In a stunning blow to the publishing industry, Angus & Robertson, one of the largest retail outlets in Australia has demanded publishers pay for shelf space.
In the Herald Sun story, A&R general manager, David Fenlon, said “As a commercial business, we have the right to make decisions about which suppliers we do business with
"In our negotiations with suppliers, we are the customer. Unfortunately we cannot work with every publisher in Australia, particularly if the relationship is not commercially viable for us."
Few small and medium-sized book publishers will be able to afford the price of between $1500 and $45,000 for the book space. One book to suffer is the prestigious Miles Franklin Award winner, Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria. This isn’t just another award winner, but the literary prize in Australia. The book is published by Giramondo Publishing, a relatively new publisher.
In my local A&R, the majority – 90% - of Sci-fi and fantasy books are by Australian authors published by the Harper Voyager imprint, which is nice. But will Harper Voyager and A&R still do business? Not at the price A&R want to charge.
If this is the trend of retailers, we can kiss the local industry goodbye. Authors earn a pitiful amount here in Australia and to add the cost of buying shelf space will cripple them.
No wonder our authors prefer overseas markets, and no wonder these authors are rarely heard of here; they get little or no exposure and this attitude makes it worse.
I won’t be going into A&R stores again; there won’t be my favourite Aussie authors on the shelves, so there’s no point. I’ll support the other stores.
The question is: how much will this hurt the A&R bottom line when the majority of small book publisher go elsewhere to sell their books? I hope it stings. A lot.
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