Come Writers & Critics: Oh man, what a response

Paul Lynch, winner of The Booker Prize for Prophet Song in 2023 has been slaying audiences in Sydney this week. Picture: Getty

Well, that hit a nerve, didn’t it? Last week’s story about the vanishing male Australian writer prompted an avalanche of mail. So, too, an earlier column about books, including many very good ones, that just don’t sell.

I was particularly interested in this note from Anthony Cooper of Kangaroo Point, Queensland, who wrote to say that he had self-published a thriller, The Eye Collector, on Amazon in 2022. It is based on his time stuck in Beirut, Lebanon, during the civil war. He met a man who collected human eyeballs, and went from there.

“I had twenty-eight people – largely unsolicited – write to me to say how much they enjoyed the book,” Anthony says. “The Morningside Book Club in Brisbane read it as their Book of the Month – again unsolicited. However, sales were less than 250 copies.”

He couldn’t work out why a well-regarded book wasn’t moving at a faster clip, and so did some research into the book industry to figure out if anyone was selling any books. This is what he found (quoted with permission) about books published in 2020:

■ Only 268 sold over 100,000 copies (0.01%).

■ 6.7% sold more than 10,000.

■ 12.3% sold more than 5000

■ 33.9% sold more than 1000.

Turn that last figure upside down, and what do you get? The vast majority of books sell less than 1000 copies. Average sales are in the region of 250 copies … which made Anthony feel very much better about his own sales, achieved without a major marketing and distribution campaign.

The upshot? It’s hard to write a book. It may be even harder to sell it, but you’re not alone in that. May the pleasure be in the writing.

Writer Anthony Cooper has crunched some numbers on book sales and the figures aren’t pretty.

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Booker Prize winnerPaul Lynch has been in town this week, and I was totally fangirling him, no shame at all, at a smashing cocktail party hosted by the good folk at Bloomsbury Publishing last Tuesday. He’s so youthful, and cheerful, and fully recovered from the cancer that cost him a kidney. The ground was moving beneath us – drinks were held in a discombobulating rotating restaurant high up in the sky – but he was completely down to earth, just warm and funny, self-deprecating and interesting. My friend Cheryl Akle captured an exchange between us on her trusty video camera, and you can see it on Instagram @overingtonc. We’re now going to make a series, where we just go around being disarmed by the charm of the Irish. The accent slays. Welcome to town, Paul. Enjoy your stay.

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Pauline Menczer is the ultimate badass battler.

There are some events that are just too good to miss, and this is going to be one of them. Pauline Menczer was in the 1990s “a dirt-poor, chronically-ill, freckle-faced teen from Bondi”. Sexism was rife in surfing in those days but she shrugged off the venom, to ride the waves.

Why?

Because, simply, she loved to surf.

She made it onto the pro-circuit. The prizemoney for women was woeful, and she couldn’t find sponsors, because she was gay and refused to play the blonde beach babe.

In 1993, she became world champion.

She’s been an advocate for women in sport ever since. Stephanie Gilmore describes her the “ultimate badass battler.” She’s written a book about her life, and she’s going to be interviewed by Luke Kennedy, who by his own admission has been clinging like a Sydney rock oyster to the coveted title of editor of Tracks magazine for 20-odd years now. Their conversation about Surf Like A Woman will be held at the revamped Bondi Pavilion on June 20. The Bondi bookshop, Gertrude and Alice, will host. It’s sure to be brilliant. Pauline is the ultimate underdog, and she absolutely owned all who tried to take the wind from her sails. Go you good thing. Tickets online. See you all there.

Pauline as world champion.

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Some upside news from one of Australia’s most successful writers: Markus Zusak will publish his first nonfiction work in September. It’s about his family’s decision to open their home to three big dogs from the local pound, and it’s described by the publishers as “purest comedy, and shocking tragedy, and carnage that needs to be seen to be believed … a strengthening of will, but most important of all, an explosion of love.” Zusak has written six best-selling books, among them The Book Thief, which absolutely everyone loved. His work has been translated into more than 50 languages, and he has been awarded numerous honours. He lives in Sydney with his wife, two children … and the last dog standing.

Three Wild Dogs (And The Truth) will be out in hardcover later this year.

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And here’s some more good news: James ­Islington’s The Will of the Many has picked up the award for 2023’s Best Fantasy Novel, in Australia’s Aurealis Awards for speculative fiction. The Will of the Many was published by Text in mid-2023 and it is the first in the Hierarchy series. Islington’s previous series, the Licanius Trilogy, has sold more than a million copies worldwide. John Morrissey’s debut story collection, Firelight, received the 2023 Aurealis Award for Best Collection. It was also short-listed for the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Indigenous Writers’ Prize and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing in the 2024 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. James and John are both based in Melbourne.

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Today’s pages: everyone is raving about Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn sequel, Long Island. I’m reading it for my book club, and Peter ­Craven has reviewed it for us, today. Miranda July has written a stirring book about draining the last drops out of your libido ­before you hit middle-age; Cheryl Akle has rounded up some ­Notable Books; and we have an extract from a new biography of William Shum, whose name may not be well known to you but he was editor of Home Beautiful for 20 years, and his impact on the way we live can’t be overstated. Enjoy.