Monday, November 16, 2009

Would a "London Review of Books" work here?


This is a question that one of our customers raised in response to our post on a NZ equivalent to the Danish publishers on-line magazine.

The London Review of Books is a prestigious literary magazine known for fresh thinking on fresh subjects, and has very high editorial standards.

The idea for a NZ equivalent is appealing but there are problems with it. The obvious one is that not many books published here measure up to the standard of what is in the LRB and, more importantly, there are even fewer book reviewers who do. The main factor is undoubtedly that the market in NZ is only one fifteenth that of the UK and if you factor in the market in Ireland and North America which is also reached (to a lesser extent) by the LRB, then the economics here are not favourable. One of the best attempts but which still failed was the Quote Unquote magazine. One which still exists but is primarily orientated towards art is Landfall and its literary content is directly allied to Otago University Press.

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