I am writing to express my extreme disappointment. Damian Bugg responds …

1 September, 2011

Dear Premier,

I am writing to express my extreme disappointment at your government’s decision to withdraw all funding from Island magazine in 2012, effectively closing the magazine.

Island magazine has been published in Tasmania since 1979, publishing and promoting local writers of the calibre of Richard Flanagan, Heather Rose, Robert Dessaix, Danielle Wood, Rohan Wilson, and James Boyce, along with international talent and important new voices.

Since I became editor in January 2011 we have launched a digital version of Island, a new website (with online subscription and submissions), formed a new management board and a national editorial committee. Our most recent issue, on MONA, has been the subject of an ABC Radio National feature program and widely reported on elsewhere across the country, including at the current Melbourne Writers Festival, where I spoke on various panels about Island’s national significance and its centrality to Tasmanian writing. The issue is on its way to selling out.

Your comment that the decision to defund Island was based on a ‘trend’ to online rather than hard-copy publication is, unfortunately, ill-informed. Island this year has developed an exciting digital publishing stream to complement our hard-copy publication, including ePub versions of every issue (sold on our website and at Readings eBookstore). We have received funding from Hobart City Council and your own office to develop ePub editions of the magazine’s extensive back catalogue, monetising a remarkable and valued resource. Industry best practice around the world is for publishers to develop a two-stream publication program: print and digital. A multi-platform approach is the best way forward for publishers to maintain readers and build new audiences.

Island is the only Tasmanian publication with a national profile: it allows us to tell our distinctive stories to the rest of the country. Conversely, the closing of Island is not a state-only concern: ending ‘one of the nation’s most important journals’ (The Australia Council) significantly reduces the options all Australian writers of essay, memoir, short fiction and poetry have for publication and professional development.

On a personal note the closing of Island will mean that myself and my husband (an indigenous literacy specialist at Dodge’s Ferry Primary school, and Chair of the Primary English Teaching Association of Australia) will be forced to take our skills, experience and energy back to the mainland where they are valued and resourced.

Yours sincerely,

Sarah Kanowski
Editor, Island Magazine
w: www.islandmag.com
e: island.magazine@utas.edu.au
t: + 61 (0) 3 6226 2325
a: PO Box 210 Sandy Bay Tasmania 7006 Australia

• Damian Bugg, Chair, Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board responds …

Department of Economic Development, Tourism and the Arts ARTS TASMANIA

The Editor
Tasmanian Times
Dear Sir,

The Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board makes the following comments in response to the letter to the Premier from Ms Sarah Kanowski, Editor of Island Magazine (Tasmanian Times 5 September 2011, Above).

The Assistance to Organisations panel of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board spent a great deal of time considering this application. The panel noted the appointment of Sarah Kanowski as the new editor of Island Magazine and recognised that she was an outstanding editor.

The panel was concerned that hard copy literary magazines, as a model for supporting literature, are in significant international and national decline, but that was not the only reason for the decision.

The panel was also concerned about the high per copy subsidy of the magazine to relatively few subscribers. It noted that the actual sales of the magazine were less than 1000 per issue (an average of 672 subscribers and 108 retail copies over the past 4 editions) and that each copy was being subsidised by the State Government through Arts Tasmania funding by $22 per copy on top of the recommended retail price of $15.95.

The Panel and the Board noted that Island Magazine had proposed a strategy for increasing circulation and reducing dependence on government subsidy, but felt the strategy was underdeveloped and the timelines lacked urgency.

The Board is mindful of the need to support Tasmanian writing, but noted that Island is not just an outlet for Tasmanian writers. In this funding round, $156,000 has been distributed in support of writing, through grants to the Tasmanian Writers’ Centre, the Australian Script Centre and the Tasmanian Poetry festival.

This was a highly competitive round and the final score for the Island application was the second lowest in the round and well below the cut-off point of 69.44%.

Yours sincerely,

Damian Bugg
Chair, Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board