Australia is publishing books too quickly – and everyone is losing out

Thanks to rushed deadlines, financial pressure and overworked staff, titles are going to market before they're ready - and then sliding from view immediately

A Sydney author - I'll call her Rebecca - vowed never to write another book after the deranging experience of publishing her first. She's using a pseudonym because one day she might change her mind; the notoriously small Australian publishing industry does not tend to look with favour on authors who complain.

When Rebecca was proofing her debut - a work of nonfiction published by one of the big five - she discovered that a pivotal chapter had been cut. I thought it was a mistake, that it had somehow been left out of the papers they'd sent," she says. Turns out they'd deliberately excised it and thought I wouldn't notice."