Dear ASAL friends and colleagues

I am involved in a project with Cengage Learning, which published the Dictionary of Literary Biography ed by Selina Samuels. Cengage is a leading publisher of library reference, literature research databases and primary source collections in digital, print and microfilm format. Existing resources include: Literature Resource Center, Literature Criticism Online, the Dictionary of Literary Biography, the Scribner Writers Series, and British Literary Manuscripts Online, among others.

They are now putting together a 3 volume set titled The 21st-Century Novel: The First Decade, to publish in 2011. They are looking for a list of 30-40 novels published by Australian writers from 2000 to 2009. They state that these “should be works of high literary merit and significance, suitable for study in an advanced high school or university undergraduate class”. They have compiled a list of 17 books themselves (pasted in below) and have asked me to add to this. I would very much appreciate your suggestions for additions to this list. You can send them to me direct (e.mcmahon@unsw.edu.au).

Many thanks, Liz

• Ballad of Desmond Kale, The Roger McDonald
• Breath Tim Winton
• Carpentaria Alexis Wright
• Dark Palace Frank Moorhouse
• Dirt Music Tim Winton
• Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish Richard Flanagan
• Great Fire Shirley Hazzard
• Journey to the Stone Country Alex Miller
• Secret River, The Kate Grenville
• Shanghai Dancing Brian Castro
• Slap, The Christos Tsiolkas
• Spare Room, The Helen Garner
• Tender Morsels Margo Lanagan
• Time We Have Taken, The Steven Carroll
• True History of the Kelly Gang Peter Carey
• Truth Peter Temple
• White Earth, The Andrew McGahan

Jonathan Franzen’s piece on The Man Who Loved Children in the New York Times has stimulated interest in translations of Christina Stead’s works, and also (with prompting from Lyn Tranter, who is the agent for Christina Stead) it’s galvanised Melbourne UP into using the Australian & New Zealand rights to the book that they acquired about three years ago. They’ll publish in November, with Franzen’s essay as introduction.

WHAT SELLS? A DECADE OF RETAIL BOOK SALES IN AUSTRALIA

RMIT’s School of Media and Communication is developing a project in partnership with Nielsen Bookscan and other industry organisations.

Through negotiated access to data in the BookScan system, it will develop and make available publicly for the first time a comprehensive statistical mapping of retail book sales in Australia for the ten-year period January 2002 - December 2011.  It will build on the recently published University of Melbourne Book Industry Study by providing sales tracking and measurements data at individual title level.

Nielsen’s BookScan gathers statistical information from booksellers on a weekly basis and makes this information available to its commercial subscribers according to the level of their subscription. The data is organised under top line Level One categories. Each of those Level One categories is broken down into a number of Level 2 categories, and each of those Level 2 categories into Level 3 categories. The database also correlates these categories across a number of variables, including ISBN, title, author, volume, value, recommended and average selling price, format, publisher and imprint, etc.

The statistical map will make available for the first time essential data on book sales in Australia covering the first decade of BookScan’s operation. It will provide year by year information and cross-year comparison for the top 500 books sold over the period, the top 250 books in each of the three level 1 categories (fiction, non fiction, children’s/young adult), as well as the top 100 books in each of a number of other nominated categories.

The key features and trends revealed by this data will be of strategic importance in the Australian publishing industry and in determining Australian cultural policy. The data and the analyses being made of them will be of crucial relevance to a number of key community, cultural and policy issues being dealt with in Australia, including government policy and regulation, specialist publishers and publishing categories, scholarly research, industry competition, literacy education, local and international copyright, and library acquisitions.

The project is being developed within RMIT’s School of Media and Communication by Michael Webster, Associate Professor Peter Horsfield and Dr Brigid Magner. It is expected to be published early in 2012.

In developing the project, we are interested in hearing from ASAL members about the Level 3 category data that might benefit their research interests. Attached is a list of Nielsen BookScan categories.

You’re invited to highlight the Level 3 categories of interest and email the document to brigid.magner@rmit.edu.au. All emails will be acknowledged.

Dear ASAL members,

Hopefully you have had the opportunity to read the Teaching Australian Literature report that was released in July this year. The TAL project has now established a forum for collecting feedback and comments. The forum can be found at: http://teaching.austlit.edu.au/?q=talsurveyforum.

So please post your responses to this important report and help to generate discussion around the important issues it raises.

The report itself can be found at: http://www.altc.edu.au/resource-teaching-australian-literature-survey-utas-2010.

Paul Genoni

President, ASAL

Dear ASAL 2010 delegates

We are writing to invite conference presenters to submit papers for the JASAL Special Issue on Archive Madness. Papers need to be submitted to JASAL by 10 January 2010.

Postgraduate students who wish to submit their essays to the A.D. Hope prize should follow the same process and include details of their postgraduate status with their essays.

The JASAL site should be consulted for information regarding submission.

We are very excited about this publication given the wonderful work presented at the conference.

Best wishes