Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Monday 03 October
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
In both the big and small ends of town, what does it take to stay afloat in the publishing business? These days, it seems that no matter your skills, the paying of bills looms large – whether you’re in small press, independent journals, magazines, books, ‘new’ media or news media.
Through subscriptions, retail, arts funding, sponsorships, donations, ads, crowdfunding and more, we’ll take a fresh look at the financial and technological changes keeping today’s publishers and writers on their toes. And we’ll talk about some of the tactics (and the logic underpinning them) that publishers are deploying in response. Who’s leading the field, who’s surviving most confidently, and how do you balance quality, quantity and liquidity? How are publishers and writers branching out – into events, publishing different kinds of material, taking on paid work in complementary fields – to make ends meet? Is there a better way?
Sam Cooney is the publisher of the Lifted Brow, who’ve just broadened their remit to include books as well as a quarterly magazine and website. Former Junkee editor Steph Harmon is now the Guardian’s Cultural Editor. Jane Howard is the newly-minted director of Digital Writers’ Festival. In conversation with Meanjin editor Jonathan Green, find out how they’re keeping the lights on.
Featuring
Jonathan Green
Jonathan Green has been an editor, writer, commentator and broadcaster in a 40-year career as a journalist, beginning with a cadetship at The Canberra Times and taking in various Australian dailies: the Melbourne Herald ...
Sam Cooney
Sam Cooney runs the literary organisation TLB, which houses the independent book publishing press Brow Books and quarterly literary magazine The Lifted Brow, as well as running a website, writing prizes, events, and more. He is publisher-in-residence at RMIT, teaches sessionally at several universities, and is a freelance writer and literary critic.
In 2017 he took part in the Australia Council’s ‘Future Leaders’ professional development program, and in 2018 he was a member of the Australia Council publishing delegation tour of India, and travelled to the United States and the UK on Australia Council funded research trips about not-for-profit trade publishing, and was invited into the inaugural Foundry658 Accelerator program run by the State Library of Victoria and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) as part of the Victorian Government’s Creative State strategy.
Steph Harmon
Steph Harmon is founding and managing editor of Junkee, a politics, pop culture and comment site which publishes work from some of the best young journalists and writers around Australia. Prior to Junkee, Steph was the editor of music and arts streetpress The Brag, and founding editor of arts and culture website Throw Shapes. She occasionally appears on ABC radio, FBi Radio and The Project, and tweets from @stephharmon.
Jane Howard
Jane Howard is a contributing editor at Kill Your Darlings, and a freelance arts journalist, critic and researcher with a focus on performance. Her work has appeared in publications including ABC Arts Online, RealTime, Meanjin and Junkee, and her experimental criticism projects have been supported by organisations including the Lifted Brow and the Performance and Art Development Agency.
Translated into multiple languages, she has worked for the Guardian across Australia and in Asia, and her work has been commissioned in Scotland, Canada, and the Czech Republic. She was the director of the 2016 Digital Writers’ Festival and coordinator of HIVE at the 2017 Adelaide Film Festival. She is currently writing a book about art and grief.