Writers need more government support: publisher Louise Adler

For all the talk about our fractured attention spans and ability to still read books, when a new phenomenon hits the shelves, we crack open the covers.

“If Harry Potter is delivered, what do we see? We see kids who are apparently distractible and distracted with their noses in their books - and they can’t be prised away from reading,” says Adelaide Writers’ Week director Louise Adler. “So I think it’s about good stories being told that connect with people. I live in faith. Maybe I’m an optimist.”

Credit: Kristoffer Paulsen

“We adore it when our authors win awards but, actually, often they do not translate into sales,” she says, pointing to the way the UK book industry gets behind the Booker Prize longlisted and shortlisted authors. “When the longlist for the Booker is announced the books on it are heavily promoted, booksellers get behind it, publishers get behind it, and then the shortlist is promoted heavily, too. And there’s lots and lots of discussion about them.”

Adler was talking all things books and publishing with Good Weekend editor Katrina Strickland on Good Weekend Talks, a magazine for your ears in which journalists from across The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age speak to the people fascinating Australians right now. A former CEO of Melbourne University Publishing and one-time publisher-at-large at Hachette, Adler was speaking ahead of her first Adelaide Writers’ Week, which runs from March 4 to 9 in the South Australian capital. She is hopeful that more support will be forthcoming for writers in the Albanese government’s much-awaited national cultural policy, due to be announced by Arts Minister Tony Burke on Monday.

“I hope there’s more support for writers because as it stands, even if you look at the Australia Council pie, where most writers go and apply for grants to write their books, the piece of the pie that literature gets is incredibly small,” she says.

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