Welcome to eNews and a belated Happy
New Year to all!
Before you read any further, please update your
IP bookmarks!!
This includes our email and URLs. We recently switched to the new
.biz domain,
and soon all our old addresses will dissolve into cyberspace.
Our first issue for 2003 reflects the pleasure and
pain of independent publishing. With pleasure we announce the results
of the IP Picks Awards and profile the winning authors. No fiction
winner was chosen this year but we were blessed with outstanding
poetry manuscripts.
With pain we acknowledge, at the time of writing,
no response was forthcoming from Arts Queensland or the Minister’s
office with respect to support for the competition. This throws a
shadow
over
its future
and our Director has PLENTY to say on the subject. Our
selections from this year’s winning entries provide further proof
IP Picks is an initiative worth supporting.
David also ponders the present and future of
the eBook. Have the
new technologies fulfilled their early promise in terms of sales?
He introduces IP’s exciting new audio series and is out
and about at the Stanthorpe Library, Gladstone, and the New South Wales and
Queensland Writers Centres.
We also have a teasing sneak preview of our Autumn 2003 Season and
give you an up close and personal view of our new
Assistant Editors,
Heidi and Morag, in a probing interview asking the really important
literary questions... If you would like a break from the heavy news,
try taking the IP Quiz yourself.
I’ve barely paddled out to websurf this year, so Bestlinks takes
a breather for this issue. As always, we're open to suggestions,
so, if you have a site you would like us to feature, please get in
early.
Finally, a timely reminder to our readers that we cannot continue
to bring you quality literature without selling more of our products!
Why not become a "friend of IP" as well as a reader of
this newsletter, and benefit doubly from our special deals?
Sara Moss, Editor, IP eNews
From
the Director's Desk
I generally get about 40-50 emails each
day, only about a third of which have anything to do with IP. There
are the usual invitations from “Sissy” and the like promising
me a personal view of her intimate body parts via her web cam, a
sprinkling of offers for drugs that will see me live longer, have
more sustained erections and orgasms, not to mention the come-ons
from Nigerian insiders who have millions to ‘invest’ in
Australia and who are eager to deposit 20% of it in my bank account
if only I will agree to help them smuggle it out of the country.
Several promise foolproof schemes to sell anything and everything—maybe
I should try a few of these to put a dent in our inventory!
A growing number are from people committed to the peace movement,
warning of dire consequences if the United States’ “Coalition
of the Willing” attacks Iraq without UN sanction. Perhaps the
most moving of these came from Harold Pinter, indirectly, of course.
I’ve always admired Pinter’s work for its directness
and economy, and, this letter was no different. After telling us
about his recent fight with cancer—a personal war that is necessary,
Pinter goes on to criticise Tony Blair and George W. Bush for threatening
to wage an unnecessary war. They, Pinter maintains, have been reduced
to a ‘vocabulary of bombs’.
As the world moves closer to a war “we have to have”,
is there any room for literature in our lives? I think so. Eventually
the repetition and posturing—on both sides—become so
mundane that we have to seek sources of truth and solace far from
the maddening crowd. This is not retreat, but a search for affirmation
in the ability of humanity to ultimately rise above the orchestrated
chaos and PR-driven truth. Life and the Forces of Evil really are
not as simple as George W, Tony and Saddam would have us believe.
Perhaps we all need to take a deep breath and read a good book to
remind ourselves of the lessons of the past.
In peace,
Dr David Reiter
Has the e-bubble burst?
Five years ago, the predictions were upbeat: e-books were the wave
of the future. E-publishers sprang up like wildflowers after
a drought. And DIY publishing became a real alternative to ‘vanity’ publishing.
You really could do it all yourself—with The Idiot’s
Guide to Self-Publishing in hand.
Access to an appreciative audience would not be a problem. You
simply perfected your masterpiece by showing it around to a few
friends, who all judged it as “publishable”, tweaked
the punctuation a bit, chose an exotic font to emphasise your originality
and then uploaded a teaser onto your home page. You were realistic
enough not to expect many sales in the first month—at least
until you’d spread the word on the search engines. But the
sales didn’t flood in, or even trickle.
Other authors turned to the professionals—or at least e-publishers
who implied they were professionals on their glitzy website or
their three-column ad in the writers’ centre newsletters.
These would be people who knew the technology, and could make any
manuscript irresistible to the buyers who would throng to their
online store. You licked your lips at the prospect of a 40% royalty
(why would anyone settle for 10% anymore?) The good news is that
there were some sales this time; the bad news is that there weren’t
many.
These new publishers had one thing going for them: a partnership
of silence between them and their clients. The publishers took
the view that they had to be in it for the long-term for their
investment to pay off—at least a year or so. And the authors
weren’t inclined to take class action against the publishers
for not delivering what their promos promised. It might be put
down to the fact that their novel wasn’t a masterpiece after
all!
But then even the e-publishers had to face their bottom line, and,
in the case of the larger enterprises, their shareholders. The
sales just weren’t happening—three and four years on.
What’s gone wrong?
You might want to blame it on September 11, or Osama, or Saddam,
and maybe there’s some truth to that. More of us probably
spend more time in front of a screen for our daily fix of pre-deployed
bad news, and less time curled up with any kind of book, e- or
otherwise. And maybe there’s something unspoken in all of
us that blames our infatuation with new technology for a prevailing
indifference to human values. But you’d be right in saying
that an editorial is not the right place for idle philosophy…
E-publishing as a process will continue to develop. In some arenas
it will even thrive. For example, the process of assessing, editing,
designing and producing books is increasingly digital. For example,
IP requires our authors to submit work on disk, and we do most
things digitally from that point on. It simply takes less time,
money and trees to follow a digital workflow.
But people will continue to demand physical books, and it’s
a brave publisher who would give them what they should have rather
than what they want. The problem is no one told the printing industry
that the physical book was about to die. Printing technology has
changed quite dramatically of late. Print-on-demand has thrown
a lifeline to publishers who hitherto had no access to markets
outside their immediate area. For little more than the unit cost
of a short print-run in Australia, we can produce single copies
of a book in the UK and North America and have them delivered to
buyers at local postage charges.
Which leaves many e-publishers out to dry—unless they go
retro.
IP, on the other hand, has always had a strong commitment to publishing
physical books, so we are in a good position to take advantage
of the latest advances in printing technology. We still think e-books
have a future, but, as I’ve said elsewhere, we must give
readers something on screen that they can’t get in a physical
book. You may already be aware of our multimedia titles, which
include The
Gallery, The
Fickle Brat and Sharpened
Knife, and we
will soon start work on an exciting new series called ip.audio,
which I hope will appeal to people who prefer to curl up with a
CD player rather than a book.
E-books will have a future, and, in many areas, a bright one. In
the literary sphere, it will depend on the willingness of e-publishers
to add value to text. It will also depend on authors producing
work that speaks to a wide audience rather than a cluey techno
few. The key question is will buyers embrace these emerging forms?
That depends on whose future you believe in. My young children
are already voting with their fingertips.
—DR—
<title>IP eNews</title>
The IP Picks awards are unique in that they offer reading
of complete manuscripts for selection in Interactive Publication’s
literary publishing program. The winners of the award
are offered standard royalty contracts for publication. It is hoped
that cash prizes
will also be available in the future but this will be subject to
government or corporate funding (see “The Future of IP Picks” in
this issue).
The Awards were decided this year by a panel of assessors from
within Interactive Publications: Editor Sara Moss and Assistant
Editors Morag Kobez-Halvorson and Heidi Keefer. IP’s Director
Dr David Reiter read all short-listed titles and chaired the final
meeting of the panel.
The selection criteria for the winning entries were literary merit
and commercial viability. We looked for outstanding manuscripts,
ready, or very close to being ready, for publication. Works that
will, in our opinion, attract a solid readership.
According to the competition conditions, the panel may recommend
to the Director that manuscripts that are Highly Commended and
Commended be offered publication, but the Director has the final
say.
On announcement of the Awards, assessors’ reports were provided
to authors of the Winning, Highly Commended and Commended entries.
Sections of the reports and profiles of the winning authors appear
in the Focus column below.
We congratulate the winners on their success. We thank all the
entrants for their manuscripts and wish them well with their future
writing.
And the winners are…
Australian Poetry
Minorphysics by Paul Mitchell
Commended – Café Boogie by Jennifer Nixon
Queensland Poetry
I’ll Howl Before you Bury Me by Liam Guilar
Highly Commended – Popular Mechanics by Liam Ferney
No winners were chosen in the fiction categories this year.
—SM—
<title>IP eNews
</title>
[In this issue we provide snapshots
of the winners of this year’s IP Picks competition as well
as the assessors’ reports on their manuscripts.]
Paul Mitchell
Winner, Best Australian Poetry
Melbourne-based Paul Mitchell is
developing a reputation as an energetic performer and accomplished
poet. His poetry is especially concerned with issues of home and
community, spirituality and fragility of mind.
Paul’s work
has appeared in The Age, The Australian, Southerly, Quadrant,
Cordite, Overland, Going Down Swinging, Studio, Verandah and
a number of other journals. It has also been broadcast on Triple
R radio in Melbourne,
and Sydney’s The RedRoom Project.
Paul’s currently
studying for a Masters of Creative Arts (Creative Writing) under
Dr Kevin
Brophy at the University of Melbourne.
Assessors’ Reports:
Minorphysics
Key to judges: SM=Sara Moss; M K-H=Morag
Kobez-Halvorson; HK=Heidi Kefer
A poetry that illuminates everyday life
in that `wasteland’ where most of Australia lives, not the
inner cities or the “bush” but the burbs, the city’s
fringes. This author’s poetry reflects the good, the bad and
the ugly of this place and its culture/s.
There are cries of desperation, such as:
Sleepless in Braybrook
in the middle of the week
at 1.19 am
staring at the stars
the ones not washed out
by the CBD
I’m down here
and I can see the shadows
bouncing off the
fence
and I’ve calmed down
I have
I could be any man
anywhere
staring at any sky
I’ve become something else
something
not quite me
it wouldn’t
frighten you
it’s something you could love
maybe at least enjoy
this is my sky
lay off the beauty sleep
come out and see me
or I’ll disappear
And insights into unvoiced emotions:
Prayer of Thanks
we hear the westgate bridge
doing sit ups
(breathing in and out)
while our hands hold stubbies
we agree are good
by the way we put them down
softly as
a surgeon sews our wounds
The author’s poetic skill is demonstrated in endings
which often surprise, leaving the reader thinking about the poem and drawn to
re-reading it.
Our Land
Keyboards are gone, there aren’t enough
people to drown out bars of Mexican guitar.
So let’s pack up our Sombreros,
pick up our Myer bags and walk.
It’s fifteen kilometres per hour
in the car park and the road to home
is lined by wheelie bins in military green.
Lids open, saluting us.
The language is simple and concise,
but there is plenty of depth and substance to the observations. There
is also
diversity in subject
and treatment throughout the collection. Some elements of cynicism about suburban
life are well balanced with humour and astute social comment.
The poem “Atoms/Bread”, illustrative of the collection’s
title, shifts focus from the specific to the general philosophical/existential
without
sacrificing clarity and quality of verse:
There is so much evidence against me.
I sit down on a chair, arm across the table,
holding a coffee cup as if nothing is happening.
And it is. My attempt to keep quiet about it
won’t change that. The nothing I appear to be
keeps being. I slice the bread, my only meal.
I never finish eating, but there are leftovers
scraped into the dark galaxy
crumbs go tumbling
to where my atoms are already
torn apart and reassembled.
Mitchell also demonstrates the ability
to move from a poetry of the self and the everyday to connect with
the wider world. The writing
demonstrates social
awareness and concern without dogma. In “dredging jerusalem” the
speaker turns the newspaper onto its back a flightless
dove with wings outstretched, waiting for a prayer.
But there is no doubt the author is more comfortable with the politics of the
everyday. The final long poem “Stubby Bill and The True Sense of Everything”,
shows he can face his subject without fear turning it inside-out to reveal the
less palatable underbelly. The real and implied violence in this poem provides
a challenging finish to a collection which began in quiet contemplation. The
writing cuts so close to the bone, it almost hurts to read it.
The poet questions the legacy and place of masculinity and masculine “roles” within
our landscape and culture. His speakers are attempting to forge a path forward,
acknowledging the violent legacy of the past, but freshly defining what it
means to be “a
man”. I see this as an important movement in literature.
The “reactionary” new age guy is dead. So too his ancestor, the
authoritarian patriarch. This “new man” has a different song to
sing.
SM
A scathing commentary on the contemporary values of the Australian suburban
middle class – the pursuit of the ‘security’ of gated communities
and the blandness of the suburban landscape:
fromAspirational
A townhouse where Des
and Faye’s weatherboard stood.
These poems cover everything from the loss of cultural identity to the monotony
of the casual workforce and the growing class of underemployed in Australia:
from Our
Land
A bin waitress wipes your table,
flicks a two-hour mark grin
from a three-hour shift.
Enough wipes a week
Makes a family trip to Noosa.
Next year
The collection uses straightforward, succinct language to give insight into
our choices and beliefs as a society, and leads the reader to question their
values.
M K-H
A mature voice, confident style and polished expression. Here is a poet who
knows what he wants to say and says it!
He acknowledges the plateaus of human existence without slipping into defeatism.
His writing is subtly suggestive, integrating familiar images.
In “Aspirational”, the line ‘our lawns will be mowed by ‘Jim’ because
he knows what to do’ is indicative not only of the economic factors of
deferred labour and migration of wealth, but also a diminishing of collective
identity – what could be more Australian than mowing your lawn? We are
left pondering what happens when a society loses confidence in the practices
that have for so long defined it?
The simplicity of the author’s language belies the depth of his poetry.
He subverts the obvious bringing fresh perspectives to familiar landscapes, leaving
the reader to wonder “why didn’t I see this before?”
Other striking features are an excellent use of rhythm and the complete absence
of emotional manipulation. This is natural writing.
HK
Liam Guilar Winner, Best Queensland Poetry
Born in Coventry, England, 1960. He
studied Medieval Literature and History at Birmingham University,
and moved to Australia in 1986. He has a Masters Degree in Medieval
Literature from
the University of Queensland.
He lives on the Gold Coast, where a version of himself is Head of
English at a private girls school, a fact he often finds incomprehensible.
In a desperate attempt to appear windswept and interesting he can
claim to be the only lute playing, kayaking medievalist to have been “smuggled” across
the Kazak border in an apple
truck and “arrested and deported” from Samarkand. All
this occurred in 1993 during the first Australian kayaking expedition
to enter what was then Soviet Central Asia. Since then he has also
organised four journeys to Indonesia to explore rivers there.
Articles about these travels have appeared in various magasines.
The full length version of the journey though Soviet Central Asia
is on the Idaho State University Website:
Poems have appeared in various places, and a chapbook, The Poet’s
Confession was published by Ginninderra Press in January 2000.
Assessors’ Reports:
I'll Howl Before You Bury Me
Key to judges: SM=Sara Moss;
M K-H=Morag Kobez-Halvorson; HK=Heidi Kefer
This is indeed beautiful poetry. A collection
so breathtaking in places I was tempted to ask…is this really
an unpublished manuscript? “I’ll Howl Before you Bury
Me” reads like a literary classic and certainly deserves to
be published and widely read.
Liam Guilar, with maturity of vision and considerable flourish, interprets
Irish legend, transporting us to a place of Irish dreaming:
Beyond the ninth wave
the nightmare riders wait
for the wind to blow them
back to shore
Although fear fractures me
I will go
where the corpses hang
on the moon stained sky,
where the sailors shipwrecked
and were broken on the reefs
guarding the harbour
they called home.
I will swallow my fear,
be it vast as this ocean.
I will look
into the plague graves of their eyes.
Beyond the ninth wave
I will learn their names.
His interpretation of the legend of Cuchulain conveys the bloody
potency of its inspiration:
They drank and feasted
Listening to stories,
Of the slide between the worlds
Moving to the music of the harp
Released, to drive their chariots
To where the beardless hero waited
Where their deaths were numbered by the poets.
The wound’s ejaculation
Spurting red seed arcing
Wet as Emer’s thighs,
Blood soaking waters
Breeding the legend
Of Cuchulain at the ford
When he turns to poetry of personal and wider contemporary experience,
he applies the essence of these legends - in his connection with
the natural environment, the world of moon and tides, in musical,
rhythmic and beautifully rhyming verses:
Even though she’s spent the year beside
you,
you wake to find a stranger in the dawn.
Nothing you can do or say will keep her,
You can break the clocks, time will stagger on.
Hand in hand you wandered by the water
Between familiar yachts and café lights
She moved away and said, “I took their offer”
And tore the moon and stars out of the night…
(fromEven though she’s spent the year beside
you)
In “Alleluia”, Guilar asks:
In my chapel haunted childhood
you were the high priest
cantor, troubadour
and fool.
When you’re gone
who’ll write love songs
I can understand?
The answer…Liam Guilar will!
SM
The first poem in this collection gives the reader a hint of what’s
to come:
I like my poems bawdy, boozy, proud
At best they should be dangerous to know.
Let there be laughter, music, friends
Rebellion: landscapes I can recognize.
I read the slim unloving volumes that you sent
But the poems turned their backs on me
Communicating nothing, except perhaps
A bizarre refusal to communicate.
I'd rather read the tags on Lucy’s underwear
Than all this bloodless syntax
That leaves my senses on another page.
And this collection, delivers on its promise
of laughter, rebellion, landscapes and sensory experiences. The dominant
theme here is Celtic mythology but the author does not limit himself
to this subject. He writes about the conflict in Northern
Ireland in poems such as “Between the Lines (A Family Myth)”.
He skilfully manages a contemporary personal perspective:
So I shuttle like my Grandfather
between contending propositions
knowing that my place will be
between the lines:
remembering it was
Grandad’s house
both sides blew to rubble.
In this poem Guilar demonstrates he is just as adept at contemporary
free verse as the more traditional forms.
It is the command of language, the range of subject and the diversity
of form that really set this manuscript apart from the other entries.
This is mature, polished and hauntingly beautiful writing.
The collection also lends itself superbly to musical accompaniment,
extending the potential options for production by IP.
MK-H
Liam Guilar imbues Irish myth and legend, with his own reactions
and interpretations, strengthening their emotional resonance.
His ability to address contemporary subjects with the language of
myth also balances the emotional and intellectual aspects of these
poems.
He blends the traditional with the contemporary, the narrative with
the lyric, fully engaging the reader in this collection with a wide
scope. From this work we can guess Guilar’s first love is language:
...Adam wakes to find a version of himself
whose strange distortions lack all purpose.
First oral pleasure was the taste of words,
the joys of shaping sounds, soon superseded
by the tastes of Eve. Abandoning his words
they grope their way to ecstasy. But afterwards
attempting to define what they‘ve just done
they find themselves outside the gates of Eden.
(fromLacan outside the Gates of Eden)
HK
<title>IP
eNews </title>
If you made it to this page, you’ll note that
the URL has changed. That’s because IP now has a new domain:
ipoz.biz.
Why the switch? interpr.com.au is a bit more of a mouthful (try reading
it out over the phone!) And it’s not all that easy for people
to remember. The .biz suffix identifies a site devoted to business,
and the company can be located anywhere. For companies like ours
who are constantly seeking a more global market, .biz makes a lot
of sense.
Your old interpr.com.au addresses will still work—but not for
long.
We recommend that you change your
bookmarks and address book entries NOW.
And for those stragglers in the pack still sending email to powerup.com.au,
please make the change ASAP!!
To amend your bookmarks, simply substitute “ipoz.biz” for
every instance of “interpr.com.au”. Too easy!
—DR—
<title>IP
eNews </title>
Two titles have been confirmed
for release so far: Sally Finn’s Fine Salt and Swelter by Louise Waller
and Kristin Hannaford.
Finn
is a Melbourne-based writer. Fine Salt,
her first novel, was winner of the open fiction category of IP Picks
2002 competition.
Very poetic in mode, the novel traces the life of twins Samuel and
Phoebe, growing up in a tumultuous family, with art and the many
shades of love as the primary subjects. (photo,
courtesy Sarah Banch, Sarah Banch Photography)
Louise Waller (right) and Kristin Hannaford (left) are based in Yeppoon,
a town on Queensland’s
Central Coast, not far from Rockhampton. Swelter comprises
their two collections, Slipway and Inhale,
respectively. Both are involved in drama, and Waller’s Two
Fridas was recently produced
for the stage, with Hannaford acting in one of the leading parts. (photo,
courtesy Shaune Sinclair)
Our Autumn Season 2003 will be launched in late April. More details
in IP eNews 18.
<title>IP
eNews </title>
[Those of you who have had direct
contact with IP of late will know that we have two new Assistant
Editors: Morag Kobez-Halvorson and Heidi
Kefer. Morag and Heidi
are work experience students from the Queensland University of
Technology, and are quickly learning the essentials of what it
takes to run a street-wise independent publishing house. Rather
than torture them with the usual “write a 100-word bio” assignment,
I decided to interview them—a la Women’s Day—to
introduce them to you. If you want to read the serious stuff about
them,
check out our Staff page.
Otherwise, enjoy!]
SM: Where were you born and how do you
think this has influenced your life?
M
K-H: I was born north of Brisbane, on the Redcliffe
Peninsula. I spent my childhood on fishing boats and splashing around
in mud-flats amongst mangroves. Although I couldn’t wait to
move away to the nearest city when I finished school, I realize now
that being near the water will
always hold appeal for me.
SM: What is your star sign? M K-H: Libra.
SM: What is your favourite food? M K-H: Vietnamese cuisine in general, and specifically
a dish called Bi cuon, which is a plate of grilled pork, a pile of
salad and fresh
mint. It comes with circles of rice paper, a bowl of hot water to
soften them in, and either a hoisin or vinegar-based sauce to dip
the rolls in once you’ve constructed them from all the ingredients.
It is possible to order similar dishes which come already rolled
for you, but I never tire of the ritual of assembling them, despite
it being quite time-consuming. Unfortunately friends and family are
sick to death of watching me adding a mint leaf here, and a bean
sprout there, long after they have finished their meals.
SM: What was
the last book you read and would you recommend it? M K-H: I’ve just read The Bolivian Times, by Tim
Elliot. It's an amusing tale of an Australian journalist living and
working in South America for a year. Anyone
who has faced the challenges of traveling in a third world country will appreciate
this book. It’s a quick, easy read which left me longing to jump on the next
plane out of the country, in search of adventure.
SM: Name a place that you would love to visit and tell us why. M K-H: I have always had it in the back of my mind that I will
travel to Russia, where my father was born. Although I have travelled quite a
bit, I haven’t been there
yet.
SM: Name a person (living) that you would love to meet and tell us why. M K-H: I would love to meet the guy who is the voice of ‘Elmo’ from Sesame
Street. I heard an interview with him recently and learned he has
been the puppeteer behind
the three and a half year old red monster for more than eighteen years. ‘Elmo’ appears
in diverse situations, from his Sesame Street Home, to talk-show interviews,
even as a guest at United Nations meetings and I’m always amazed at how fresh,
intelligent and witty he is.
SM: Where were you born and how has this influenced your life? HK: I
was born in a shed. In all honesty, I don’t think it's a fact that has
asserted much influence on my life. It has however provided me
with a vehicle for limitless embellishing of a childhood frought with hardship,
triumph
of character and various self-promoting Aussie Battler scenarios.
SM: Star sign? HK: We’re a Gemini.
SM: Favourite food? HK: This is a bad question for me to answer when I’m hungry!
I think though, it would have to be Agadashi Tofu, with the little whisps of
seaweed
on top that quiver in the heat. And seafood—anything seafood. And curry
of every possible variety. I also have a passion for fruit and anything Mexican
involving black beans.
SM: Last book you read? HK: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, by Scott
McCloud. This book is brilliant! It provides an interesting perspective on the
interactions between time, space, motion, words, pictures and the reader within
the comic structure. Its exploration of the critical theory of comics helps to
legitimise
a form of expression which is far too frequently dismissed as
disposable kiddie-fare.
SM: Where would you visit and why? HK: Everywhere and nowhere in particular. I have had a slight
proclivity towards Mexico lately, but that could have less to do with the place
itself and more to do with the lack of Mexican restaurants in Brisbane.
SM: Who would you like to meet and why? HK: I can’t think of anyone I have a burning desire
to meet. Saddam Hussein could prove to be quite an entertaining dinner guest.
Similarly,
Gene Roddenberry, with his ability to create an indomitable empire, has a
certain inspirational appeal. He’s dead though, so I suppose he doesn’t
count.
Those of you out there who, like our
Director, depend on detective shows in lieu of crosswords for
relaxation and mental stimulation will know of the Nero Wolf mystery
series currently screening on the ABC.
Aside from having an assistant who does most of his legwork (Wolf
is girth-challenged), Nero is obsessed with orchids, and insists
on spending at least an hour every morning after breakfast with his
exotic charges—before putting his mind to solving the next
crime.
What does this have to do with IP, you ask? New from our IPS distribution
section is Orchidopaedia, which is literally everything Nero Wolf
would want to know about orchids—and more. Co-authors Greg
Steenbecke and Gary Yong Gee describe their pet project as “an
illustrated reference and guide for the professional and amateur
grower”.
What makes Orchidopaedia a real must-have for Wolf and the rest of
the orchid-loving world is that it is published on Windows/Mac compatible
CD-ROM, which makes it possible for the authors to thoroughly hyperlink
all the recognised orchid genres in over 1000 pages of text and more
than 550 full colour images.
At $88 GST-inclusive, it’s a tad more expensive than a night
out at the Hoyt’s, but then you wouldn’t catch Nero Wolf
there dead or alive.
With that much information at your fingertips, maybe it’s time
to pop the popcorn at home and start planning where to put which
orchid in your shade-house-to-be. Order
it now!
A new series is born! (or at least it’s on the way…)
ip.audio will be part of our IP
Digital imprint and offer digital
recordings for your listening pleasure. Our titles will be drawn
from work that has already been published and proven a popular read.
The plan is to include fiction, non-fiction, spoken word texts and
dramatic scripts. They can be for adult or younger audiences.
IP will commission local professional actors to dramatise and read
the works. Some recordings may include sound effects and musical
backgrounds. The work will be recorded in the studios of 4MBS Classical-FM,
a community radio station in Brisbane, and then edited at Treetop
Studio before being mastered for production on CD and/or DVD. Eventually,
as our list expands, we may offer streaming programs over the Internet.
If you’re an author interested in submitting a work for the
series, read on. Otherwise, keep tuned to IP eNews for further developments!
Here are the key criteria we’ll apply:
• The work must have been published by a publisher with national distribution.
• The work must be commercial; that is, you must be able to show that
it has sold well in print form.
• The work must be suitable for a straight dramatic reading by a small
cast.
• You must be able to offer us exclusive audio rights to the work.
You’ll need to send us supporting material before submitting
the complete work. This must include:
• A two-page (maximum) synopsis of the work; in the case of spoken
word collections this can be a description of representative selections
from the work.
• Copies of reviews, press clippings, etc.
• A detailed creative resume.
• Evidence that you are able to license the audio rights to the work.
Your package of supporting material must reach us by 15 April. Our
editorial panel will review the submissions and then ask short-listed
authors to send copies of their published work to us for final consideration.
If you want any of this material returned to you, please include
a self-addressed stamped envelope.
Please note that this will be a pilot project for the first year.
The number of works we decide to produce will depend in part on external
funding, but we will at least be offering royalties on a profit sharing
basis. The actors as well as the author will be paid royalties.
Since our last issue, the usual holiday inertia set in and most of
our dwindling energy was expended planning our list and activities
for 2003.
Our friends at Stanthorpe Library invited David back for a return
engagement—with a difference. His brief was to read at the
local Grape and Food Festival from work that had something to do
with the focus of the Festival, subjects that obviously required
some
further
research! He had the choice of reading from other people’s
work or writing something new. What did he do? The
first person to email us with the right answer gets a free copy of
his new story ‘The
Sixth Bottle’ (no, this is not a trick question!)
Rumour has it that he was assisted in verifying the alcohol content
of the said detective story by his wife Cherie, who accompanied him
on a tour of several Granite Belt vineyards.
<title>IP eNews</title>
As we go to press, Lesley
Singh is returning to Gladstone for IP events at the Library and
the local Dymocks bookshop. Lesley was born and raised in the Central
Queensland city, which is now one of the busiest ports on Australia’s East
Coast.
She will read from her IP Picks 2002 winning title Cry
Ma Ma to the Moon at the Library on Friday, 21 February from 7 p.m.
On Saturday, she’ll be signing books at Dymocks from 9:30 a.m.,
with a reading scheduled for 11 a.m.
David will introduce her at Gladstone Library after stops at Gympie,
Maryborough and Hervey Bay Libraries on his drive up.
<title>IP
eNews</title>
The Queensland
Writers Centre (QWC) has invited David to serve on a Meet
the Publisher panel on Thursday, 6 March from 6:30 p.m.
at Metro Arts, Edward Street, Brisbane. Also featured will be
Madonna Duffy from UQP and Linda
Funnell from HarperCollins.
David will talk about: • Our three literary imprints and the
opportunities for new authors to have work accepted • IP plans for publishing print
titles via print-on-demand technology in the UK and North
America
• Our new ip.audio series
• Our latest multimedia titles
• Expanding services offered to non-IP authors through IPS, our distribution
section.
The
following weekend, David will join IP authors David
Rowbotham and Chris
Mansell at the New
South
Wales Writers Centre Harvest Festival (8-9 March) at the Centre
in Rozelle. In a featured session, Rowbotham, a charter member
of the
Centre, will read from Poems
for America, while Mansell will read
from her IP Digital audio + text CD The
Fickle Brat. Reiter will
give a demo of his latest multimedia title, Sharpened
Knife, before
leading an all-day workshop Get Published
Online! on Sunday. Bookings
for the workshop are essential.
Common Ground
Publishing will
be holding a conference on The Future of
the Book at the Cairns
Convention Centre from 22-24 April.
Conference speakers will include
international
experts from the publishing and printing industries, as well as
academics from research institutes in North America and Europe.
We’re
pleased to mention that David Reiter will be making a presentation
on IP at the conference and look forward to reporting back on the
outcomes of the Conference in IP eNews 19.
Two years on, it’s a good
time to reflect on the future of the IP Picks competition. The
idea of
starting the competition was to:
1.
Offer guaranteed publication to author of poetry and shorter fiction
titles
2.
Give Queensland authors greater access to publication opportunities
3.
Promote IP nationally through the publicity generated by the competition
4.
Realise higher sales for the winning entries.
IP Picks 2002 resulted in three new titles: Bacchanalia by Brisbane-based
Brett Dionysius, Cry Ma Ma to the Moon by Maleny author Lesley Singh
and Melbourne-based novelist Sally Finn’s soon to be published
Fine Salt.
On the negative side, we have not had as many high-quality entries
as we’d hoped to attract. In 2002, the judges decided that
the standard of entry in the Open Category for Poetry was too low
to award a prize. In 2003, the judges recommended against awarding
prizes in either fiction category. It’s worth noting, however,
that they did recommend that IP make publication offers to the runners-up
in both poetry categories, so we will likely be publishing four new
titles out of IP Picks 2003.
IP’s Editorial Team met recently to assess where we’re
at with IP Picks and to consider if the competition has a future.
At this point, frankly, we’re not sure.
Up till IP Picks, IP published by means of a subsidy model, which
involved authors investing in the cost of publishing their title,
with the expectation of a higher share in the profits realised. IP
Picks, which guarantees full royalty publication, was always going
to be a gamble for us since we could not afford to offer cash prizes
as well as royalty publication.
We hoped to attract additional funding from arts
organisations in support of the competition. We’ve argued that
the competition is different from other major national competitions
in several important respects because it:
• offers publication for unpublished, complete manuscripts rather
than recognition after a book has been published.
• provides valuable mentorship for the winning authors—support
sometimes rarely found in ‘mainstream’ publishers
• gives Queensland authors an inside track on two of the awards
because our perception is, rightly or wrongly, that Queenslanders
do not do as well as they should in competitions run by Sydney and
Melbourne- based organizations.
We would be delighted if the Premier’s Department decided to
make IP Picks a part of the Premier’s Awards for these reasons.
We’d be content if Arts Queensland saw fit to support these
awards at the level of the Judith Wright Calenthe Award and the Steele
Rudd (for published poetry and short story collections, respectively.
In 2002 Arts Queensland provided us with a modest grant that included
support for two of the titles, but our bid for additional funding
to cover cash prizes was rejected. (We were only asking for $1,000
per award—far less than that provided to winners of the State
awards.) The Australia Council provided a subsidy to help with the
printing costs of only one of the titles.
With two excellent IP Picks titles already published, we argued strongly
for additional support for IP Picks 2003 with Arts Queensland; to
date, that has fallen on deaf ears. The bureaucrats argue that Arts
Queensland cannot support awards run by private businesses. Yet they
have no problem with the University of Queensland Press creaming
off the winners of the State Awards, including the ones for Aboriginal
authors or Emerging authors. My quarrel is not with UQP—like
IP, they are doing the best they can for their bottom line.
The Minister for the Arts, Matt Foley, frequently criticises Canberra
for not providing enough support for Queensland artists, but he too
has been slow to acknowledge the potential of IP Picks with financial
support.
It remains to be seen if the
Australia Council will provide more money in their upcoming grant
round. But the Council supports only individual titles, not competitions.
Back to the issue of entries. Why aren’t we attracting more
top flight entries, notably in the area of short fiction? It is interesting
to note that the number of enquiries we had about the competition
was significantly higher this year,
probably because our publicity campaign was better. However, only
about 20% of those who enquired actually entered. There could be
several reasons for this, including:
• their manuscript wouldn’t be ready/available by the deadline
• they were disappointed by the lack of a cash award incentive
• they objected to having to pay an entry fee ($45, which included
a free IP title)
There were certainly many worthy manuscripts out there that didn’t—for
these and other reasons—get submitted. That’s a shame,
especially when you consider that no fiction prizes were awarded
this year.
The bottom line for us is that the
competition must pull its weight and not be a drain on IP’s
resources. We will continue to seek additional support from funding
agencies, and we may search for corporate
sponsors to provide cash awards. Maybe that will fix the problem;
maybe it won’t.
We would be happy to hear from you about
this, especially those of you who might have entered if the conditions
were different.
What
do you think we can do to make IP Picks a viable competition in
the long term? Or, to make the point more bluntly, what can be
done to
ensure there will be an IP Picks 2004?
Have You Joined the Friends of IP
Club?
Not yet? Well, before you read any further,
have a look at the Deal in our previous issue.
FIPC members receive an additional
10% discount on any promotions we offer below. So join up first then
come back!
<title>IP
eNews </title>
A 2 for 1
Deal (almost!)
1) We’re clearing the backlist—and
our storage facilities! Buy any IP title and get any one of the following
for just $7.70! Buy two IP titles and get any two of the following
for just $15.40! (and so on...)
and we’ll include a limited edition, autographed copy of “The
Sixth Bottle”, his most recent work, commissioned
for the recent Stanthorpe Grape and Food Festival. Any resemblances to Archie Goodwin
are purely coincidental in this vintage story of love, betrayal and
near-homicide set in a sub-tropical suburb.
For both offers:
Postage and handling extra.
FIPC members get a further 10% discount off the cost of the full price IP title
plus free postage. But if you haven't signed up, you must fulfill the requirements
for FIPC membership first.
You can buy from our Orders page or email us, but you must
mention the following code when you place your order: YD17.
Offers available only to individuals. One order per household, please.
Paul’s work
has appeared in The Age, The Australian, Southerly, Quadrant,
Cordite, Overland, Going Down Swinging, Studio, Verandah and
a number of other journals. It has also been broadcast on Triple
R radio in Melbourne,
and Sydney’s The RedRoom Project. 
He lives on the Gold Coast, where a version of himself is Head of
English at a private girls school, a fact he often finds incomprehensible.
Finn
is a Melbourne-based writer. Fine Salt,
her first novel, was winner of the open fiction category of IP Picks
2002 competition.
Very poetic in mode, the novel traces the life of twins Samuel and
Phoebe, growing up in a tumultuous family, with art and the many
shades of love as the primary subjects. (photo,
courtesy Sarah Banch, Sarah Banch Photography)
Queensland’s
Central Coast, not far from Rockhampton. Swelter comprises
their two collections, Slipway and Inhale,
respectively. Both are involved in drama, and Waller’s Two
Fridas was recently produced
for the stage, with Hannaford acting in one of the leading parts. (photo,
courtesy Shaune Sinclair)
M
K-H: I was born north of Brisbane, on the Redcliffe
Peninsula. I spent my childhood on fishing boats and splashing around
in mud-flats amongst mangroves. Although I couldn’t wait to
move away to the nearest city when I finished school, I realize now
that being near the water will
always hold appeal for me. 
HK: I
was born in a shed. In all honesty, I don’t think it's a fact that has
asserted much influence on my life. It has however provided me
with a vehicle for limitless embellishing of a childhood frought with hardship,
triumph
of character and various self-promoting Aussie Battler scenarios.
What does this have to do with IP, you ask? New from our IPS distribution
section is 
She will read from her IP Picks 2002 winning title 