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Public reading: More please!

Since phones have taken over it seems to me that people are reading less in public spaces. My children and I flout this at every opportunity. On a trip to the shops all three of them can often be seen trailing behind me, book in hand. (No one has met with calamity yet.) If I know I’ll be wasting time in queues, I’ll stuff my current novel into my bag before I leave home. But then as I stand in a line of people bent over their phones, I often feel almost mournful. Perhaps those either side of me are reading ebooks, but their scrolling fingers suggest otherwise. And I wonder, are we losing the art of reading? Are people reading less? Are we so spending so much time on social media that we are no longer taking time for deep reading?

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A 2016 Nielsen report puts average media consumption (social media, TV, radio and all electronic devices) at 10 hours a day. How is there time for anything else? And in 2016, a National Endowment for the Arts survey found that only 43 per cent of American adults had read ‘a work of literature’ for pleasure in the previous year. That stat depresses the hell out of me. More than half the country hadn’t read even one book in a whole year. That’s 163 million people who didn’t pick up a book for pleasure.

Anecdotally, the word from my children about their classmates’ lack of interest in recreational reading doesn’t paint a rosier picture. Last week Miss 15 reported that her English class complained volubly about a Roald Dahl short story they were asked to read. It was too long, they all said. Miss 15 rolled her eyes as she recounted this. It was 10 pages.

Canberra Writers Festival

The third Canberra Writers Festival has just wrapped, and this year I found more to love on the program than in previous years. In fact I wish I’d been able to split myself in two for several timeslots. If you’re after rundowns on lots of the sessions, head over to the Whispering Gums blog, but I thought I’d just highlight a few of my favourite events here.

First up though, I was on a Canberra Writers Festival preview event with journalist Sam Vincent, moderated by the Conservation Council’s Larry O’Loughlin. We spoke about animals in literature, and the power of words to change the world. Interestingly, this theme was echoed throughout the festival in many different ways. But in this session I naturally spoke about the animal rights issues involving elephants in Asia, which relates to my next book. I could talk about the complexity of these issues for days, but in truth I don’t recall the conversation in enough detail to recount it here (events are always a bit of a blur afterwards). I do remember that it was a thoroughly enjoyable conversation with some thoughtful and intelligent questions posed by the audience. Can’t ask for more than that.

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Larry O’Loughlin, me, Sam Vincent

But on to other sessions. The Prime Minister’s Literary Award Recipients session was moderated by the wonderful Sue Whiting, a children’s author and editor (formerly my editor at Walker Books) and one of the judges for the PMLAs. Her panel consisted of a diverse range of writers — children’s author Wendy Orr, historian Peter Cochrane and poet Anthony Lawrence — and yet she managed to make this a cohesive and interesting session. Ryan O’Neill was also billed as part of the panel, and I was looking forward to hearing him speak, but sadly he was unable to attend due to a death in the family.

It’s impossible to cover everything in this discussion so I’m going to touch on a couple of points that most interested me. The PMLAs are the richest Australian literary prize, with each author taking away $80,000 tax-free. The financial benefits for writers — most of whom are unable to live off royalties — are obvious, but Wendy recounted how the prize meant so much more to her.

Despite spending her whole adult life in Australia and writing all her books here, she has always been referred to as a Canadian author. She has repeatedly been told that she cannot say that Nim’s Island was the first Australian book to be made into a Hollywood film, because she’s ‘not Australian’. Naturally she found this deeply hurtful, but the PMLAs changed all that. ‘I can say I’m an Australian author now, and my books are Australian books.’ Bravo!

Oh the places you’ll go!

2017 is the thirteenth year of the ACT Chief Minister’s Reading Challenge, but it’s been anything but unlucky. This year saw more students than ever before take part, with 34,000 kids from 91 schools reading their 15 books. Twenty-six schools finished with a 100 per cent completion rate across the school — bravo! And 49 schools with the highest percentage of students completing the Challenge were invited to attend the awards ceremony.

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The ceremony is always a wonderful celebration, and this year I was honoured to speak on behalf of the Ambassadors. Our job is to promote reading (could their be a more perfect role?) and visit schools. I was asked to talk about how I became an author, and so I shared how I began writing and making my own books when I was just a wee thing. I remember hours spent on my bedroom floor, writing fairy stories and researching books on hard-hitting topics like the royal family. But I never imagined that I could actually become an author.

I spent my childhood in England and I assumed that authors must be terribly posh people who wore tweed suits and spectacles, and lived in mansions where they wrote in cavernous personal libraries that required a ladder to reach the books at the very top. They definitely weren’t people like me who lived in the suburbs in a noisy, chaotic house with five annoying younger brothers and a dog who liked to eat socks.

Go ahead, make my day: supporting Australian authors

Here’s a stat for you. On average Australian authors make just $12,900 a year. That figure is usually made up of a bunch of different income streams that might include teaching writing, festival appearances, PLR/ELR (if you don’t know what this is, read on), school visits, and a range of other writing-related activities. Book royalties  often represent only a fraction of an author’s total income.

The market in Australia is small and consequently there is pressure on authors to sell enough copies of their book to warrant the publisher’s financial investment. Put simply, if a book doesn’t sell well enough, a publisher will think twice about taking on another book by that author. So if you love Australian writing, here are some ways that you can support authors and the industry that makes it possible for them to continue publishing.

  1. Buy their book, but know that all sales are not equal.

On every book sold authors make ten per cent of the RRP. So if the book retails for $30, the author makes $3. If the book has multiple authors, or an author and an illustrator, that ten per cent will be divided between them. So, for example, my picture book, Megumi and the Bear, retails for $27.95 which means that on every book sale I receive 5% or $1.40 (as does the illustrator, Craig Phillips). But this is only the case on full price sales. If the book is sold at a discounted rate the author may earn next to nothing. For example, on my latest royalty statement a bunch of Megumis were sold at discount, netting me the grand total of 13 cents per book. Deals like this are often done by the publisher when the book has been out for a while, but even a new release can receive just a few cents in royalties. How? you might ask.

Read More »Go ahead, make my day: supporting Australian authors

Well, here’s how it works. In order to get books into the major department stores (the Big Ws of the world) the publisher offers them at a drastically reduced cost. So if you purchase a book from, say, Kmart, you might get it a couple of dollars cheaper, but you’re also reducing the author’s already meagre earnings. And then there are all the online bookstores offering cheaper rates. Again, the author’s earnings are likely to be meagre. I’ve quoted Jo Case’s stark example before but it’s worth repeating here. Purchasing a copy of Case’s memoir, Boomer and Me, from an Australian bookshop meant she received $2.50 in royalties, but buying it via Book Depository UK meant only three cents in royalties.

Ultimately authors are going to be happy that you’re reading their book any which way, but if you can buy locally from a physical bookstore everybody wins.

  1. Better yet, pre-order the book

Pre-orders and first week sales are crucial for a book’s success. Pre-orders help determine the number of copies retailers will stock, and also help books hit the bestseller list. So if you’re intending to buy an author’s book when it comes out anyway, why not pre-order it to give them that extra boost.

  1. If you can’t buy their book, borrow it…

…but not from a mate, from the library. Most readers don’t know that at the end of every financial year Australian authors receive PLR (Public Lending Rights) and ELR (Education Lending Rights) payments based on the estimated number of copies held by Australian libraries. These funds are significant, and often exceed royalties on sales.

If you read anything like the quantity of books that I do, then buying every book is simply not possible. But when you borrow a book from a friend, or buy a copy secondhand, the author gets nothing. Supporting your local library is a better option. I regularly borrow books from the library and if I love the book I will often then buy myself a copy. A recent example is Lucy Treloar’s Salt Creek. I borrowed it from my local library and loved it so much that I bought a copy for myself, and have been buying it as a gift for friends ever since.

If your local library doesn’t have the book you’re after, you can request that they buy it. You’ll increase the author’s PLR payment and other library users will also benefit from your initiative.

  1. Write a Goodreads (or Amazon) review

I am a late adopter of pretty much everything, and Goodreads is no exception. I had an inactive account for years and have only just started actually using it (so come join me there!).

Reviewing and rating an author’s book does make a difference. The best kind of reviews give other readers a sense of what the book is about and why you enjoyed it. But if you don’t have time to construct a paragraph or two, a quick line — even just ‘loved this book’ — will always be welcomed. Aside from making the author extremely happy (and believe me it really does), the more reviews a book has, the more readers see it. And constructive conversation around a book is useful in generating awareness. I use the word ‘constructive’ because Goodreads can be a brutal place for an author. Many authors I know avoid it in order to maintain their own sanity. I think some reviewers forget that a real person with real feelings wrote the book that they are reviewing. So please be honest but kind.

  1. Tell your networks

If you’ve enjoyed a book let others know by tweeting, Facebooking or Instagraming about it. Even good old-fashioned face-to-face works a treat. Word of mouth is the best way to help a book make its mark because readers act on recommendations from people they know and trust. And the author will love you forever and ever.

  1. Write to them

It’s so easy these days to drop an author a line. Most authors are accessible via email, website contact forms and various social media platforms. And don’t underestimate the zing it will give your favourite author. You work so hard on any given book for so long in isolation and then when it goes out into the world you crave feedback from readers. As Roger McDonald once said ‘an author is a thirsting person in the desert’. Hand them that glass of water!

  1. Go to their events

Better yet, meet them in person. Get them to sign your book, tell them what you loved about their last one, even take a selfie with them! It’s the loveliest thing when someone comes up to you at an event and tells you how much they adored your book. Nothing beats it.

So there you have it. Six ways to make an author’s day.

Audiobooks: why they matter and why authors should care

The companionship and delight of a voice telling stories is incomparable. Stephen Fry

I’m not usually a consumer of audiobooks, but circumstance has recently led me to a couple of excellent audiobooks, and it’s got me thinking about the medium. My children have long been fans, partly, I suspect, because we have a No-TV-after-school rule. This means they often listen to an audiobook while drawing, or doing craft. I mentioned this once to a fellow writer and her response was, ‘But is that actually the same as reading?’ The question holds an implication. That listening to books is somehow cheating, that it doesn’t count. That audiobooks are an ‘easy’ way to digest books with all of the rewards and none of the ‘work’.

My local library’s homage to the audiobook

The fact is that at a cognitive level there is no real difference between listening to a book and reading it. Listening comprehension and reading comprehension have a strong correlation. And while it’s true that listening to an audiobook does not require ‘decoding’ of the text, studies have shown that by Year 5 this ability is pretty much automatic and therefore not a particular benefit of reading over listening to a book.

What’s more, there are benefits that are specific to audiobooks. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that at seven my son was completely obsessed with audiobooks (there was always one playing). At this age his intellectual capacity was more sophisticated than his reading ability, and audiobooks supplemented equivalent books that I read to him at bedtime, and the lower-level books that he was able to read to himself. An additional benefit is that audiobooks teach the rhythms of language, and the way inflection and intonation are important when telling a story. Of course parents and teachers reading aloud can also do this, but who has four hours a day to read to their child? Masters Ten and Six both love print books but they can also gleefully recite whole slabs of audiobooks that contain sophisticated vocabulary. Now what could possibly be wrong with that?

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When I was a kid, my brothers and I had a cassette tape of Captain Beaky and his Band, an album of poetry set to music. I have no real memory of its content, but I do recall that it was roll-on-the-floor hilarious, eliciting the kind of violent laughter that makes everything hurt. We never tired of it, we listened to it so many times the tape eventually snapped. But as an adult who loves nothing more than curling up with a cup of tea and a print book, it’s only recently that I’ve discovered the pleasures of audiobooks for adults.

Later in the year I’m travelling to South Africa and I’ve been trying to read as much as I can by South African authors. I wanted to get my hands on Damon Galgut’s The Imposter but the library only had an audiobook, so I checked that out. Turns out it’s a stunning book and I’m keen to read more by Galgut. But this particular narration by Humphrey Bower, which gives each character a distinct South African voice, enriched the experience for me. I listened to the story whenever I was alone in the car and I found myself looking forward to previously mundane trips to the markets or school pick-up or meetings, because it meant I could sink into the story again. I was bereft when it ended, but not for long, because as it turned out my book club had scheduled Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera. I left it too late to get hold of a copy and when I rushed to the library only the audiobook was available. (I am, as you might have guessed, a big library user, but more on that another time.)

Whale Rider includes large chunks of Maori language which frustrated some of my fellow book clubbers on the page, but Jay Laga’aia narrates the audiobook and listening to these words in his mouth was like poetry washing over me. I only got the gist of their meaning but I could appreciate their beauty. Combined with Jay’s whale song and snippets of music, I found the audiobook a moving experience. Interestingly both these books were set elsewhere — South Africa and New Zealand — and the narration added another layer, bringing those cultures alive in ways not possible in print.

Of course there are audiobooks that miss the mark. It goes without saying that the quality of an audiobook hinges on its narrator. In May, the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) introduced its inaugural Audiobook of the Year Award, with Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton’s 78-Storey Treehouse taking out the gong. Stig Wemyss is the voice behind all the Griffiths/Denton books and consequently quite the rock star in our house. (It is a terrible oversight that he is not credited on ABIA’s list of award winners.) My kids met Stig at an event at our local library and Master Ten has never forgotten the moment he was invited on stage. At Stig’s request, Master Ten responded to his every question with a series of burps in a fashion so gross it would have made Griffiths and Denton proud. He won himself an audiobook and much kudos from the mini humans present. (Unfortunately — or fortunately — I was not there to witness it.)

But I digress. For authors it’s worth knowing that while audiobooks are currently a small market, they are showing the biggest growth of any format. In 2014, the value of the global audiobook industry rose to $1.47 billion, up 13.5% from 2013. In 2015, the value rose further to $2.8 billion, and then again in 2016 to $3.5 billion dollars. Commensurate growth is predicted for 2017. Overall, audiobook growth is ‘nearly five times the increase of the overall book trade industry’ according to the American Publishers Association. (For further stats see this article.) The most popular genres for audiobooks (and, incidentally, also for ebooks) are mystery, thriller, romance and fantasy/science fiction.

As Philip Pullman says, ‘Long before writing, people were telling each other stories and the audiobook goes all the way back to that tradition.’ While a print book is still my own personal preference, I’m an advocate of maximising opportunities for both children and adults to access stories. Ebooks, audiobooks, print books — whatever the format, it’s the story itself that counts. And if an audiobook means that I can convert all those mundane hours of driving every week into time spent with a story, I’m all for it.

Do you listen to audiobooks? Does it feel like cheating? And do you have a favourite narrator? I’d love to hear your thoughts.