Past Programs
Business, Economics and Finance - 2007
Barbara Cullen - Outgoing CEO of the Australian Bookseller's Association
27/11/2007
It's turned into a week of major upheavals in the world of politics, and I suspect the Jobs pages, for many senior positions in the public service and beyond, will be full to overflowing for the next few months.
In the midst of all this, though unrelated to the election, a senior figure within the book industry is about to step down. Barbara Cullen, CEO of the Australian Booksellers Association, is stepping aside after four years at the helm of one of our most important industry groups. And although the change of guard is not tied to federal politics, her successor is going to be very interested in whether the new federal government is going to pay any attention to the needs and concerns of the book world.
Barbara Cullen is in that quite luxurious position of being able to reflect about the way the industry has evolved over the 24 years since she first started working in bookshops, moving then to owning her own bookshop in the 90s, and then her most recent work with the Australian Booksellers Association.
And Barbara joins Ramona Koval on The Book Show.
Andrew Wilkins: Bookselling and Publishing News
02/08/2007
Today, Ramona Koval is joined by publishing industry analyst Andrew Wilkins, who's the publisher of the online Weekly Book Newsletter and the monthly Bookseller + Publisher magazine - Australia's two major publishing-industry journals.
Andrew has just returned from New Zealand, where he attended the Montana Book Awards and a publishing industry conference. So Andrew tells us about the award winners and, more generally, the state of the industry in New Zealand.
Plus, in bookselling matters close to Australia, and with the imminent visit of some of the bigwigs from Amazon, the undisputed world champion of online bookselling, Andrew discusses the likelihood of Amazon setting up a division in the region. And he looks at the latest prospective buyer for the 24 Borders stores in Australia and New Zealand.
Andrew Wilkins - Borders, Booksellers and Digitisation
09/07/2007
With the latest and most important news from the book universe Ramona Koval is joined by Andrew Wilkins, who's the publisher of the online Weekly Book Newsletter and the monthly Bookseller + Publisher magazine -- Australia's two major publishing-industry journals.
Last time Andrew was on the program, he spoke about the surprise decision by the US book giant Borders to withdraw from all its Australian and NZ operations. At that time Andrew discussed what this might mean for the local booksellers that remain.
Now the reason we would want to talk about this is, quite simply, that the arrival of Borders in the first place was so consequential for the way we thought about bookselling in Australia. And so their decision to go is both odd and, whether or not you liked Borders as a retail model, it'll leave a massive hole in the landscape.
Also, at the recent Australian Booksellers Association conference, the president of European Booksellers Federation (EBF) John McNamee gave a keynote address, in which he delivered a sobering assessment of the landscape for local booksellers. He basically said that the 'digitisation' of books was a reality, that it was not going to go away, and that, if booksellers wanted to survive, they'd better start trying to figure out how to live with, and take advantage of, the digital book.
Charles Dickens and the international copyright act
20/03/2007
Today, we look at the legacy on present day copyright laws of the debates between Mark Twain and Charles Dickens about the need for international copyright in the 19th century. This debate raged across the Atlantic between England and America before America drew up its international copyright act to protect the work of foreign writers like Dickens.
Matthew Pearl joins us to discuss this influential debate. Matthew Pearl is a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Law School, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA, and he has written two novels: The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow.
Modern applications and abuses of copyright law
20/03/2007
We know Copyright Laws have clearly been created and have evolved for very good reasons. But strict application of the laws isn't always in the best interests of everyone involved in the care of an original work of art, whether it be music, visual art or writing. So our regular expert on the legal side of the literary world, Nic Pullen from Holding Redlich joins Ramona Koval to discuss these issues.
