News – Your Second Draft

October 8, 2023

Some bookshops may be thriving but that’s missing the point

Dom Knight’s piece on the ABC website (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-07/how-independent-bookshops-still-thrive-in-face-of-big-business/102937826) noted that many indie bookstores had been lost. Others survive. Some thrive. If your bookshop doesn’t have a loving community to support it, what is its future? It strikes me that publishing is, again, putting its head in the sand about change. As an advocate of digital, …

Continue reading "Some bookshops may be thriving but that’s missing the point"

May 12, 2022September 24, 2023

Why I’m not worried about the kids

Was this all a piece of projection? Bowed down? Recrimination? A wasted twenty years? Speak for yourself. It reeked of a childlike nostalgia for simple answers and couldn’t articulate a vision, or even any element of it, that she says she craves.

December 16, 2021September 24, 2023

A new publishing model

Unbound is a new, author-centred publishing model. It's a welcome addition to the industry.

March 8, 2020January 10, 2023

Why we need to read digital

Someone with a pretty sizeable following tweeted recently that reading digitally wasn’t really reading. Go read a book, you animals, she said. I wonder. What is a book? The words. It’s the words, folks. Who is more deeply moved by the quality of the paper, than the words printed on it? Yes, I understand that …

Continue reading "Why we need to read digital"

July 21, 2019

After the Flood

After the Flood available now.

November 5, 2017March 16, 2022

Self-publishing 101

Do you have a story? Today, I went to a full day workshop to hear from two insider heavyweights about the ins and outs of self-publishing. Sue Liu and Anna Maguire are experts in their fields. Sue is a successful self-published author of Accidental Aid Worker. Anna Maguire, Digireado, is a veteran of the book …

Continue reading "Self-publishing 101"

October 16, 2017

Women Writing Women

I spent a recent Saturday at the Symposium of the 2017 Rose Scott Women Writer’s Festival, its theme this year, Women Writing Women. An intimate festival, held in the beautiful rooms of The Women’s Club overlooking Hyde Park, its limited numbers allow for mingling between writers and readers. This year, it drew such well-known writers as Delia Falconer, Tegan Bennet Daylight and poet Kate Middleton, launching her most recent collection, Passage (Giramondo, 2017).