Even after decades of history wars, Australians still have a keen appetite for Australian history. According to recent research by UNSW, 83% of Australians believe history is relevant to society today – but only 57% feel we know much about it.
Despite a welcome rise in history education through podcasts and social media, books are still among the best vehicles for it. In fact, books are often the engine for history in other media, including radio and podcast interviews, and literary festival appearances. But you will not find many of the books written by Australian historians in your local bookshop – though local publishers say there is a healthy market for Australian history among local readers.
Elizabeth Weiss, nonfiction publisher and digital publishing director at Allen and Unwin, described a “public respect” and “public interest” in history. We spoke to her for our new research on the place of the book in Australian universities, focusing on history. The Australian Historical Association surveyed 223 members, mostly historians, researchers and students (but also publishers and agents). It is the first study of its kind.
We found that though books remain historians’ most valued form of research, many universities favour high-impact journal articles over books, and there is a bias towards international publishers over Australian ones. This makes it harder for new history knowledge to reach most Australian readers.
Pressure against affordable, accessible books
While historians – especially those still young and building their careers – feel pressure to publish internationally, many would prefer to produce affordable books that Australians might actually get to read. Yes, academics don’t always write in ways that are accessible to readers who want stories, rather than jargon. But many do.
Unfortunately, these are not the books they’re incentivised to write.
Our study found that many Australian academics felt pressured to publish with “international” – largely meaning American or British – university presses. But the resulting books can be priced well out of the range of the average reader and are rarely available at local bookshops.
There are also pressures from within the historical profession to push scholars in this direction.
One young scholar with an award-winning book published with a top Australian academic press reported on social media in 2022 that an anonymous assessor of their Australian Research Council (ARC) application described their “claim to academic excellence” as “questionable”. The problem included their “choice of publisher”. The assessor urged them “to consider more prominent international academic presses”.
In chasing international prestige, historians are often forced to forgo local audiences. This means Australian readers can miss out. So, of course, do the authors themselves, as well as universities – who desperately need to demonstrate serious value to an increasingly sceptical public.
Tyler Callahan/Unsplash
Why history books are crucial
While people engage with historical research in many different ways, the book remains a key portal to the past. Books enable the historian to tell a complex story, explore the different sources used to find out about the past and interpret their significance. They help the public understand crucial events and periods, and how they continue to shape our present.
“Even in a changing digital world, [the book] remains the most enduring and compelling form of storytelling,” one respondent told us. Another called the book “the finest expression of the historians’ art”.
Universities, however, continue to incentivise forms of publishing that are inaccessible to most Australians. International university presses produce expensive books: some in excess of A$200. Journal articles are written for specialist, not general audiences, and often sit behind paywalls.
Publishing with the most esteemed British, North American and (to a lesser extent) European and Asian publishers helps universities improve their rankings. Australian universities seek to improve their international rankings for a range of reasons. The attractiveness of well-ranked universities to high-fee-paying international students is not the least of them.
For histories on non-Australian topics, and even for many histories with strong Australian content, an overseas publisher will often be the right choice to reach a wide international audience. But usually, historians writing on Australia want their books to be easily accessible to Australian readers – and to contribute to better understanding our country’s past.
Missed opportunities for universities
These shifts in publishing culture epitomise the rise of the “enterprise university” since the 1990s. They are regarded by university executives as positive manifestations of internationalisation. In that sense, the “cultural cringe” identified by writer and teacher Arthur Phillips in 1950, is alive, well and enjoying a second wind in Australian universities.
Today, academics are expected to publish internationally to advance their careers, even if their field is Australian history. And this pressure can produce perverse incentives.
“When I signed a contract with an Australian university press, my then Head of Department said, That’s a shame. An Australian publishing a book about Australian history with an Australian press betrays a lack of ambition,” one early career historian told us. “In truth the only reason I felt able to publish my book with an Australian press was because I’d already secured a continuing position.”
A striking finding of our survey was the concern early and mid-career historians expressed about the conditions for publishing books. While they remain deeply committed to the book, they felt that increasing workloads and precarious employment made the time required for sustained research and writing harder and harder to find.
Books are not the be-all and end-all of communicating history to the public. Indeed, most Australians learn about history in other ways. But books still have an immense power to influence how the past is understood: not least through their role in informing television documentaries, films, podcasts, museum exhibitions and school curricula.
Universities’ retreat from public culture has needlessly undermined their social licence by implying that taxpayers don’t need to be able to access the research they fund. But it is also a missed opportunity for universities to help sustain the vibrant public culture that lies at the heart of any successful democratic society.
