By Jason Steger
It’s the start of another working week, but for Mark Rubbo, the long-time managing director of the eight Readings bookshops, it’s the start of a new chapter. After nearly 50 years in the business, Monday is the first day of his official retirement.
“I’m getting physically not as able to do it anymore, although my back’s been quite good recently,” he said at the end of his last week at work.
Mark Rubbo in Readings’ flagship Carlton shop.Credit: Eddie Jim
At the age of 74, he is relinquishing to his son Joe control of the business he has grown from one outlet in Lygon Street into a chain of eight shops. At the same time, he has been in the vanguard of nurturing new Australian writers, writing, and the country’s vibrant independent publishing scene.
“He is one of the world’s great independent booksellers,” says Text publisher Michael Heyward. “For all of us who have spent a lifetime in books, working with writers, trying to extend the culture and doing something new, we have been really lucky to have him as a partner and a supporter.”
The first Readings – named after owner Ross Reading – opened in Lygon Street in 1969 when Rubbo was stalling in his medical studies at the University of Melbourne. Having sold records in the uni bookshop, Rubbo thought a record shop might work in the same way as a bookshop, and in 1972 opened Professor Longhair down the road from Readings, helped by a loan from his mother.
Next step with two partners was a shop in Hawthorn, half of which was sublet to a bookseller. But Rubbo took over the whole space when his tenant was sprung selling dope to schoolgirls. The allure of selling records waned, however, and when Ross Reading offered him Readings in 1976 he again touched his mother for funds.
It was the right time to get into the book trade. “When I took Readings over, the Whitlam government had put quite a lot of money into the arts. And a lot of the writers who got that sort of support had books coming out and these were published by people that I knew. So it was very exciting.”
Mark Rubbo peeks out from Professor Longhair in the early 1970s.
When playwright Jack Hibberd asked him in 1977 why there were no Australian books in the shop window, Rubbo rectified the situation by championing Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip at a time when most fiction published still came in from Britain. It was the start of an ongoing commitment to local authors.
Garner remains a fan: “He’s the sort of guy who makes a good feeling in a room. I like him, I respect him, I’m grateful to him for his hard work, and his generous temper, and his imaginative presence in our lives. I’ll miss him.”
Peter Carey, who remembers buying a record from Rubbo in his Professor Longhair days, wrote him into his novel Amnesia, with a character stealing a copy of Lord of the Rings from Readings (Rubbo hates shoplifters). Carey said it seemed as if he had known him forever. “He’s a very pleasant man who has sold a shitload of good books.”
Today there are eight Readings, with the business having fought off the challenge of Borders, which opened one of its outlets across the road from Rubbo’s flagship Carlton shop, the emergence of digital books and the dramatic shift to online selling during the pandemic. After a burst of industrial action, Readings became the second bookshop to negotiate an EBA with its staff, which the union described as “one of the best retail agreements in Australia”.
But there has been more to Rubbo’s involvement in Australian literature than selling books. He was influential in setting up the Melbourne Writers Festival, helped to obtain Melbourne’s status as only the second Unesco City of Literature, served on the board of the Wheeler Centre, judged the Miles Franklin Literary Award and several other writing prizes, set up Readings prizes for new writing, YA and children’s writing, and in 2009 established the Readings Foundation, which has given more than $2 million to charities and invested another $1 million.
“As a philosophy, I have always believed that the business has to have a social responsibility,” Rubbo said. “Sometimes it’s hard to marry the two.”
The Carlton shop was named the international bookshop of the year by the London Book Fair in 2016, Rubbo has received several awards from the book industry, he became a member of the Order of Australia in 2006, and in 2004 was even named one of the sexiest people in Melbourne by this masthead.
Novelist Christos Tsiolkas said Readings had been a haven and central to his life.
“Mark has been unstinting in his support of Australian writers. He is someone I admire greatly for his generosity, love of literature and his good humour. And he has remained curious all these years.”
No one who knows Rubbo believes he will walk away from Readings. He will remain the Frank Sinatra of the business - chairman of the board – he reckons he might do shifts on the shop floor. He will also do some work with his friend Henry Rosenbloom, publisher at Scribe.
But Rubbo, who says he has always been a worrier, is not taking a career change for granted. “I might be a failure. I might get the sack.”
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