Literary Publishing in Australia: Questions of Patronage

This paper addresses the structure of the Australian book publishing industry in both an international and local context, and in both economic and cultural terms, looking at questions of what counts as 'literature' and how various understandings of 'the literary' are constructed. It looks at questions of state responsibility to patronise literature, drawing attention to differences between the role of the Literature Board and that of other publishers, who may be seen as necessarily concerned with books as saleable commodities. While the Australian book industry may appear to be dominated by international conglomerates, the small indigenous publishers who flourish (or at least survive) perhaps demonstrate that a definable 'Australian' literary culture is not moribund, nor always at the mercy of multinational publishers, nor solely dependent on the Literature Board for survival.