I’m very passionate about writing…well, actually from my point of view it’s more about the reading than the writing but someone has to write so I can read it. I’m also very passionate about the Australian writing industry, if we don’t support them then they will go out of business and Australian authors will not be published as often, if at all and that’s not good. We have some very talented authors in Australia and I’m not going to name names here as that’s not what this post is all about.
We have some big problems with the Australian writing/publishing industry and some of those have been highlighted in the press in the past few months while some have not. The price of books in Australia is a big one, we are paying much more for a book than our counterparts in the US for example. Even if the book was written and published here we’re still paying much more for the same book. Another problem is our size, we’re just so small in comparison that we’re finding it hard to compete with the rest of the world, very few of our authors make it overseas.
I was given an idea a few months back and I’ve been working on it with the lady who gave it to me to try and bring it to fruition. So far, the idea is very small and I’d like to see it grow. Basically, it’s a forum for Australian authors to interact with the public. What we’re looking at is having a whole month devoted to each author, they get to choose the time and place of their postings as they can do it from home in the middle of the bath if they so choose, but we would expect them to check in and answer the questions for that month only. I would be trying very hard not to charge anyone for this as I consider it too important.
I have the forum and it has some people on it, I now need to take it to the next step and get more people and also some willing victim volunteer to take on the task of being the first authors to take on the public in this manner. I do have some ideas for who I could ask but have decided to open it up to volunteers. Here is the address of the forum (edit 2022: sadly, this didn’t work, I’m hoping someone else will make it work) if you want to check it and sign up now you can.
I’m hoping that by raising our homegrown authors profiles and making them more accessible to the general public then people will be more inclined to buy their books rather than imported ones.