Community Publishing Newsletter - Issue 9
Happy new year to everyone from the Community Publishing in Regional Australia team.
I’m Beth, writing this edition of the newsletter from Thailand, where I am a Visiting Professor at Kasetsart University for a few weeks. On Saturday, I’ll be speaking about the Community Publishing in Regional Australia project at a symposium about publishing studies and book history methods.
As usual, this edition of the newsletter presents a few highlights from our research including links of things to read, watch and listen to.
Last November we were delighted to present on the Community Publishing in Regional Australia project as part of the Roderick Centre’s Public Seminar Series. The Roderick Centre for Australian Literature and Creative Writing is housed at James Cook University and hosts some great events (you can access recordings of these, including a recording of our seminar!).
Also in November we co-hosted an online symposium with another research team: Emily Potter and Brigid Magner from the Reading the Mallee project. The symposium was titled ‘Reading, Writing and Publishing in Regional Australia’ and featured more than twenty speakers sharing insights and experiences from Wagga Wagga, Toowoomba, the Gold Coast, Cairns, Bendigo, Lismore, Roxby Downs and more. Some of the presentations will be written up for a special cluster of the open access online journal Australian Humanities Review in late 2026.
I wrote a piece for the Conversation about why print books still matter, including for the self-published authors we interviewed for our project. The article got a lot of interest from radio stations, and I did interviews with ABC Canberra, ABC Regional NSW, 2SER Sydney, and ABC Melbourne. All of these interviews had people phoning in and talking about their preferences for print books vs ebooks vs audiobooks. They were great discussions! You can listen to part of the 2SER interview here.
Alex was interviewed all about the project and our DIY Publishing Toolkit for the Book Lovers’ Podcast, and it’s a great listen. If you haven’t downloaded the DIY Publishing Toolkit yet, here’s the link.
To whet your appetite for the toolkit, I’ll wrap this newsletter up with another enticing and hopefully useful excerpt. I’ve chosen one on ISBNs and barcodes, forms of metadata. Metadata may not seem glamorous but it’s very important for authors, librarians, booksellers, and academics - as I’ll be explaining at the symposium in Thailand this week!
With all best wishes,
Beth on behalf of the CPRA team
30. ISBNs and barcodes
To publish a book, whatever the format, you need an ISBN (International Standard Book Number). ISBNs are unique, 13 digit identifiers that are used to track your book in library and book ordering systems. We recommend you buy your own directly – it’s not difficult, and many third party companies will charge a mark-up. In Australia you buy ISBNs online from Thorpe-Bowker. You need one for each format (for example, you will need separate ISBNs for paperback and ebook editions of your book). A good plan is to buy the pack of 10 they currently price at $88. There is also a set up fee for new publishers who have not bought an ISBN before (currently $55).
Print books will need a barcode. You can make one for free with an online barcode generator (search for one of these online). Some platforms (e.g. IngramSpark) provide you with a barcode when you use their distribution and printing service.
