Restaurant Criticism
Anne O'Donovan, publisher of the Guides
Anne O'Donovan is the publisher of Australia's 'Good Food Guides'
Photograph ©Tony Knox 1991
Anne O'Donovan publishes The Age Good Food Guide, The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide, The Brisbane Courier Mail Good Food Guide, The Adelaide Advertiser Good Food Guide plus The Cheap Eats Guides, her empire has a major impact on restaurants in Australia.
She has been in the marketing end of publishing for over twenty years, and was, prior to The Good Food Guide bonanza, Managing Editor of Penguin.
Anne feels that the consumer wants a brief colour piece on each restaurant not a rambling dissertation on its food and that the wide range of the guides is important.
"Creatively the idea for the book was mine--I did approach The Age, most people do think it is the other way around--that The Age initiated the book but in fact I went to them with a dummy that I'd prepared and it actually cost me quite a lot of money to do."
Don't The Age see it as theirs?
"Well it is and I'm very happy with that. We all see it as ours because it is a sort of team thing" Who actually does what?: "The editors work for the paper and I pay the paper a royalty and we mutually discuss."
Don't your publications control the market?
"Yes, I know, but I don't know what to say about that--I didn't set out to have, for the books to be powerful, I set out to do something that answered the consumer's need and sold well--it just inadvertently ... "
Wasn't it launched at a very good time?
"Yes I suppose it was, just before the boom--and then it became a habit ... it is just before Father's Day [that the AGFG comes out] ... You know for the Father's Day market it's really an ideal gift."
Mietta O'Donnell & Tony Knox
June 1991
©Mietta's 1996
Update June 1998
Anne is still the publisher of the Good Food Guides. She is still powerful in spite of gradually declining sales which has resulted in the guides appearing less regularly in the smaller capital cities. Recently she placed her publishing empire on the market. Apparently, it has not yet sold.
Update November 1996
Anne is still the publisher of the 1988 AGFG, but there are strong rumours that the Age will take over this onerous role itself for future issues.
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