market last year were by US authors, with no such authors from any other foreign nation and none of the top ten being released by Australian publishers.
The late Michael Zifcak, a former head of the Australian and International booksellers associations, a founder of Australia’s National Book Council and giant of the industry here, who arrived in Australia soon after the Second World War with barely a cent to his name, recalled in retirement (My Life in Print, Lothian, 2006) that he had devoted his professional life to two causes: one was combatting censorship – and there are many discussions to be had about how well that fight is going – and the other was maintaining the price of books.
One suspects that a meeting between Zifcak and members of the Productivity Commission today may not be a pleasant one.
Who, in this argument, would be right?
History moves fast. Corporations are swallowed. Individuals are swallowed. Governments and institutions also. One day you’re standing at the bar of the company throwing the Melbourne Writers Festival party that everyone wants to get into; the next day the party’s over and those who attended can barely remember it.
The challenge for us is to recognise where history is happening. The end of Text as an independent enterprise does point to a less healthy Australian publishing industry and less robust local culture.
Not surprisingly, history’s apparent winners, such as Jeff Bezos, a man who credits much of his own personal success to the reading of books, especially novels, but also the founder of the hyper-aggressive margin-squeezing monopolist Amazon, tend to argue passionately that they are on the side of this amorphous thing ‘history’, rather than the beneficiaries of mere government policy.
Interestingly, some book markets did report strong sales growth in 2024, including markets at a marked remove from the Anglosphere: Portugal, Spain, Mexico and Brazil.
Audiobooks continued to grow strongly, with some evidence of audio non-fiction ‘readership’ compensating for declining print non-fiction Audiobooks – Worldwide | Statista Market Forecast. Though data is patchy, there is also evidence of increasing market share for streaming-service and other ebooks 366 million ebooks among OverDrive’s 739 digital download tsunami as Kindle Unlimited pays out $645 million to self-publishers in 2024 – The New Publishing Standard; and Los jóvenes de 14 a 24 años son los que más leen en España | Cultura | EL PAÍS.
Australian independent book publishers face many challenges in addition to rising input costs and deflationary Reserve Bank and federal government policy settings, some of which have no real historical precedent, but they can also learn, as Zifcak and his generation did, from the hard-earned lessons of industry organisation, which can be traced back ultimately to the experience of British book publishers and the Association they formed in the late nineteenth century.
The truth is that there is no such thing as a level playing field in industry, since all markets – as Karl Polanyi might say – are actively created and regulated by governments. It is largely the case that, as with democracy, we get the industry we deserve.
Nathan Hollier
Nathan Hollier is Chair of the Board of the Small Press Network, a representative body for small and independent publishers in Australia, and a former member of the Australian federal government’s Book Industry Collaborative Council and head of Monash, Melbourne and the Australian National University presses. These are his personal views.
Contributions to Pearls and Irritations
Your contribution will fund quality independent comment and analysis in Pearls and Irritations
Contribute
