The Community Publishing in Regional Australia project team comprises academic researchers Beth Driscoll, Kim Wilkins, Sandra Phillips and Alexandra Dane. With funding from the Australian Research Council, the project runs from 2023–25 and will be running workshops and conducting interviews about independent publishing in regional Australia over that time. Below, the team introduces the research project, and reports on findings from their recent trip to Mparntwe/Alice Springs.
What if the future of the book in Australia is in the hands of grassroots organisations with local aspirations? Digital publishing technologies, from print on demand to Kindle Direct Publishing, mean that book publishing is less tied to the cities of New York, London, or Sydney than it used to be. This means new opportunities for those in regional Australian communities to make books that record stories and share culture, whether that’s life stories, children’s books in First Nations languages, romance fiction, or local histories.
About the project
These opportunities and these books are the focus of a new research project, Community Publishing in Regional Australia, funded through an Australia Research Council Linkage Grant. This project investigates how community groups in regional Australia are using digital technology to publish and distribute books, and it brings together a team of ten partners. Three partners are universities: the University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland and Western Sydney University. There are three industry partners: the Small Press Network, Booktopia and Busybird Publishing. And there are four local councils who are partners on the project: Alice Springs Town Council, Burdekin Shire Council, Broken Hill City Council, and Winton Shire Council.
Our project aims to find new ways to support the increasing number of Australians in regional areas, including regional Indigenous Australians, who use digital technologies to write and publish their own books. We want to enable effective publishing practices to be shared between communities, linking diverse communities across distinctive regions in Australia, and work with industry organisations to build new relationships and share skills.
Between 2023–2025, we will visit each partner site, run workshops on self-publishing, interview residents who are publishing books, and meet and exchange knowledge with people who are engaged in the world of books and publishing. We will write up what we learn as a digital publishing toolkit, as well as in articles and— hopefully—a book revealing a better understanding of books, writing, and writers from around Australia. The project hopes to provide skill development for regional Australian book creators and publishers, and data on regional Australian book production and markets that can advance the Australian book industry. We spoke about our research recently at the Association for the Study of Australian Literature’s annual conference, which had the theme ‘From the Regions’, where we learnt about a lot of exciting community publishing happening, including in the Riverina region.
About our trip to Alice Springs
In August, we had our first fieldwork trip. The four academic researchers on the project (Alex Dane, Beth Driscoll, Sandra Phillips and Kim Wilkins) all travelled to Mparntwe/Alice Springs for a week of meetings, workshops and visits. Our trip was timed to follow on from the First Nations Australia Writers Network’s (FNAWN) annual summit, which Sandra attended and spoke at. The FNAWN annual summit is a significant event in Australian writing culture and an industry day on its third day saw the peak body host representatives from a wide range of agencies including Creative Australia, publishers small and large, writing organisations, and the Copyright Agency and Cultural Fund.
Alice Springs is an important gathering place for culture and storytelling, with a highly active community of readers, writers and publishers. It is a creative hub, home to numerous galleries and organisations including an office of the NT Writers Centre, Red Hot Arts and the Araluen Cultural Precinct. The annual NT Writers Festival is held in Alice Springs every second year in the Olive Pink Botanical Gardens. During our time in Mparntwe, we were able to experience a small taste of this cultural activity and discuss books and publishing with people working with books in many different capacities.
A priority for storytelling in Mparntwe is local histories and life stories, including truth-telling accounts from First Nations people. Examples of these books include Living in Hope by Frank Byrne (Running Water Community Press), Nomad Girl by Kanakiya Myra Ah-Chee (Aboriginal Studies Press), as well as On Both Sides of the Fence by John Spencer. We saw these books many times while we were in Mparntwe: for sale in local cafes, available to borrow from local libraries, and on the shelf at the local bookstore.
Red Kangaroo Books is a vibrant local independent bookstore run by Bronwyn Druce, winner of the 2023 BookPeople Bookseller of the Year Award. The store hosts launches and events for local writers and readers from its spot on Todd Mall. Red Kangaroo Books stocks hundreds of titles, including some that are independently published by local writers and printed at Coleman’s Printing, a local business that produces books.
One particularly important community publisher working from Mparntwe is Running Water Community Press. This Arrernte- and other First Nations-led, not-for-profit organisation has published a series of beautiful books, including Arelhekenhe Angkentye – Women’s Talk: Poems of Lyapirtneme from Arrernte women in Central Australia and Frank Byrne’s Living in Hope. It developed from Ptilotus Press, which itself grew out of a local writing group, and now has a strong board and strong partnerships with organisations across Australia including Akeyulerre Healing Centre, BLACKBOOKS, Arts Law, the ACT Us Mob Writers Group, and NewSouth Books.
Mparntwe is also home to educational and cultural institutions that support the local book culture. We were welcomed to the library at the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE) and met people from the Centre for Appropriate Technology, co-located at the Desert Knowledges Precinct. Batchelor Library brings together Indigenous thinkers and scholars and showcases their research, stories, and artwork; we also connected with the Batchelor Institute Press. We were pleased to be featured guests on the Book Talk program for 8CCC Community Radio, a show hosted by Eleanor Hogan that is dedicated to the discussion of literary culture in the region. (Listen to the podcast here.) The Alice Springs Public Library has a special collections section of work about or by people living in Central Australia, a section of First Nations language books, and a DVD library/TV area that is much used.
A focal point for our visit was running a workshop on community publishing at the Alice Springs Public Library. The two-hour workshop covered the basics of self-publishing, from coming up with amazing content through editing to marketing and distribution, and ways that publishing services and platforms can be used. Approximately 30 people attended, and we had a great discussion about the different projects participants are working on, which include fantasy and romance novels, business and personal development ebooks, First Nations language publishing projects and local histories. Two days later we held a drop-in session at the library focused on tailored advice for these individual projects, which 12 people attended. We also spoke to others involved in books and writing, such as Kathleen Ryder, who has self-published 20 works of romance fiction since 2020, many set in Alice Springs.
Where to next
So, where to next for the Community Publishing in Regional Australia research team? We have much follow-up to do from our trip to Mparntwe, including additional reading and interviews. We are preparing for our next fieldwork trips in 2024, to Broken Hill, Winton and Ayr. And we are doing a deep dive into data from AustLit to get the big picture of what community publishing is happening across regional Australia, in what genres, and in what formats. If you’d like to be kept informed about the project, follow us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter (social media accounts maintained by our talented research assistant Caitlin Parker) or email project lead Beth Driscoll driscoll@unimelb.edu.au.
Image: Sandra Phillips at the Community Publishing in Regional Australia workshop in Mparntwe.