Review of Making Books: Contemporary Australian Publishing, edited by David Carter and Anne Galligan

Abstract

This volume of writings from UQP is a timely contribution to a cultural arena currently caught up in discussions about publishing and books, about priorities and stances, traditional and new technology formats for books, and what a bookshop—chain or independent—can do in the era of an online world where consumers have more control over how they buy books. It follows the release of two volumes in what looks like a limited series. The second one, Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia (U of Queensland P, 2006) had the whiff of a book that had taken too long in gestation: parts of it read as out of date or curiously incomplete ·in its case-study format. Making Books is of a different order—largely up to date in an ever-changing and volatile industry, and relevant in its attempt to steer a path through a myriad of issues clustering around this object: the book.