Notes from big cities
Also many events
In real life (for our SA friends)
Tomorrow (1 August)! In the morning, our March author Timmah Ball will be talking about Blue Art Journal as part of Our Words. Then wander over to our space in Adelaide Arcade for the afternoon launch of Ayesha Aggarwal’s SALA exhibition.
Celebrate Alex Cothren’s shortlisting for the Queensland Literary Awards by seeing him in conversation with the one and only Mariana Enriquez on 19 August.
Register to come along to our big book launch on 3 September, or to see us chat about not being a robot with our friends at Human.Kind on 20 August.
I drifted over to the east coast last week, which meant visits to two beautiful new bookshops, meeting lovely writers’ festival teams, and eating scones at a conference. Here are a few takeaways from said conference (since it was hard to take away the scones and also our newsletter really needs more bullet points):
Ignore the trends and embrace the deep niche – although this came with a caveat that deep niches are easier when your book prices are higher.
Publishers have as much in common with authors as farmers have with chickens – Anna Funder on the need for more author support.
Discoverability is a great word – if we say it enough times, we might figure out how to harness it.
Printing as a vocation needs people – maybe we all learn how to use the book machines, instead of worrying about the AI machines?
Reading is entertainment – people know books are good for them, but sometimes we all need a reminder that they should also be fun.
Emily
Not all pink
Margot loved a recent library find for her two-year-old: the gloriously illustrated Cat at Night by Dahlov Ipcar, first published 1969.
Emily is sticking with the fun fiction advanced copies – this time it’s Jaclyn Moriarty’s Time Travel for Beginners.
Some fun shorts
The next bizarre writers’ festival ‘controversy’.
‘The Canon is elastic’ – lots of aligned thoughts on why we’ve brought Barbara Hanrahan and now Moya Costello back to bookshop shelves.
Miles Franklin snubs (one we agree with) – now time to weigh in on Booker snubs!
Behind the press
Working on advance reading copies and festival pitches for our March books, while packing publicity copies and pre-orders for our September books, and feeling grateful that we only release books twice a year.
Hanging Ayesha Aggarwal’s beautiful flowers on our walls. And more events! Emily will be doing a ‘books and flowers’ still-life drawing session with oil pastels on 22 August, alongside a collage workshop with Ayesha and a flower arranging session with Jake Lane of FLWR.bttm.
Organising books for Stavroula Adameitis’s Australianarama event in Naarm/Melbourne and Tracy Crisp’s Pearls events all around Victoria.
