Went to buy a book today and (this is going to expose me as a wanker of sorts but anyhow..) I was shocked by how badly so many books are packaged and fonted (is that a word?). Readers (or at least I) buy books for different reasons, and (shock horror) the story is not always #1 on my list. Otherwise I’d just download a scanned version from the internet (if I could work out where to go). No, I like it to look nice, smell nice and feel nice. And set a mood. That’s why I’ll never by an E-Book or whatever they’re called. Put (insert desired book here) in a large loopy font and doublespace it, add an acre of white space in the margins and make it so big and heavy that it will dent my sternum in bed, and I won’t buy it. I’ll buy instead the much-less-desirable-but-maybe-ok small paperback from another writer that fits in my bag instead. I’LL EVEN BUY IT FOR THE STUPID SOFTBACK PRICE YOU SILLY MARKETERS. We are not pensioners with eyesight problems. Much Australian published fiction is guilty of all the above. Just awful. So – completely unravelling my uncompromising stance here, today I broke down and bought a book I’d heard an author talk about on the radio a few week back. And I’m furious because in the age of beautifully decorated covers, it had a gaudy title and picture, and acres of white space. Publishing god, bring back the small paperbacks of the 80’s, your greatest fan lies in wait. And they stack nicely too.