Carody Culver is a freelance reviewer, PhD student and bookseller at Black Cat Books in Brisbane. This review first appeared in the Summer issue of Bookseller+Publisher magazine.

Text publisher Michael Heyward told Bookseller+Publisher ‘we set the price for Text Classics at $12.95 because we want readers to surrender to their impulse to curl up at last with The Women in Black or A Difficult Young Man.’

‘In a world of virtual infinite availability, curatorship is everything in publishing and bookselling. That’s why we are rushing back to the future in which the independent bookstore on the corner will thrive. We all want people we trust to help us make our choices in life, and especially so with books because a huge part of the pleasure of reading is the pleasure of talking about the book afterwards with our friends. Great booksellers all know this and that’s why they take the curatorship of their bookshops so seriously.

A signature series like the Text Classics, in which every book has been handpicked, will allow booksellers to offer their readers something new and something trusted in a collectible edition which is going to be pretty close to the cheapest thing in the bookstore.’

As for the design, Heyward said design director Chong Weng Ho ‘was part of the discussion from the start. ‘We wanted the covers to be like light bulbs in a dark room,’ said Chong. ‘We wanted readers to be cheered up by a good prospect. We wanted to give them art.’

The full list of launch titles is:

• The Commandant (Jessica Anderson, intro by Carmen Callil)
• Homesickness (Murray Bail, intro by Peter Conrad)
• Sydney Bridge Upside Down (David Ballantyne, intro by Kate De Goldi)
• A Difficult Young Man (Martin Boyd, intro by Sonya Hartnett)
• The Australian Ugliness (Robin Boyd, intro by Christos Tsiolkas)
• The Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse (John Clarke, intro by John Clarke)
• Diary of a Bad Year (JM Coetzee, intro by Peter Goldsworthy)
• Wake in Fright (Kenneth Cook, intro by Peter Temple)
• The Dying Trade (Peter Corris, intro by Charles Waterstreet)
• They’re a Weird Mob (Nino Culotta, intro by Jacinta Tynan)
• Terra Australis (Matthew Flinders, intro by Tim Flannery)
• My Brilliant Career (Miles Franklin, intro by Jennifer Byrne)
• Cosmo Cosmolino (Helen Garner, intro by Ramona Koval)
• Dark Places (Kate Grenville, intro by Louise Adler)
• The Watch Tower (Elizabeth Harrower, intro by Joan London)
• The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (Fergus Hume, intro by Simon Caterson)
• The Glass Canoe (David Ireland, intro by Nicolas Rothwell)
• The Jerilderie Letter (Ned Kelly, intro by Alex McDermott)
• Bring Larks And Heroes (Thomas Keneally, intro by Geordie Williamson)
• Strine (Afferbeck Lauder, intro by John Clarke)
• Careful, He Might Hear You (Sumner Locke Elliott, intro by Robyn Nevin)
• Stiff (Shane Maloney, intro by Lindsay Tanner)
• The Middle Parts of Fortune (Frederic Manning, intro by Simon Caterson)
• The Scarecrow (Ronald Hugh Morrieson, intro by Craig Sherborne)
• The Dig Tree (Sarah Murgatroyd, intro by Geoffrey Blainey)
• The Plains (Gerald Murnane, intro by Wayne Macauley)
• The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (Henry Handel Richardson, intro by Peter Craven)
• The Women in Black (Madeleine St John, intro by Bruce Beresford)
• An Iron Rose (Peter Temple, intro by Les Carlyon)
• 1788 (Watkin Tench, intro by Tim Flannery).

Crikey

The first one that ‘An international agreement between publishers has driven massive increases in the price of ebooks for Australian readers’ is not exactly accurate. Yes agency agreements have seen the price readers pay for some ebooks go up but the price of the ebook has not necessarily increased. Under the agency model retailers must sell the ebook at the price set by the publisher. Under the traditional wholesale model the publisher sets a list price (suggested retail price) and retailers can discount off that. Whether an ebook is sold under agency or wholesale the list price stays the same. To say an agency agreement has driven prices up is incorrect, the agency agreement just means the ebook is sold at is originally set price and cannot be discounted by the retailer. But it can be discounted by the publisher. You will not see flat pricing under agency (not if the publisher has half a retail mind). There will be days, weeks or even months when the price will drop, quite considerably in some instances, before going back up again.

The agency model is not new. Everything Apple sells is under the agency model from apps to music from Macs to iPads. In fact many electrical goods and kitchen appliances are sold in Australia under a similar agency model. Yes Apple instigated the agency model for ebooks when they launched iBooks in 2010 but it was not ‘a deliberate attempt by Apple to destroy Amazon’s dominance of ebook sales’. They achieved that just by entering the ebook market as did Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google and every ebook retailer.

Apple does everything by agency. The reason the big major publishers jumped on board was because Amazon’s ebook pricing was destroying their business model. And yes there is a business model for book publishing both print and digital. There are costs that need to be recouped. Just because a book is in a digital format does not mean it cost 3 cents to make. An ebook does not exist in a separate world to the print book. They share the same costs of production as well as marketing.

Publishers’ sales of $US25 hardcovers were being eroded by Amazon selling the ebook a $US9.95 regardless of the price (retail and cost) that the publisher had set. The agency model allowed publishers to gain a 70/30 split (publisher/retailer) on ebook sales, much higher than the print book split which can be up to 45/55 for Discount Department Stores (usually 60/40 for bookshops). This meant an ebook at $US14.95 agency vs a $US25 hardback would be at a ‘price of indifference’ (indifference for the publisher NOT the retailer). Unfortunately there are some publishers who have not priced their ebooks at this ‘price of indifference’ and Crikey can rightly argue that they have ‘gouged the customer’ (both reader and retailer).

The real story is not one of ebook rip offs and global pricing inequality. The real story is that Amazon is actually predatory pricing (see ACCC definition). They are setting ‘prices at a sufficiently low level with the purpose of damaging or forcing a competitor to withdraw from the market’ and they are doing this with a proprietary ebook format and device. This has also made it next to impossible for new competitors to enter the market. If it wasn’t for the agency model there would be a lot less competition in the ebook market. Barnes & Noble would not have been able to claw back marketshare nor would Kobo have made the inroads it has made and I doubt there would be independent booksellers selling ebooks like you have in the US with Google or here via Booki.sh and ReadCloud.

While many consumers enjoy Amazon’s predatory pricing the end result is not good. Once competition is wiped out Amazon ‘can disregard market forces, raise prices and exploit consumers’ something that can be more easily done if you have already locked your customers in to a particular format and device. It is a complex issue and one that is far from over. But it is a lot more complicated than is being reported. What is at stake is a competitive market which ultimately is good for authors, publishers, retailers and most importantly readers.

Jon Page is president of the Australian Booksellers Association. This post first appeared on his Pages & Pages Bite the Book blog. 

The first narrator we meet is Catherine Gehrig, a grieving conservator at the fictional Swinburne Museum in modern-day London, who is given the task of restoring a clockwork automaton that is apparently a replica of the mechanical duck designed by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739. Included with the parts are the notebooks of the man who commissioned the replica, Henry Brandling, a wealthy member of a railroad dynasty who conceives of the automaton as a gift to cheer his beloved but ailing son. Catherine reads the notebooks and the chapters alternate between her story and Henry’s, as he travels to Germany to find a clockmaker who can reproduce the remarkable feat of Vaucanson. Once there he finds the mysterious Herr Sumper, a brute of a man who speaks in riddles and may be a genius or a charlatan and who agrees to make the automaton, but produces something that is not entirely expected.

The dual narrative is something that Carey has employed in several of his most recent novels, including Parrot and Olivier in America, His Illegal Self and Theft: A Love Story. In this case, with the present-day character researching a somewhat mysterious 19th-century past, it also has overtones of A S Byatt’s Possession. There is nothing quite so neat as the resolution of Byatt’s novel here though, as the narrative proceeds through confusions and misunderstandings and hints at things that are simply beyond our comprehension. There’s something off-kilter about both of the narrators that Carey captures in a jumpy prose style, and there are hints of madness in several of the characters. Catherine reads Henry’s narrative and realises that ‘what was initially confusing would never be clarified no matter how hard you stared and swore at it’ and the experience is not dissimilar for the reader of this novel, but Carey has long traded in ambiguities and like his previous novels, this is a gripping read.

Fans of Carey (and they are legion) will snap this one up and it should attract widespread attention in the literary world. Look for it to feature on prize shortlists next year.

Blair Mahoney teaches English, Literature and Philosophy at Melbourne High School and is the author of Poetry Reloaded, a textbook for secondary students. This review first appeared in the Summer issue of Bookseller+Publisher magazine.

Andrew Wrathall is publishing assistant for Bookseller+Publisher. This review first appeared in the Summer issue of Bookseller+Publisher magazine.

Eric Knight is a former Rhodes scholar, who has worked as an economics consultant to the OECD, the UN and the World Bank, and has written for various Australian newspapers.

You write that we get distracted by what is visually compelling, but how do we change our focus to look at the bigger picture?
Near the start of the book, I describe a simple puzzle which was developed in the 1940s by the psychologist, Karl Duncker. I won’t go into the details here, but the puzzle intrigued me because I failed miserably at it. I later learnt that five-year-olds were the best at solving it. My mistake—and the one I examine throughout the book—was to view the elements of the puzzle in a stereotypical way and miss the hidden connections between things. Five-year-olds, by contrast, approached the problem with fresh eyes.

Reframe is an attempt to apply Duncker’s insight about human psychology to politics. The way we look at political problems directly affects our ability to solve them. I show a different side to our stickiest problems–from the frontline of the war on terror to Mexicans crossing the border into Tea Party America. The book is an attempt to reframe each of these problems. But even if you disagree with my final conclusions, I try to offer a new way of thinking about how to change the world. Our best answers arise by trial and error, not by the neat application of abstract ideas.

Did your frustration with the way people think drive your need to understand them?
No, I actually came to write Reframe for a very different reason. I’m an optimist about human nature. There have been many books written recently which essentially argue that people are irrational. I make the opposite case: people are rational with a good heart and head.

History, however, is obviously filled with many instances of human misjudgement and error. I explore several of them in the book. My first chapter, for example, is called ‘Why people are smart but act so dumb’. My claim is that these are momentary blips rather than structural flaws. Correction is possible.

We all want to distil complexity in the world around us. When we fail, it is usually because an issue has been misrepresented rather than because of mindful malice. Our greatest challenge is to frame political problems in the right way. An alternative, and inferior, approach is to assume there is a dark side to human nature which can be curbed by benevolent dictum.

Do you believe our world leaders often neglect historical fact?
I think our world leaders are guilty of something more subtle. Politicians simplify messages because they think it makes them easier for us to understand. However, I actually think simplifying problems can make them harder to solve.

World leaders might be better served by heightening their respect for our natural intelligence. They could trust us with more complexity not less. We are not in a political stalemate because our world leaders neglect historical facts, as such. We’re in a stalemate because leaders presume we won’t understand complex facts.

Reframe tackles global problems. Have you thought about writing a book that looks at local issues in Australian politics?
I have thought about it and that might be my next book! But I wrote this book after spending three years living in England. What fascinated me whilst there was that the British fought over political issues for remarkably similar reasons to why we did. The same applied in the United States and continental Europe. The players were different and the factual contexts were obviously unique. But the reasons—the common, almost universal, nature of political misunderstanding—were similar.

That contradicts something commonly said about Australian politics. Australian politics is parochial, people say. They don’t sweat the small stuff in the grander political pastures of North America and Europe. I disagree. It’s the common thread you can weave between the immigration debates in the United States and the climate conundrums of Great Britain which really intrigues me.

I’ll let my readers apply the lessons to Australia. But I think you can get a deeper understanding of your own country by observing a parallel political world abroad.

What was the last book you read and loved?
I really enjoyed Michael Lewis’ new book Boomerang: The Meltdown Tour (Allen Lane). He is a fantastic writer and has a wonderful way of making economics come to life through its quirkiest characters and their real life stories. I also liked Niall Ferguson’s Civilization: The West and the Rest (Allen Lane). He has built a reputation for arguing the counterintuitive side of history. You don’t have to agree with Ferguson to appreciate his ability to distil very complex ideas into simple prose.

David Gaunt is co-owner of Gleebooks in Sydney. This review first appeared in the Summer issue of Bookseller+Publisher magazine.