Conditions of Access: Mapping the value of Australian novels in the twenty-first century global marketspace

Abstract

What is the value of Australian novels in the twenty-first century global marketspace?

Competing accounts about the extent of the international circulation of contemporary Australian literature and the conditions under which works circulate have informed policy advice to the Australian Government about changes to territorial copyright laws, fuelled a public narrative in which Australian access to the world literary sphere is a case of exceptions, and structured industry practices related to circulation. Academic understanding has been determined by data availability and a focus on the evidence of circulation rather than the material processes of the export trade, the less visible aspect of which is the export of intellectual property, often referred to as 'selling rights'. With no comprehensive record of 'rights' activity available, these multiple accounts have led to many empirically untested theories about why the rights to Australian literature do 'sell'.

Focusing on the novel -- and conceiving of the international rights as not 'sold' but licensed in a conditional cultural exchange -- provides the study with an indicator for 'literature' and 'the global'. This thesis conceptualises these rights as traded within a global marketspace from which works of sufficient value are offered entry onto an international licensing field. Integrating this rights-specific frame within a three-tiered sociology of translation exchange model, the value of a work can be shown to be determined by international power relations, national consecration, and local networks: not, as is often claimed, by the quality or the subject matter of a work. To build the two-part database this study uses to map circulation, measure value and demonstrate this process, it draws on the license itself to create a 'transaction' and an 'influence' data set. The license provides evidence of transactions, digitally linking the constellation of information surrounding the license as a way to measure 'influence'.

By mapping circulation in this manner, this study creates a new data-driven account in which Australian literature has a different value in the domestic marketplace and global marketspace. Not only is there more international access during the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century, in this space women authors receive a high amount of critical attention, genre fiction is highly visible, and literary fiction is not in decline. Overall, the international value of Australian literature can be seen to have increased over the period.