The Internationalisation of a Manuscript: Finding the Potent Generic

While publication on the Internet is often a truly global enterprise involving writers, readers and editors from all over the world, print publishing is still a significantly locale-specific venture. This was brought home to us when we were involved in the final editing of our book, "The Girl's Guide to Work and Life: How to Create the Life You Want" (Brien & Brady 2004).This paper addresses issues arising from working through the process of turning a manuscript originally written for an Australian readership into one suitable for international sales and distribution - a process which we soon discovered entailed more than looking at spelling or taking out all the slang. While the very idea of this process is often perceived as culturally demeaning, we found it could be turned around to make a positive contribution to the de-colonisation of contemporary Australian writing and publishing.