Guest Posts
Why Australia Doesn’t Need The Reader
One of my favourite pieces in Volume 2 of The Reader is ‘Why Australia Doesn’t Need Another Literary Journal’ by Torpedo editor Chris Flynn. From the title, you can guess the subject matter: if you’re thinking of starting a journal, magazine, anthology or collection, don’t. It’s compelling advice, and Flynn is rather convincing. You might even say he’s right. When it comes to literary journals, they shouldn’t be entered into lightly, and many could benefit from heeding his words. (By way of disclosure, he does have some very flattering things to say about Kill Your Darlings and its editors.)
But apart from articulating arguments I wish I’d made, and speaking from experience I wish I had, something that Flynn’s had me thinking is whether his advice should be applied to The Reader itself. It’s a young journal in a well-populated landscape. So should it have been started, and now that it has, should it continue?
The Reader has already survived the two initial hurdles of attrition: making it to print in the first place, then making it past the first issue. It’s done so primarily because it’s a project of the Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF), with the attendant support and infrastructure that this provides. So it’s easy to make retrospective arguments for The Reader’s instigation. But to consider whether it should keep going, we might turn to everyone’s favourite benchmark: sustainability.
So, broadly speaking, does The Reader generate enough money to justify the time and effort put into it? On sales alone, no. At least not yet. The first volume didn’t sell out. Will the second? Fingers crossed. It’s not about to fall over, but its commercial viability is yet to be proven.
And this is key to Flynn’s argument. The commercial viability of any journal is, at best, tenuous. The reason? The market is small. Journals don’t just walk off the shelves. First they have to get to the shelf, and from there – even with stellar contributors and great production values – you can’t count on anything more than a casual dawdling. Most journals keep their print runs below 1000, and Flynn asserts that Meanjin rarely breaches the 1500-sales mark. It doesn’t exactly leave room for immense profits.
In light of this, a journal has a couple of options. It can make the operation workable within these limits, reject the figures and shoot for the stars, or develop new models.
The current approach of The Reader is option one. If the second volume does sell out, the argument for a third is strong, and the choice will be justified. But if it doesn’t, what then? Is it sustainable as a print journal? Should it become print-on-demand, an e-journal, or simply shut up shop?
With this last option, we move into a broader debate in the arts, that is, whether economic success should determine something’s existence. Arts operations have been increasingly moulded into business-like structures in the last ten years, to cut reliance on public funding. But despite this, the overwhelming majority still rely on grants, funding, donations and philanthropy for their survival. Which is not a problem, except in an economic rationalist sense. While they might not be commercially viable, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist. Just ask an opera fan.
I think it’s important to accept that most journals are unsustainable in pure commercial terms – if only to wrench the conversation back from the successful business model agenda. But the outcome of this acknowledgement might only be an ideal, and based on a small semantic turn. Should commercial viability determine the existence of a journal? No. Will it? Probably. The harsh reality of starting a high-risk project is that no one’s going to rush in to save the day. No white horse, no novelty cheque. And so every journal – old and new – should aim for sustainability, even if it remains an asymptotic movement.
In addition to the independence and security you get from cutting reliance on funding and similar sources, perhaps the more important reason for pursuing sustainability is for the benefit of the people involved. Namely, the writers, editors, designers and publishers. Sustainability shouldn’t just mean scraping by. It should mean these people getting paid, getting paid more than they currently do, and that journals are able to provide viable career opportunities beyond the ubiquitous exposure and professional development.
In this, The Reader, like so many independent journals, could improve. The rationale for the collection is to offer opportunities to, and provide a useful resource for, emerging writers. Which it does. Being published in a well-curated, well-designed collection is a good opportunity, it just doesn’t pay that much. (To find out exactly how much, you’ll have to read Greg Foyster’s piece in Volume 2.) But it’s also an opportunity for people like me to have curatorial and editorial control over a great collection. And in that respect, it’s one of the most rewarding projects I’ve been involved with. So I want it to exist. I want to sell out this print run, to be sustainable, to pay writers more. I want The Reader to run to a third print volume.
When I started writing this, I was hoping to honestly address Flynn’s piece, without offering an apologia or entertaining a hypocrisy. But I don’t know if I’ve achieved this. I can’t refute Flynn, but I can’t argue against The Reader without idealism getting in the way. And so perhaps the only argument I can make is that if you do start a journal, or get involved in one, make sure what you get out of it is worth it. And that you know what’s at stake.
Volume 2 of The Reader will be launched in Sydney and Melbourne:
Penguin Plays Rough #20
Saturday 6 November, 8 – 10.30pm
Applebee Orchard, 4 Lackey St, St Peters
Readings by Darryn King, Gabrielle Maait, Felicity Castagna and others
Horse Bazaar, 397 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne
Tuesday 9 November, 6pm
Readings by Lou Sanz and Sean M Whelan
You can pre-order a copy here.
Aden Rolfe is a Melbourne-based writer, editor and radio-maker whose work includes poetry, collage and criticism. He recently edited Volume 2 of The Reader and directed the Critical Animals Creative Research Symposium.
6 Responses to Why Australia Doesn’t Need The Reader
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11:22 am, November 3, 2010
Some good thoughts
The Reader is not solely a journal, being also a programming arm of the EWF, providing benefits to the Festival and as such i think it may be harsh to judge it purely as a journal.
In my opinion, and yes i may have some bias where the Reader is concerned, its measure of success is not in readership, viability or sustainability but rather in the multiplier effect that it has for the writers published and how their opportunity contributes to their career and where they get to and what they add to their area of writing in years to come.
6:17 pm, November 3, 2010
I remember Kevin Brophy suggesting many years ago that the future of a literary journal is worth reviewing once it has reached the five year mark. Good advice; but then journals are addictive projects – as you suggest, much for ‘the benefit of the people involved’ – and difficult to give up.
5:03 am, November 4, 2010
Very difficult. As Ralph would know better than most…
10:01 pm, November 4, 2010
I liked this sentence of Jeff Sparrow’s plucked from a debate currently running over at Overland:
“One of the real problems for literary journals in this country is that there simply isn’t any explicit contestation between aesthetic schools taking place, which is why so many of the publications simply define themselves as publishing ‘new’ or ‘fresh’ writing, and why so many of the same people appear in all the journals.”
I consider myself to be across only a very small proportion of current journal output, but I’ve been feeling for a while now that at least to some extent their purpose should be not just to accomodate a legion of scribes, but to provoke. Surely a fiction or poetry writer is – in the act of publication – putting their work “out there” for public scrutiny; many non-fiction pieces too will usually elaborate some sort of argument or thesis.
I don’t get the impression however that much critical dialogue or debate about aesthetic merit and suchlike ensues. I suspect then this does all involved somewhat of a disservice.
Which makes me think that this site has a great deal to offer in this respect. The other day Daniel Wood offered his view of the contemporary literary landscape – and there was a lot of blood on the floor. But even if I didn’t particularly agree, this was bracing stuff, too seldom heard!
So bring on the literary journals to my mind – but let’s care about them, too.
12:39 pm, November 5, 2010
australia doesn’t need The Reader because we have coal mining & alcohol
2:09 pm, November 9, 2010
It’s always heartening to hear a journal editor use the phrase ‘successful business model’, because it reminds me that others are thinking that publishing literature is more than just a pursuit that ‘benefits the people involved’. I don’t see the point in publishing to an existing crowd of literature fans when we could be broadening the influence of literature by trying to reach the general public with new ideas.
This is why we absolutely do need The Reader: as David says, it is more than just a journal, it is part of the EWF’s programming brief to showcase the work of the writers attending and participating in the festival itself. The Reader provides festival attendees with something to take away with them.
Thinking of it as merchandise is useful, I think: as the music industry looks to live touring and merchandise to make up for revenue lost to file sharing, so too should literary festivals add a merch stall to their repertoire.