Foong Ling Kong is Publisher & CEO at Melbourne University Publishing. Over a two-decade trade publishing career, she has commissioned and edited predominantly non-fiction titles for several Australian publishers. Before her returning to Melbourne University Publishing, where she was Executive Publisher from 2006 to 2010, she was Editor of Debates for the Legislative Assembly at the Parliament of Victoria. She was on the boards of the Stella Prize and Overland, and managing editor of Anne Summers Reports.

What was your pathway to publishing?

As a student at Melbourne University, I asked Philip Mead if Meanjin, for which he was then poetry editor, needed some help over the summer. I stayed for three years, doing whatever needed to be done, from copy-editing to proofreading, entering corrections, mailouts, reading the unsoliciteds. From there I went to Viking/Penguin as editor, and then to Allen & Unwin, Hardie Grant, and MUP. I freelanced off and on, which enabled me to work for Fairfax, and had a ridiculous amount of fun with Anne Summers on her magazine. Eight years ago, I wanted to properly understand how legislature worked and so I stepped into the world of Parliament, where I had a ringside seat and watched legislation on voluntary assisted dying, gender equality, and treaty go through.

How many titles do you publish each year?

MUP publishes thirty-five to forty titles a year.

Do you edit the books you commission?

I try to do some structural work; much depends on what’s on my desk when a manuscript lands. That first read of a manuscript is invaluable: it’s also when I imagine the finished form the book may take – format, cover, all the things that contribute to the bookishness of the book.

What qualities do you look for in authors?

The idea and the voice, and how they embody the subject matter. Authors who genuinely have something to say. Pleasure comes into it, too, where language is used in unexpected ways.

In your dealings with authors, what is the greatest pleasure – and challenge?

I am an editor at heart and always will be; to be able to stand on the shoulders of giants and look at and understand the world from a writer’s perspective is a privilege of which I’ll never tire. I want all their books to succeed – and the challenge/heartbreak is delivering on the swooning reviews, the prizes, and the sales.

Do you write yourself? If so, has it informed your work as a publisher?

I did, and spookily, can internalise an author’s voice enough to ghostwrite. Having a writerly perspective definitely informs my publishing, though correspondence, lectures, blurbs, and structural reports are my lot these days.

What kinds of books do you most enjoy reading?

I like writing that reveals the relationship between idea, form and voice, that shows process and connections, that is not afraid of the unknown, the unresolved and the political, and that makes a difference. One of my favourite books remains Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature – a diary, a manifesto of mischief and possibility, and the work, always the work he loved.

Which editors/publishers do you most admire?

I love the grandes dames – Carmen Callil, Anne O’Donovan, Diana Gribble, Hilary McPhee, Anne Summers; admire the firepower of Lloyd O’Neil, John Iremonger, Bob Sessions, Louise Adler, Ivor Indyk, Sandy Grant; and the myriad people who do what they do so well – Sue Hines, Bryony Cosgrove, Phillipa McGuinness, Julie Gibbs, Henry Rosenbloom, Esther Anatolitis, Michael Heyward, Yasmin Smith, Evelyn Araluen.

What advice would you give an aspiring publisher?

Be curious, keep an open mind. I believe in knight’s moves, so no experience is ever wasted and may come in useful two, three roles down the road.

How significant, in a protean age, are book reviews?

Book reviews and word of mouth remain the most trusted paths to a book, so they matter from a sales perspective. However, if you take the good reviews, surely you have to take the bad, no? I have long heeded Joseph Conrad’s advice: don’t read reviews, measure them.

In a highly competitive market, is individuality one of the casualties?

Not at all; bestsellers tend to be out of the box. The first book of its kind that inevitably gives rise to a hundred imitators is often an outlier, an original. Recall the trend for single-subject books on cod or the Oxford English Dictionary that began with longitude.

What’s the outlook for new writing of quality?

There are far more platforms available now, and so many more ways in which words can be transmitted. The important question is how creative work is properly remunerated. Our writers, thinkers, and creators sacrifice so much to create our culture; as readers we need to be better at support, to learn to pay for quality. That’s where publishers come in – only connect.