AustLit

Authors abstract: The end of the 'golden age' of Australian literature and publishing has been proclaimed many times, and multiple causes of this situation have been identified, including 'declining editing standards, changes in literary taste, the rise of marketing departments in publishing houses, changing leisure patterns, [and] the advent of Nielson BookScan'. Most often and most convincingly, the end of this 'golden age' is attributed to the globalisation, consolidation and economic rationalisation of book publishing. Nathan Hollier's claim that 'Australian literature is dying, or at least disappearing', because 'the Australian publishing industry and market is dominated by a handful of large corporations, themselves generally parts of massive, multinational conglomerates', captures the general view. This supposed dominance of Australian publishing by multinational conglomerates is described by some commentators, like Michael Wilding and David Myers, as negative for Australian literature as a whole, and by others, like Webby and Mark Davis, as responsible for a specific decline in Australian literary fiction. I explore both positions, first investigating trends in Australian novel publication and comparing these to trends in publication of novels from other countries as well as other forms of Australian-originated literature (specifically, poetry and auto/biography). I then consider the case of Australian literary fiction, before looking in detail at Davis's account of the changing output of large publishers of Australian novels. The results of this study reveal a decline in Australian novel and poetry titles (since 2000 and 1994 respectively), but suggest a more complex picture of this trend than dominant expressions of nostalgia and alarm about the fate of Australian literature and publishing imply.