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‘Any colour you like, as long as it’s black,’ said the revolutionary genius, Henry Ford, and smugly ushered in the twin worlds of mass production and mass culture. The impression of freedom and choice was everything to the mass economy of the West. That’s the price of affordability. Sameness. The Orwellian West was as committed to sameness as the East. A thing, or a person, had to more or less the same in order to belong. Today, diversity rather than sameness has become the key. Communities of interest, even individuals, grow ever more finely differentiated from each other. So we have niche markets instead of mass markets, narrowcasting instead of broadcasting, multimedia instead of the old mass media, and we search for points of common ground at which we communicate our unique and different understandings of the world. Publishing has not kept up with the new times. Publishing factories measure success by number of sales-per-title, rely on cumbersome warehouses, service capital-heavy bookshops, are fuelled by mass-production successes plus below-cost junking of work deemed only half-successful or a failure. In short, contemporary mass-publishers show an aversion to anything less than the mass-marketable. The Internet and new variable print technologies make this kind of business, this kind of cultural focus, obsolescent. The world has changed in ways which mean that mass-production publishing is more likely to be mindlessly predictable than a place of cultural vibrancy and innovation. Hence WorldWriting . . .
Publications:| West of the West: writing, images and sound from melbourne's west | |||
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<a href="http://www.vicnet.net.au/~westwest/"> <i>West of the West </i> </a> a book and CD anthology to walk the reader through the stories, sounds and images of Melbourne's western suburbs. The true history of the word Maribyrnong? Before Franco Cozzo sold televisions? King Monkey takes a mini-van? |
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Book: Print |
$US19.95 | ||
| refo | |||
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<b> Complete set of five issues of Refo, </b> a serial publication that emulates literary practices of the past, independent of the corporate interests of mass-publishers, at the same time seeking to take advantage of the technologies of the present and future. |
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Book: Print |
$US55.00 | ||
Book: Electronic |
$US44.00 | ||
| Gay | |||
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Traverses the terrain of contemporary gay and lesbian life speaking lyrically about outing, about resistance, sports, body-image, HIV, drugs, intersex, the Catholic Church, the media, gay bashing, dancing...and fun! |
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Book: Print |
$US18.00 | ||
Book: Electronic |
$US13.50 | ||
| Love is Cruel | |||
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Geoff Goodfellow's hard-hitting. (mostly) unsentimental poetry dares the reader to search beyond the truisms and cliches, ideological as well as emotional. This is obviously the poetry of a hard loud man.<br> Or is it? |
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Book: Print |
$US17.00 | ||
Book: Electronic |
$US12.75 | ||
| Semi Madness: Voices from Semaphore | |||
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Goodfellow portrays a society in which the behaviour of the marginalized and mad appears more sane then the behaviour and routines of the certified straight. |
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Book: Print |
$US17.00 | ||
Book: Electronic |
$US12.75 | ||
| Amor Mundi: Days of Bombardment and Martial Law in Belgrade | |||
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Love, friendship, a quiet, wittily-spoken courage… |
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Book: Print |
$US18.80 | ||
Book: Electronic |
$US14.00 | ||
| Keeping Mum: Secrets of Happy Parenting and Other Lies | |||
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Covers every parenting trauma from toilet training, theme birthdays and the dangers of staples to costume creation, school projects and parent–teacher interviews. |
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Book: Print |
$US20.00 | ||
Book: Electronic |
$US15.00 | ||
| Seventeen Versions of Jewishness: 20 Examples | |||
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Twenty instalments of quintessential Lurie |
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Book: Print |
$US20.00 | ||
Book: Electronic |
$US15.00 | ||