The Queensland Writers Centre, of which I am a member, distributes a newsletter each month (with a trendily obscure cover) with “helpful” advice to writers.

As there is no letters to the editor section or any other mechanism for comments, suggestions and feedback, it does appear to be a closed shop! In this digital age, they don’t even have a forum or allow comments on their own blog!

Unfortunately, like most of the publishing industry (it used to be a profession), it has its head buried in the sand and only occasionally blinks around in a lame and often late effort to discover what is really occurring! Like the entire publishing business inAustralia, it is, sadly, ten years behind the times. Publishers,companies, critics, agents -  you could slap a glass dish over the lot and call it Jurassic Park! Oops, that’s been taken, hasn’t it.