Articulating Bookish Value: Value Beyond Price in the Words of Australian Literary Arts and Publishing Sector Insiders

Our research looks at the concept of value in relation to local books. In particular, we are interested in value beyond price and the question of how to recognize and articulate dimensions of value that are more than economic. We argue that a fuller and more nuanced understanding of value in relation to local books is necessary in order to positively impact local, state and national arts and cultural policy levers that can serve to protect, nurture and grow local content. In this article, our focus is on the way the Australian literary and publishing sector expresses ideas about bookish value. We use both close reading and software-assisted word-frequency analysis to discover how respondents to the public consultation phase of the Australian National Cultural Policy review of 2022 speak to three broad dimensions of value – (1) skills, jobs and economic prosperity; (2) social cohesion and building equity; and (3) wellbeing. Our data set includes 146 submissions that were contributed to the national policy review by authors, publishers, not-for-profit organizations and selected government bodies who stand to impact the health and vitality of local books and writing. This research demonstrates that those working with and within the Australian literary arts and publishing sectors conceive of value in myriad ways, and that economic value plays only a small part in their thinking on this topic. In particular, what we find is a persistent emphasis on value beyond price.