All Reviews - Bibliodiversity
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Susan Hawthorne has provided all of us who cherish and love books, knowledge, ethics, cultural diversity, multiversity in all its forms, with a wonderful manifesto for our sustainable survival. Bibliodiversity. Read this book, share it with your friends, discuss its content, imagine the kind of world you want to live in and the books and ideas you want to keep sharing to help make the world a better place to live. Do not just read the book but use its bibliography as a learning resource as it is almost as rich as the book itself. Like those who sat at the feet of the Maori Rainbow God, Uenuku, learn from this wisdom and share it with the rest of the world.
Cathie Koa Dunsford,
Director: Dunsford Publishing Consultants
Susan Hawthorne’s ideas are brilliant. Independent publishing feeds the cultural identity of our society as well as providing a source of income and satisfaction for writers, editors, and designers. This book must be read and distributed far and wide so that everyone understands the challenges but supports the joy!
Lisa Hanrahan, Convenor, Independent Publishers Committee, Australian Publishers Association
In Bibliodiversity Susan Hawthorne explores the present and future impacts of globalization, digital publishing, censorship (including self-censorship), the declining importance of reviews, monopoly-controlled distribution systems, and social media niche market promotion. She argues for the voices of diverse and marginalised people to be heard and for fair trade and fair speech rather than free trade and free speech
NANCY WORCESTER, Professor Emerita, Department of Gender & Women’s Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA
This manifesto was written with the systemic complexity of the challenge of survival of our species in mind. Susan Hawthorne warns us brilliantly from start to finish to recognize the vital interdependence of all living systems. Bibliodiversity can be read as a manifesto for the defense and promotion of diversity in all its forms, but also as a master class in ethics and testimony ‘to free one’s self ... and not to be impeded’.
JUAN CARLOS SÁEZ C., Director Gerente, JC Sáez Editor, Chile
This passionate, challenging and highly readable manifesto champions the vital role of international, independent publishers who give voice to ‘the risky, the innovative, the controversial, the marginal and the imaginative voices’.
Richard Smart, Consultant for Independent Publishers Committee, Australian Publishers Association
...the points that Hawthorne has to make here are enlightening and important, and whether you are the owner of an independent publishing company, a writer who works on books in your free time, or simply a reader who wants to discover the best texts out there, Bibliodiversity is a must-read.
Craig Manning,
Independent Publisher
Much of what Hawthorne writes in her manifesto is for and about the publishing world but her book is a strong statement to all of us about the need to insure that our own reading and thinking includes bibliodiversity... If we are ever to live together in relative peace, we need bibliodiversity to get to know each other as friends rather than stereotypical enemies.
Me, you, and books
Susan Hawthorne has been championing and refining this manifesto for years through presentations and conversations and it is very important that she has now further contributed to bibliodiversity by publishing this work! This publication should be mandatory reading for anyone within the publishing industry—to understand the role that you play—and core curriculum for all students of publishing and publishers of the future—to ensure sustainability for the industry. Whether you are a publisher, bookseller, librarian or writer, you are above all a reader, and you each have a responsibility to encourage bibliodiversity—start playing your role today by reading this manifesto.
MARY MASTERS, General Manager, Small Press Network, Australia
This is a huge and interesting work; a precious testimony to explore and understand bibliodiversity from the point of view of a feminist publisher. Bravo!
LAURENCE HUGUES, Directrice, Alliance internationale des éditeurs indépendants Paris, France
Susan Hawthorne’s insightful and warm-hearted essay argues for a wide landscape of independent publishing to balance what is called ‘mainstream’, meaning the male power of big money.
GERLINDE KOWITZKE and HILKE SCHLAEGER, Frauenoffensive, Munich, Germany
...Hawthorne is the eternal optimist, having no doubt that global corporatisation will
not kill independent publishing
Katrina Kincade-Sharkey,
North and West Melbourne News
Susan Hawthorne has done a great service to the book publishing industry. In this concise book she clearly and succinctly explains the importance of independent publishers. Using the analogy of biodiversity, she points to the importance of bibliodiversity in providing expression for minorities, for peripheral regions, for often unheard voices and for literary forms such as poetry.
Errol Sharpe, co- owner and publisher at Fernwood Publishing,
foreword to the Canadian Edition
