It's good to see that the book webpages of Brisbane's "Courier-Mail" have been given a decent overhaul. The previous version hardly had any literary content at all. Chief amongst the new offerings is Suzanna Clarke's piece on the standing of the Miles Franklin Award within the Australian literary community: "Always a Story".
I was certainly pleased to see Alex Miller making a point I heartily endorse: "Winning the Miles Franklin is the only thing that gets you out of the book pages and into the news pages. "You get fabulous publicity, but the response by the bookshops is crap. When the Booker comes out, the shortlisted books are in shop windows for weeks. That doesn't happen with the Miles Franklin." And, to be frank, I can't see why not. The sales of last year's winner, The White Earth, had practically dried to a trickle before
McGann's win. After that it went gangbusters, pushing up towards 40,000 copies. Surely something to be learned there.
