Mark Rubbo wanted to start in the book trade when he was so young he was still in short trousers. He had a scheme that he and a friend should pool money, buy books together and swap them: "I wanted more books; this was the way to get them."
Fast forward more than 50 years and Rubbo has many thousands of books. Lots are in his home, but most are in his five Readings shops. Next year he will celebrate the 40th anniversary of his first bookshop in Carlton, but last night he was celebrating being given the Lloyd O'Neil Award for distinguished service to the Australian publishing industry at the Australian Book Industry Awards.
It is an honour previously given to luminaries such as Maureen and Tony Wheeler, Ruth Park, Margaret Fulton and former Penguin publishing director Bob Sessions. During the presentation in Sydney, Scribe publisher Henry Rosenbloom described Rubbo as a bookseller without peer. "In a long career [he] has demonstrated not just superb professional judgment, but a powerful community-building spirit that has placed books, writing, and reading at the centre of civilised life."
In the industry business awards, another Melbourne bookshop, The Avenue Bookstore in Albert Park, was named the independent bookshop of the year, while Melbourne publisher Black Inc. was named the small publisher of the year and Hardie Grant received the innovation award.
Rubbo's shops are undeniably part of the texture of Melbourne life – one features in Peter Carey's latest novel, Amnesia – his customers loyal and committed. But he has provided more than just a source of books from home and abroad, the popular, the literary and the obscure.
He was the founding chair of the Melbourne Writers Festival, which marks its 30th birthday in August; he was chair of the Australian Book Review board; he was president of the Australian Booksellers Association; he has been on the board of the Wheeler Centre since its inception; he established the Readings Foundation that has contributed about $700,000 to literacy and cultural projects, and last year he instigated two writing prizes – for new writing and for children's writing.
He has mortgaged his home several times to ensure Readings prospered. "When we bought the building in Lygon Street, I told my wife we had borrowed a huge amount of money and I had mortgaged the house. I always see the worst of everything and woke up in the middle of the night and said 'we're going to lose the house'. Wendy was a bit uncertain."
The beginning of his bookselling career coincided with a nascent local publishing scene. "When I started there was very little Australian publishing, very little fiction. Often if it was fiction it would be published in the UK."
In 1977 McPhee Gribble published Helen Garner's Monkey Grip. It was the first literary Australian novel that Readings sold. Rubbo says he made a big push with Garner's now classic but admits that he didn't then know enough about bookselling. "If I had my time over I would probably have sold many more copies."
He has faced two massive challenges over the past 40 years – the opening of the US chain Borders opposite his Carlton shop and the rise of digital books.
"I was angry. People were so supportive and they took it on as their own battle. And the day Borders opened or just after, Bush invaded Iraq and the US consulate closed so the Trots and Socialist Alliance came and burned his effigy outside Borders. Which was wonderful."
He saw off Borders with the help of devoted customers and has weathered the digital effect. "I didn't think the physical book would disappear because they are beautiful. But I guess I feared that it would make publishing unviable and many bookshops unviable."
Rubbo's first retail business was his Professor Longhair record shop, his first expansion to Hawthorn nearly came unstuck when the people handling the books side were busted for selling dope to MLC schoolgirls, and the first Carlton bookshop had a lot of counter-culture material and American books that weren't at the time allowed in Australia. The shop was subject to "gestapo raids, men in suits who would walk around the shop and pull books off the shelf and say 'you shouldn't be selling these'."
That all changed with the growth of Australian publishing, an exciting period for him "When I started selling books, it was a small community. You got to know all the writers and publishers. We were all united and I saw Readings very much as being part of that and wanting to contribute." Nobody could argue that he hasn't.
He was given an Order of Australia in 2006 and named in this newspaper in 2004 as one of Melbourne's sexiest people, a title he is still embarrassed about. "My brother said it's a bit late." But the honour he most cherishes, appropriately, is his life membership of the Australian Booksellers Association.
