In a second piece of good news to come from the Federal government today, the Productivity Commission’s mooted changes to the import regime for books have not been accepted.
The argument about consumer benefit was always spurious – the purported reduction in prices would have been small (and well run public libraries exist precisely to stock books for those for whom marginal prices are a real impact), and the effect would have been to reduce the range of titles available – both because it would have enabled large retailers to further dominate the market and because of its impact on local publishers.
Nevertheless, Guy Rundle is right to say that the interests of authors and publishers are separable, and to highlight the fact that it’s the provisions in the US-Australia free trade agreement preventing particular support for Australian literary production which are the real – but largely ignored – issue.
However, it should be very pleasing to see that governments are not so prone to accepting all free market ideological arguments on trust. And to see the Labor backbench able to influence government policy.
It also might be an appropriate moment to consider what good the Productivity Commission actually serves.
Update: Spike.
Its a good result. I have no particular objection to the Productivity Commission; provided its findings are not treated as some biblical guide to consequent public policy, but rather, as a neutral discussion starter.
I’d like to see a Sustainability Commission operate on the same turf, with the same status.
When I looked at this debate, I looked at who was lining up for the two sides. On one side you had Dymocks and Bob Carr. On the other side, you had most of the authors and independent booksellers. So, I knew whose side I was on.
Good news? Yeah, I just love paying $24 for a book that would cost $10 in the UK or US. Knowing the author is getting a whole extra 50c-$1.50 just toasts the cockles of my heart to a crunchy brown hue. Especially the knowledge that by doing so, I’m effectively subsidising a whole host of Australian writers that I’ll never be reading anyway. Whoopee.
Fine – Bit selective there. Penguin, Harper Collins and Allen and Unwin, collectively responsible for about 85% of published books in Australia, were also very much against it. But of course it’s cultural considerations they’re thinking of, not a great price gouge.
We should do the same for Australian car manufacturers – they need our support. And farmers. Oh, and coal miners, too, what with all this global warming palaver. These industries all desperately need our support.
I’m more concerned about the small, Australian owned publishers and booksellers, patrickg. I’d take more notice of the opinion of Mark Rubbo than Bob Carr. As to whether book prices would fall substantially – it seems the evidence is very mixed and a great deal of damage could be done with only a very small price fall for consumers.
And only for certain books. If you want to get your Danielle Steel for $20 at Coles, good for you, but when you want a wide selection at an independent bookstore, woe to you.
Wide selection is in the eye of the beholder, Mark. Independent bookstores can be just as limited to their particular ghettoes as large ones or vice versa. To use a local (for you example), I can’t think of a Mary Ryan’s that would eclipse the Borders on Albert street for range.
I know you’re concerned about small publishers, Fine, but you’re talking about an incredibly small section of the market here, and you’re asking everyone in Australia to prop it up (If they’re going to be hurt, that is. You can argue about price falls, I’ll argue about this hurting small publishers). Furthermore if you think the big publishers had any inkling this would help small publishers that they would get behind it?
I feel like both of you guys are essentially advocating for a ‘taste’ tax, where people not reading the right kinds of books from the right kinds of stores are effectively punished for not being middle-brow enough.
Independent bookstores and Australian authors aren’t a) going to disappear if this got passed, and b) aren’t some kind of inherent good like clean air or happy families. This kind of closed shop mentality is so regressive. If it was sugarcane and the national party, we wouldn’t even contemplate taking it seriously. But amorphous cultural values around australian authors and independence give these guys a free ride.
Meanwhile I’m paying for it – well I’m not, because I only buy from book depository now. Rather, it will be the vast majority of book buyers who only purchase 3 or 4 books a year, usually from a chain, 95% of the time a best seller. This is where the money’s going (ultimately into a publishers’ pockets; this isn’t helping local authors, and no one has been able to prove it does), and taxing us for liking shit ain’t gonna change it.
I linked to it in the last thread, and I link to it again: Alan Fels on the anticompetitive nature of PIRs on books.
Its way too late for our manufacturers, such considerations were torpedoed yonks ago when Oz signed onto the global economy. It’s a small win for local publishers but they still have to deal with the whole eBook phenomenon as well as normal business. On balance I think its a good decision and I’m not sure that everything should be governed by considerations of productivity anyway.
But you see, here’s where’s the difference in perspective comes in – I think independent bookshops and authors are an inherent good, just like clean air and happy families.
For who Fine? For who? the 1% of the book-buying public using them? That’s great. If that’s the case, let independent bookshops charge more per book than chains (which they often already do), and let the people who value them pay for the privilege.
This isn’t like subsidising public transport, say, with its increased environmental and health benefits that affect everyone. The only people independent bookstores benefit (sketchy ground, on what? selection? culture?) are the people who shop there.
Probably in some aspects of non-fiction, patrickg – the Borders selection in a lot of categories is often very North American focused (in some cases – like philosophy – really starkly and pretty tied to college curricula). But I’m actually more thinking of the Avid Readers and Folios and Pulp Fictions of the world.
Note that we’re not just talking about literary fiction – a lot of Australian genre fiction (sf, fantasy, detective, romance, etc) is not well served either by chain booksellers and with very odd exceptions, struggles to find international publishers despite in many instances, less particularity to place than litfic.
And then there’s poetry – which some of us would like to be able to continue to buy and support – not to mention the distribution of a wide range of Australian small magazines, etc.
Suffer in your jocks, neo-libs!
I said this wouldn’t get up. There are better ways of bringing prices down than destroying our publishing industry.
In addition to booko.com.au — invaluable for discovering the cheapest place to buy a new book, bookfinder.com also does a good job for second hand books, making it easy to take shipping to Australia into account.
but Mark, your Folios and especially your Pulp Fictions import most of their range anyway because there is no local publisher for a lot of their range.
I honestly fail to see how this would hurt any of these stores, and I’m yet to see anyone make a genuine argument for it.
The only real potential for damage is through Keane’s tortuous remainders route (pretty unlikely in most cases, for a variety of reasons) and as you and Fine point out, that will be the big chain stores, and they ain’t gonna be interested in screwing some 5000 print-run nobody to the wall. They won’t be doing that with your monographs, Pluto Presses, sub-genre genre stuff (because they don’t stock it currently and their customers don’t buy it currently). The volume is not there to make it profitable in those cases, and for other cases I’m sure Stephen King for example could care less.
If, you are worried that your personal access and selection to books is affected, fair enough, so make a point to buy locally produced local work for local people or whatever, but why should I – and most of australia’s book buying public – have to subsidise your preferences?
The elephant in the room here is royalities. Most authors get between 70 cents and $2.00 per book sold. Bookstores markup somewhere between 30%-60%. Where is the extra money going? Not to authors. Not to bookstores. It’s going to publishers, and it’s a frigging racket. That’s why they love it.
I would be a lot more simpatico to arguments about this if I could see it was going to address the massive imbalance between content producers and content distributors, but it won’t. For every cent an author makes off PIR, a publisher makes a dollar.
@Fine well over 20% of the local book market (by volume and value) is at independent bookshops …
And if you want to go with an Australian online retailer, Fishpond and Booktopia are both great – and generally cheaper than Amazon, and you can get good customer service on the phone.
All this means for me is that I’ll continue buying all my books from overseas online stores where I save 30-50% on every book I buy. I don’t see why this is considered a win for anyone except the publishing industry. To be fair I don’t understand the issues involved here, but why should the needs of publishers / independent bookstores be given priority over the consumer? (I’ll note here that I’ve never bought a book from an independent book store in my life. Why would I, when borders has every book under the sun?) Then again I’m against protection of uncompetitive industries overall anyway. I don’t see why Australia needs to have our own local versions of every industry that needs to be protected. Surely we’re better off promoting industries that are actually able to survive on their own merits?
And more handy tips! If you want an Amazon book to turn up in 6 days instead of 6 weeks: go Amazon.co.uk.
I wouldnt order a book from that lousy yank outfit for quids.
Marvellous. Amazon.com.au killed again. Thanks a frickin’ lot.
Sure, patrickg, but it still enables them to sell local product that would not otherwise find a distribution outlet.
In any case, I am far from convinced that a further concentration of market power would lead to cheaper prices all round – I can typically buy a lot of stuff I’m interested in which is imported from Folio than from Borders. I suspect the dynamics would play out very similarly to what happened in music retail.
Why would you do this when you can get the same titles quicker and cheaper from Australian online retailers? See my comment @15.
@18, Jacques. Third time lucky. Try Booktopia or Fishpond.
When I find a local store cheaper than the book depository, I will happily change. I suspect the current exchange rate will make this especially difficult
I check Fishpond and Booktopia for every purchase I make from the Book Depository and (when they have what I want which they frequently don’t) never once has it been even close to cheaper. Just checked again on a sample of my Book Dep wishlist and again not remotely close. They arrive in a week too so they can’t do me quicker either.
What I find interesting in this is what it tells you about Rudd Labor.
When you look at the government do you see many who are really neo-libs? True neo-libs – like Paul Keating, Bob Carr, Peter Walsh, Michael Costa, Mark Latham – just aren’t there. Sure, Emerson and Bowen still try to fly the battered ’80s flag and Tanner makes all the respectable noises that you would expect in a finance minister, but post-GFC all conviction seems to have gone.
Rudd will make all kinds of tactical zig-zags, but basically his instincts are sound. When he wrote in his Monthly essay that the neo-liberal period is over, he meant it. Just watch The Australian go feral.
I have to say Mark that this decision will only further crush the Australian book market. I regularly browse the Independent Bookstores around Brisbane for non-fiction in history, politics, philosophy, religion & asian studies but I NEVER buy from them simply because it is far cheaper to buy online from Book Depository or as a Barnes & Noble member.
Many Australian book publishers utilise overseas suppliers so it can often be up to 40% cheaper to order a book published in Australia from an overseas seller. This is all very silly IMHO.
I am really struggling to understand who this decision will benefit in the medium to long-term. Non-fiction readers will continue to go online. Fiction readers will continue to go online or shop at Borders if the price difference is negligible. Put simply, consumers will vote with their feet amidst the drowning pleas of the rent-seekers.
Mark, if you are relying on Booktopia or Fishpond then you are getting a raw deal on most of your purchases. Go to a meta-site like fetchbook.info , type in the ISBN and in almost every case there is an overseas supplier that is at least 20% cheaper than a local one – even taking into account shipping costs.
The arguments for this decision from what I can see are:
1. Think of the independent book sellers! (Why should I care? Are indie book stores somehow inherently better and have some kind of moral/social value worth saving?)
2. Think of the local publishing companies! (Again, why? If they can’t compete with foreign publishers why should we prop them up?)
And again it’s all rendered irrelevant by the internet providing easy access to cheaper foreign published books anyway.
Well if we can all get books cheaper on the internet, what’s wrong with leaving things as they are?
What are you complaining about? You can get your cheap books and we still have a few independent book shops and small publishers who will hopefully remain viable.
My argument is more that it is foolish to make this kind of decision based on outdated assumptions. I (and many others presumably) would prefer to be able to shop locally, but the price difference makes this a silly thing to do given the current market. If the argument is that promoting indie book shops provides jobs, surely the extra business generated by people no longer buying all their books on amazon/bookdepository/whatever should also be taken into consideration? And if that’s not the argument, then what is?
Well, why use a publishing company at all when there’s Print on Demand?
As a serious question to those who know more about niche publishing than I, why would you try to find a publisher, when you could use a service like lulu.com, and source your own pre and post services (eg proofing/editoral and marketing)
d
Have a thought for the small Victorian town of Maryborough and others where publishing is one of the few job providers, Zedar.
Hang on Joe2, I thought Kevin Rudd was going to usher in a new era of “evidence-based” decision making and end the ideological based approach of the Howard government? Or by “evidence-based” do we mean making national policy decisions based on special pleading cases rather than thorough-going reports?
Anyone that was ever fooled that somehow this Federal government was not just another group of douches captured by special interests willing to forego good policy in order to “keep the backbench happy” should well and truly have had the scales fall from their eyes.
Fail reformist ALP.
Now all we have to do is get rid of the Aus/US Free Trade Agreement.
As a writer I think this decision is exzcellent news.
@fine
But you see, here’s where’s the difference in perspective comes in – I think independent bookshops and authors are an inherent good, just like clean air and happy families.
One could make the same argument for the corner store to wind back deregulated shopping hours. What is it that adds to the culture when someone buys the latest Tom Clancy book at borders or from the a local independent (or online)?
And wouldnt increasing employment at the big chain bookstores by allowing them to be more competetive with overseas online retailers be a positive outcome? Or is employment only good if the employers are hip and trendy?
For people my age this matters little. I will continue to either get what I want from the library, buy online or second hand. I just dont want to pay 30 bucks and upwards for something I’ll only read once. But for people my parents age who are less likely to start e-shopping they will continue to get rorted by some local rentseekers. Pity really.
I reckon Louise Adler frightens the shit out of Kevin and his boys. She is one heavyweight lobbyist.
This decision keeps the marginals happy, we can already buy cheap online, the whole market is morphing, and as Guy says, the real issue is that bloody stupid FTA anyway.
As for the Productivity Commission. We should have no problem with free and frank advice. We are allowed to disagree. What’s the problem?
Can’t see the problem either, grace, as I said it’s a free market (heh!). If peoples’ parents can’t be bothered or don’t want to get on-line and order books, then the may have to pay a little more for the privilege of buying them in a bookstore. Not exactly a big bloody tragedy, and in light of the probability that it will help maintain some cultural diversity, a good thing.
As we’re already being told that the duopoly that is Coles and Woolworths is causing our food prices to be among the dearest in the world, the argument that bigger and fewer bookstores will lead to reduced prices is hardly convincing either.
Grace, are you disagreeing based on actual evidence or based on ideological presuppositions/special interest group pleading?
Please show me the *evidence* that this decision will lead to better outcomes for consumers (most importantly), local publishers, booksellers and authors. Sounds more to me like – thorough-going Productivity Commission report = deregulation = TEH neoliberalism = death. What was that we were saying about evidence-based policy…?
I remember when parallel importing of CDs was announced under the Howard government and every Henny Penny rentseeker was telling us that the local music industry would collapse. What happened? Local music stores stayed in business, local musicians still got together and OMG Australians still bought local music! Meanwhile folks that didn’t buy Australian music got their CDs cheaper. How dare they!
Fail rent-seekers.
Yes adrian, I have little sympathy for corporate bookshops, like Dymocks for example. Cookbooks and Yoga manuals might as well migrate into supermarkets alongside the magazines. Might even make queuing slightly more interesting.
We have two or three excellent independent booksellers servicing the Canberra region (Electric Shadows and Paperchain for example), who tempt serious bookbuyers in with their intelligent and diverse range of selections, and don’t seem to be exactly collapsing in the face of online trade.
They will survive (and perhaps prosper if Dymocks dies) and more power to them.
So protectionism is fine for the publishing industry but bad for everyone else?
Try and pick this apart a little.
Prices stay higher.
People use online bookbuying to save money. (and with a stronger Aussie dollar the gap will get bigger)
Local publishers sell less book anyway.
Local publishers cant afford the smaller “niche” print runs.
In effect the same outcome over a slightly longer period of time.
And I would take issue with this particular statement.
“..(and well run public libraries exist precisely to stock books for those for whom marginal prices are a real impact)..”
Thats not a valid arguement, its a bit like dismissing people wanting cheaper cars because “theres a well run bus service im some areas”.. Im a terrible hoarder of books, I will often have half a dozen on the go that I will dip in and out of as well as a “main” book I will read. Libraries suck ass as far as thta sort of thing goes, and if you live in the regions actually getting the book can be a pain.
If you want to get sniffy over people “not having to own books because there are libraries” then I could get equaly sniffy and say “why do you need your poetry/niche book nicely printed? You could just whack out a few spiral bound photocopy editions for much less…
Being cheaper than Amazon is not too hard, once you include shipping — but being cheaper than thebookdepository.co.uk or betterworldbooks.com is much harder.
I’m fascinated that, when it comes to one type of print publication (newspapers, aka “Tory Rags”) and one media mogul wants to charge for on-line content, the blogsphere invites him to get real followed by cliches about cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face with lectures on Teh Internet and alternative sources; yet where Ye Sacred Precious Books are concerned, reality goes down the gurgler and it’s as if Teh Internet doesn’t exist.
Antonio & Zedar are right on the money. Despite postage, the gaps between Oz & UK/USA prices range from considerable to monumental, as do the ranges of available titles on almost every topic – except specifically Australian authors/ titles (and not if the authors/subjects’ appeal is international): and I’m talking the exact same ed/print run here! I wasn’t out of high school (& TV hadn’t reached Brisbane, & Qld hadn’t celebrated statehood’s 100 years, much less 150) when I discovered how much cheaper it was to order books from the UK, and they usually arrived before local bookstores had them!
Strip away emotional outpourings of the “I love books, love their smell, how they feel in my hand” books type and/or nationalism – since PIR doesn’t address either the nurture of budding authors or royalty-stripping practices of international anglophone publishers – and arguments for its continuation are dominated by the deification/ sanctification / reification of one [only] form of printed material; pretty much on a par with the “You can’t read a computer in bed” type of (totally bunkum if you have a laptop) argument – though Rupert’s publications don’t elicit the same emotional responses.
Yes, I still write & get paid for it! Yes, I’ve heard every argument for PIR (very few rational). Yes, I still love books as does OH – enough for each of us to have a 12 ft square library, and a couple of large auxiliary bookcases in other rooms, and piles on tables & floors; but not at Australian PIR prices! No, there’s no way I’m selling my Arthur Rackman illustrated ones, or my “older than QLD” Austens, or my William Westall (artist on Flinders’ voyages) book of British Views (the first to be engraved on steel not copper plates) etc.
Irrespective of the arguments, PIR is a monumental rip-off. There are, as BK argues for Crikey Rudd ducks again: book import slug stays better ways of dealing with difficulties Australian authors face. Continuing PIR despite on-line bookshops, ebay and price differences, will only hasten the demise of Oz bookshops.
Antonio, there might be a consumer benefit in the interim but ultimately how does the restructuring of an industry benefit us as a whole when most of the money ends up going overseas. This isn’t an argument for protectionism rather its an observation that consumer benefit is a touchstone for advocates of economic rationalism which seems to equate life with consumption. Great we can afford cheap CD’s or budget priced super doopa wide screen televisions; Macdonalds is cheaper these days maybe that’s a consumer benefit too?
To all those neo-libs out there all I can say is: what are you worried about? This decision won’t affect the editorial page of The Australian (the only reading neo-libs do). Australian culture is the richer for this decision. You see, as with human labour and Work Choices, there are some things that shouldn’t be traded like every other commodity. Other considerations come into play. I don’t expect neo-libs to understand this. Neo-liberals don’t give a damn about Australian culture – they say they do but they really couldn’t care less if Australian publishing died (just another “sunset” industry that we shouldn’t “prop up”).
Antonio: the next job for social democrats is to take back words like “reformist”, restoring their true meaning. Then you’ll just be left with ugly neo-lib jargon like “rent-seeking” and “special interest group pleading”.
And seeing that neo-libs love certain rote phrases (to be trotted out in place of independent thought), why don’t they save time and run them all together into single words like the Soviets used to? Like shortening communist international into comintern, special interest group pleading could be spingrpling.
I might sound callous here, but so what? If small towns aren’t providing jobs, people can move to where there are jobs. Every few months you see this oh so sad story in the news about rural community X that is dying because there aren’t any jobs so everyone is leaving. What exactly is so special about any given small town that the entire nation should pay higher price for books (or whatever industry we need to protect to keep X alive) to support them?
I mean sure it’s sad to no longer live near your lifelong friends, but the internet once again comes to save the day with networking apps like facebook.
Yes, and what exactly does ‘rent seeking’ actually mean?
According to wikipedia
So in this case I guess its implied that the book publishing industry are not earning profits through economic transactions nor are they engaged in production of added wealth. It has bugger all to do with any other value the industry might bring.
Thanks David_H. I guess we just need to remember there isn’t any ‘other value’.
Good for you Patrick G.
From where I sit this is a typically regressive move from a lazy government, that will end up seeing more and more Australian readers moving to online stores like Amazon and Abebooks and the Book Depository, who don’t have to worry about these stupid and rather petty restrictions. Result, in a couple of years time: regulations that were meant to protect Australian publishers and booksellers will probably end up benefiting online book markets.
I suspect the mooted changes were nixed by backbenchers or a PM eager to do a favour for a small but rather vocal group of authors out there, and not by Craig Emerson (who generally seems to be thoughtful and progressive on these matters). Oh well. Another reason not to vote for Labor.
It is indeed rather snobbish to insist that less well off readers who perhaps can’t afford to buy as many books should just use libraries.
Sure, that’s a great option, if you’re willing to put up with books that have been thumbed over by other people, sometimes are never returned at all, a rather slow moving library administration that sometimes takes months to order in books, and of course can only cater to so many people’s interests in the one year due to budgetary restrictions.
Antonio@37: “Grace, are you disagreeing based on actual evidence or based on ideological presuppositions/special interest group pleading?”
I am the consumer Antonio, and I am sovereign. The author serves me, the publisher serves me, the bookseller serves me, even the internet serves me.
And right now, I am relaxed and untroubled.
So Mark you’ve acknowledged that:
a) the bookstores you love (not even all independents!!) import most of their books anyway, and have to pay extra for it.
b) most consumers don’t buy from indepenent bookstores, and the books they want aren’t stocked there anyway (your Wilbur Smith’s, Bryce Courtenays, etc.).
c) Book in Australia are more expensive than the UK and the US online, or offline.
So this arrangement doesn’t benefit:
a) the vast majority of consumers
b) the vast majority of bookstores – even independent
The only people it does benefit are:
a) the publishers, 90% of which are controlled by Newscorp, a $4 billion dollar (revenue) company and $30 billion privately owned company in the hands of a neoliberal political group!
b)a tiny subset of authors who essentially need subsidisation because their books are too narrow or too crap to be competitive internationally (which is to say, very very narrow or crap indeed).
I honestly don’t understand! I mean, I know you love your bookstore and your local books or whatever, but firstly I’m not sure how this would hurt the bookstore given they already import most of their stuff at a price premium, and secondly; I like pu-erh tea, but I don’t expect the rest of Australia to pay for my choices!
If this was about shonky Australian cars, National party rent-seeking for farming produce no one would buy, you would be so up in arms. This is no different, except it happens to be a choice you like – but that’s no reason for a public policy. You can’t argue that PIR’s enrich Australia, when you acknowledge that virtually nobody shops at the stores you buy from, reads the books you buy, etc. Furthermore Mark, I see your books on Facebook, and I’m not seeing a lot of those that would disappear without PIR. Indeed, most of the books you say you’re reading are both international authors and from large published like Oxford, Henry Giroux etc!
TimT: isn’t it snobbish to object to other peoples’ thumbs touching your library book?
What I object to is the idea that it’s either expensive books or risk destroying our publishing industry. We pay the Productivity Commission a lot of money, and those are the stale, unimaginative options they come up with?
Maybe the Productivity Commission needs a bit of competition, the stern discipline of the international marketplace – surely there those clever Indian IT-types could do come up with better ideas.
This is a ridiculous decision, why should everyone pay more so you can have you independent niche books. When the vast majority of the public will be benefitted by removing PIR, the government should act in their interests. If you want niche books, perhaps YOU can pay more. Supply and Demand people, demand it at a higher price and they’ll supply it. But dont force higher prices on everyone else.
Perhaps this issue is a good example of Robin Hanson and Tyler Cowen’s idea that ‘Politics is about status, not policy’. That is, the government wants to indicate that Australian authors are high status, and whether the policy actually benefits them, or hurts anyone else, is beside the point.
patg – clappity clap.
TimT:
“in a couple of years time: regulations that were meant to protect Australian publishers and booksellers will probably end up benefiting online book markets.”
As is often the case. Protecting outmoded, outgunned local industries is one of the surest ways to keep them dependent on said “protection”, whose inevitable removal becomes that much more sudden and painful.
Writers might, stress might, be high status. But here in Oz quite a lot of us are also poor as are many other arts practitioners.
How? Seriously, I want to know how you think it will.
I’m not going to respond comprehensively to everyone, but I’ll make a few points.
First, print on demand is not a substitute for a publisher, for at least two reasons (even if one can somehow access editorial, proofing etc. – and who pays?):
(a) It outsources the publicity and marketing to the author themselves. A lot more is involved in this than sometimes recognised, including market knowledge, which is not something authors necessarily have;
(b) If it is likely that there is a market (and part of the market *is* the marketing), then normally an author will get an advance, which actually enables them to research and write the book.
There are attractions for academic non-fiction in print on demand (and for well known but out of print fiction) – in part because of peculiarities in the publishing environment for Australian scholarship:
(a) You basically can’t publish anything with an international publisher if it’s Australian specific;
(b) Local publishers often will only publish if there is a course guaranteed to set the book as a text;
(c) Even if you have a proposal or a manuscript suitable for publication as a monograph, publishers will often demand the author subsidise the costs of publication.
But academic publishing – except for textbooks – is a very very small part of the book trade in Australia.
With regard to the argument about independent bookstores, what appears to be overlooked is that these stores are very often part of a literary culture – employing writers (rather than high school kids as at Dymocks), holding events, providing an environment in which local authors can build a name, subsidising or sponsoring talks and festival sessions, etc. There is great value to the writer and to the sustainability of a reading, discussion and publishing culture which Dymocks and Coles or whoever really aren’t interested in (or particularly capable of delivering even if they were).
Thirdly, one may well be able to purchase Australian work online, but the economics of publishing it in the first place are currently determined by the protections in place.
Having said that, I agree with Guy Rundle that we need to think beyond the current status quo.
It is also simply just wrong to suggest that Australian work will find a publisher if it’s “good” or whatevs. I don’t want to have to list all the now canonical works which were rejected, didn’t sell, etc. Nor can work grow over time if the only criterion is immediate success measured by return on investment. Many small publishers effectively have made long term investments in developing and working with promising authors to help them find an audience.
Then there’s the whole question of the value of work in particular categories which goes beyond market success – no doubt political books, for instance, would continue to be published in Australia but if you’d like to see lots more Costello autobiographies and very few accounts of the history of Indigenous dispossession (Henry Reynolds’ books and many of the powerful memoirs by Indigenous women, for instance, were initially published by Penguin Australia and small presses), then keep arguing for the ‘free market’ solution. Be my guest. But please be careful of what you wish for.
Maybe what this decision is really about is three things:
Currying favour with the ALP constituency that thinks the policy will benefit Oz Authors (whether it does or not is moot – they think it does, so no arguments really considered).
Knackering the publishers, who as pointed out above, are not the usual ALP constituency so who in the Govt gives a toss? As younger people, more used to on-line purchasing increase their use of thebookdepository et al, the major publishers in Oz will feel the squeeze. At some point it will only be the instant gratification types that will shop locally.
The knackering of the larger publishers and bookstores will appeal to the ALP constituency that likes more exclusive/eclectic stuff.
Win Win Win for ALP politics.
But dunno if there is really anything for authors in it.
If you want to find out, Marks, just try pitching a book to an international publisher. Australia is a very small market, and that needs to be recognised.
Well Mark, no publisher at all would have me, international or not. (Unless it is to do with obscure treatises on pollution reduction in a very narrow narrow field – and I don’t see Rupert or his mates rushing).
But please tell me why Isobelle Carmody would not? Frinstance.
Did the decision by the Govt stop me buying the latest RJordan at $29 at thebookdepository instead of $35 at Anxious and Robberbarons? And is it going to make me more likely to buy Isobelle Carmody at $22.95 at Boreders (and I will have to get off my fat arse and a $2 bus fare to go there) rather than $19.65 at thebookdepository (delivered to my lazy fat arse at home)?
Like I say, and others have pointed out, there does not seem to be any logical connect between support of Aust industry and PIR other than an assertion that it is. Believe me, I have tried to find that connect, and if I thought it actually did help Aust authors, I would support it.
However, the only logical reasoning I can see for the decision are outlined in the three political issues. Authors’ well-being ain’t in it afaik.
Mark that’s a dodgy argument – even at the height of publishing tonnes of books were rejected. Confederacy of Dunces was rejected like sixty times – at a time when publishers were doing very well. On the other hand, bloody Stephen Donaldson got reject 100 times before some madman published him and subsequently made millions when he sold truckloads of of his shitty shitty books. It’s a mug’s game, always has been always will be.
You are being disingenuous here on three counts.
1) It’s not Coles etc that are disinterested it’s that readers are disinterested. That’s why they don’t do it.
2) Dymocks is a _huge_ sponsor of Australian literary festivals (I use the plural there, not just one). Huge. I would confidently say they sponsor more author appearances than all the independent stores combined (though in reality, the dichotomoy is false: authors appear at both).
3) You of all people should know better than to ignore the internet as part of literary culture. Reading – always a solitary activity by its nature – has exploded onto the internet in an almost unheralded way.
Again, your notions of what constitutes a good reading, or a good reading culture are deeply prescriptivist and I don’t like to say it, but really elitist. I have friends that work at Borders, are they not worthwhile? Is the way they read and share reading with people somehow inferior to the bookdude at the Avid Reader counter? Is the reading the 17 year old at KMart does just worthless, ignorant pigshit? Is the reading culture they participate in somehow worthless?
What is it that makes an independent book somehow inherently better than someone who picks up Peter Fitzsimmons’ latest book at KMart and talks about it at work on Monday? How is that not culture – is it because the typeface isn’t Baskerville, it wasn’t printed on recycled duckskin and sold by a Hegelian postgrad with three macchiatos and a beret?
Make no mistake, I hate Bryce Fucking Courtenay as much as the next self-respecting dude – but that’s my opinion, not my right to force on it others. Even less to make them pay more for Wilbur Smith!
I know I’m het up about this but it gives me the screaming shits. The idea of telling anybody how to read is something often exercised by elites and historically by people trying to limit access to knowledge or power. Saying, there’s one type of reading and one type of person who can do it is so reductionist, old-school modernist, and non-participatory it riles me right up.
“NeoLiberal”, Ginja? As in conning a government into charging citizens a very large premium, only a pathetic amount of which actually goes to the author, and most goes to huge multi-national publishers and distributors (inc Coles/KMart, Woolies, & chains like Dymocks)? You’re right! The NeoLib capitalists whose greed brought on the GFC would cheer you on for supporting that! It’s the multinational publishers who gain most by PIR.
So please explain how ripping off everyone who buys a book in Australia – rarely by just 10% or 20% (many titles here are 100% dearer than the same ed of the same book in the UK, and some much dearer, especially if the book was printed a year or so before) can possibly be justified. If one does buy 20-30 new books a year (we do – tho all from OS), for which an Australian who buys in Oz pays A$20 or more (often a lot more) extra per book, is not that a huge price to pay, especially for children, students, the poor, the old? Given that most of that extra goes not in tax, or in author royalties, but to the publishers, isn’t that capitalism rampant?
BTW the editorial page of the OO, like the flowers that bloom in the spring, Tra La have nothing to do with the case. Nor does “guilt by assertion” (ad hominem) rhetoric.
As for “Australian culture is the richer for this decision”, I can only assume you haven’t caught up with changes that created some of the current realities in Oz publication, especially for new authors (I accompanied a friend to a “how to get published” seminar last year & was gobsmacked by the changes)
* meagre royalties – how many authors are still making only 50c-$3 a copy, in some/many cases the same as it was in the mid 1990s (a family member’s royalties have just taken a 50& ‘leap’ from $2 to $3);
* that new authors are being advised (by some) to have their manuscript assessed, edited (general editing & line editing) all at the author’s (considerable) expense – was it really only a decade ago that one sent one’s scripts straight to publishers? (Mind you, it’s great for retired English teachers, esp those with editorial experience.) Once you’ve had a successful publication, you’ll still get “shepherded through” editing etc for your subsequent publications, though this may not last;
*today, some seminar leaders are encouraging the hopeful to self-publish, do one’s own distribution, then, if it “takes off”, one might be offered a contract. “Oh, and you have tried on-line self-publishing?” (I actually wrote that bit down)
When it comes to “a thought for the small Victorian town of Maryborough and others where publishing is one of the few job providers.” (joe2)
* I believe that Dymocks is installing/ has installed in-store machines that will print & bind a publication to order (while you have coffee/ whatever) so I doubt PIR will help Maryborough survive
* We should all be able to buy a publication on CD Rom/ DVD anyway; given that that’s how one usually presents one’s script (in the publisher’s required format); then those who prefer dead tree versions could print it off, in their preferred font & size
* Anyway, isn’t there an ethical/moral question about ripping off every new Oz book-buyer, not once or twice but every time anyone buys a new book, to keep some of one small town’s workers in jobs – especially when just about every other craft/trade and farmer in the country has already had to face the loss of jobs when technology changes?
patrickg, there’s a difference between the sorts of authors Dymocks have at their events, and indeed sponsorship of festivals, and what independent bookstores do. I’m not seeking to be elitist, and I don’t think there’s a fair characterisation of my argument as such.
It’s also disingenuous to suggest that I was implying that there should be no rejections of manuscripts or proposals, or something. The point is that with fewer small and local publishers, it will become much more difficult to even get to starting gate, or for that matter, to have accessible editorial input which could improve a manuscript or proposal.
If you are unsure about the arguments about the economics of all this, and how the publishing industry currently works, then I suggest you cast an eye over the submissions to the Productivity Commission enquiry. People more expert than I in this field have made the case there.
I’d also reiterate that I’m not suggesting the status quo should remain indefinitely, or even for all that long. But I think as a first step it needs to be defended *while* we work out how to maintain a viable literary and writing culture in Australia. “Let the market rip” will destroy a lot of what exists, without the time needed to formulate new strategies. Surely the record of what has gone on when things are just knocked over in areas of intellectual and cultural work and production (universities are one example) demonstrates that once something is gone, it is very hard to bring it back. That’s not an argument for conservatism, but for thinking beyond reductive claims about consumer benefit and sovereignty so that as many as possible interested in reading and writing in this country can benefit.
Are there any statistics on what proportion of books bought by Australian’s is made from overseas companies? I wonder how much money the government is missing out on GST revenues with the strong financial incentive to purchase books online from companies based overseas.
In the end protectionism like this ends up just being a tax on the disadvantaged (can’t order online for various reasons), ignorant (don’t know about ordering online) and lazy (can’t get themselves organised enough to buy books in advance so end up going to a local store).
FDB @ 55 – common to some other IP based industries this about buying time rather than adapting as circumstances change. People currently doing well trying to extract as much money as they can now trying hard to ignore the brick wall they’re heading towards.
I’ve never really understood the political economy of Australian fiction and commercial audience (as opposed to academic) non-fiction, and I dont aim to start now! But as a general point to those above who wish to turn this into a story of the “non-reforming” Rudd govt, Id point out:
a. this issue is NUTHIN compared to the major Telco reform on the table, and
b. Howard never changed this arrangement either.
Mark I _have_ read shitloads of the submissions. FYI for anyone interested you can read all the submissions here.
I am yet to read a proper argument. There are lots of small publishers saying that their [unsustainable, publicly subsidised] business will be hurt (undoubtedly), and lots from authors saying it will be that much harder to break through a global market (it will. Newsflash: it’s a lot harder for telegraph operators nowadays, too. Dead tree publishing is not the be all to writing). And lots of high-falutin’ talk about book culture and the like (even from Matthew Reilly, or all people!). But no one (that I’ve read; about 45, there’s around 300 submissions, I’m happy to be corrected) that can actually, in real terms, outline what the concrete benefits are, how many people benefit from them, how much it costs, and how it will change.
You bristle at being called elitist and then tell me that the sponsoring that Dymocks does is somehow different (inferior) to what local bookstores do, even when it is in fact exactly the same, and then dodge the question of why reading culture outside the hallowed halls of Glebebooks is not as good (I’m not hating on Glebebooks or any independent here; different strokes etc).
You are holding a nation of readers hostage to – what? a couple of thousand people? – that ingest their books in the manner you and several authors fantasise about. It’s not right.
This is not good news for anyone much.
Another nail in the coffin of the local book shop in Australia.
Looking at the spreadsheet of my credit card in the last 6 months I’ve spent around $1,000 on books for myself and as gifts. About $80 of that has been in a bookshop. The majority has been from bookdepository.co.uk and a bit from amazon.
I’ve saved about $600 or to put it another way I’ve bought shitloads more books – a lot of them Australian authors than I would have if I shopped locally.
patrickg, I don’t believe that you are responding to what I am actually saying.
I will just say that I completely reject the false dichotomy you construct, as I reject the assumption present in many comments on this thread that the only relevant interest in all this is that of consumers. It saddens me that that appears so, and that few here really seem to have grasped how difficult it is for authors in Australia to make a buck, and to get the sort of promotion and distribution they deserve.
There is no doubt some element of special pleading in submissions by some retailers and publishers, but there are also independent people and bodies writing on the topic. It’s simply unrealistic to expect that in any policy debate, every participant will be able to set aside completely their own perspective. However, I don’t believe that the PC foregrounds its own ideological assumptions, and I’m not particularly confident that the marginal gains in price for *some* books would really eventuate, particularly if the impact of removing the current regulations would be to restrict competition, and advantage players in the market whose current behaviour demonstrates that they’re happy to destroy competitors by discounting in the short term.
But I’m tired tonight, and on top of that, I’m not having a good night with my laptop’s performance. So I’ll leave it where it is.
What Patrick G and Tim T have already said (from one Australian author who is very glad to have gone overseas).
And another thing: Australian rights tend to be quite pricy from the overseas end because Australian publishers can gouge the local market more. This has nothing to do with the nationality of the author, just publishing companies in the US and the UK going, ‘let’s charge the Aussies more, makes their piss-weak market worthwhile!’
Update: Spike.
I want to touch books I’m considering buying, I want to read the blurb about the author and the precis. I want to browse other titles too, and can happily while away hours reading bits and pieces.
More often than not, I walk out with more books than I originally intended to buy and have found many an unexpected gift for difficult-to-buy-for people. Of course, the added benefit is that I can read them before I have to hand them over. And I actually don’t mind paying more for the pleasure of wandering around a book shop.
I would never read a book or paper online; for me it’s a cold and unsatisfactory way to read.
Spreading the paper out on the table with a cup of tea steaming away, reading and re-reading the odds and sods, poring over the hatch, match and dispatch columns and cutting out stuff that is of particular interest, has far more allure for me, and I suspect many others, than looking at a poky computer or phone screen.
I’m really amazed that many think that, say, a New York-based publisher would be scouring Australia searching for books to publish. That just doesn’t pass the commonsense test. What’s most likely is that Australian publishing would be reduced to something not much bigger than a cottage industry – mostly university publishing. Maybe not in the unhealthy state of our film industry, but who knows? There simply would be no need for foreign publishers to maintain a presence in this country. Occasionally a foreign-based publisher would go to the trouble to publish an Australian author, but it would have to be a really profitable propostion. Can’t people see that much would be lost in all this?
It’s amazing how many great novels come close to never being published. There’d still be an appetite for reading stories about and by Australians, but would there be enough publishers to pick those stories up? Enogh publishers with an understanding of the subtle cultural nuances of this country to spot a great novel? Remember, editing books can be a time-consuming exercise. The profitable state of Australian publishing under the present arrangements does at least allow publishers to take risks.
As I said, surely there are better ways to bring prices down.
The last 3 books I ordered as gifts and delivered to my door step within a week. I’ve quoted Australian Bookshop prices delivered to enable fair comparison. NB; My experience is that Australian stores often do not have in stock these items so the wait is usually 3 – 4 weeks. Usually the Australian edition available is NOT hardback.
Art of Pixar Short Films
Amid Amidi
Format: Hardcover
Book Depository $36.88
Readings $86.45
Collins $70.90
To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios
Karen Paik
Format: Hardcover
Book Depository $69.44
Collins $176.95
Readings $101.50
The Pixar Touch (Vintage)
David A. Price
Format: Paperback
Book Depository $15.70
Collins $32.90
Readings doesn’t have it
If, as you say, “the purported reduction in prices would have been small” then how does this hurt independent retailers? Since discovering Pulp Fiction I shop there almost exclusively (SciFi and Crime are my two favourite genres). Their prices are compatible with the major chains and they have a far larger range in the genres that interest me. Last week I bought a book by Greg Egan (an Australian author) from them – the book was published in the UK. I don’t see that artificially increasing the price of that book helps me or the author (in fact reducing the price might encourage more people to buy it).
As for local publishers – how many are there in Australia? Apart from local history books (some of which self published) or university texts I can’t think of a single book I have that has ‘Published in Australia’ on the detail page. For those that are published in Australia – how would their price increase? The independent chains would still stock them (they are catering to their consumers) and for those that see the price difference as a barrier – well “well run public libraries exist precisely to stock books for those for whom marginal prices are a real impact“.
It is also worth considering that the barrier to publication is much, much lower than what it was previously. An eBook can be distributed in many ways (either through personal networks or through Amazon for the Kindle) and ‘real dead tree’ versions can be done much the same way through publish on demand systems like CafePress. To publish my own 496 page book in ‘medium octavo’ (6 1/8″ x 9 1/4″), which is the size and page count of ‘Oceanic’ – the Greg Egan book I referred to earlier, works out as follows:
The closest size available is ‘comic’ (6.625″ x 10.25″) and is priced at $US 0.03 per page plus $US 7.00 for ‘perfect binding’ (book style binding). A grand total of $US 21.88 ($AU 23.51 at current rates). Add an extra $AU 7.00 for shipping to Australia (an extra $AU 4.00 per extra copy if ordered in bulk) and we have a total of $AU 28.88 production cost for delivery to door for Australian consumers. This particular book was $AU 35.00 from Pulp Fiction (Borders: Not Available, Angus & Robertson: Not Available, Amazon US: Print – N/A(!?), eBook – $US 4.60 ($AU 4.94), RRP: $UK 12.99/$AU 23.22). It seems that using CafePress that Mr Egan may have given himself a much better profit margin than going through a traditional publisher. Even given that he may have sent off a number of copies to various book stores for display purposes that may be returned it looks like using the ‘publish on demand’ model would have increased the return per book to him and reduced resource usage (nothing printed that wasn’t bought). And it seems that CafePress is far from the best provider for this form of publishing – Lulu is mentioned many times as well as some other publishers.
Please tell me again how artificially increasing prices for imported books benefits authors or independent retailers again?
P.S. Is it just me or do a lot of the people here against this decision sound like Sir Les Patterson. “I couldn’t give a stuff about Australian culture, I just want cheap books, truckloads of them – I’m building a retaining wall with them!”
This is a textbook case of the difficulties of achieving welfare improving reforms. The status quo is a regime that protects one group from competition. The best evidence suggests that not only is the status quo welfare reducing overall (weighing up the benefits and costs to consumers, publishers and authors), but is an inefficient way of assisting Australian authors. However, the costs of altering the status quo are concentrated, while the benefits are diffuse. This means that the losers from the proposed reform are far louder than potential winners. We then have a government that has protectionist inclinations anyway (green cars anyone?), on top of the fact that it doesn’t seem to have met a concentrated producer interest (coal, big auto, multinational publishers, big banks, etc) that it doesn’t like.
Evidence based policy? What a joke!! The dumbest thing about the decision is that it will do little to prevent the long-run adjustments that are necessary in the industry anyway.
Patrickg, DeeCee, TimT and others have made their points very well. They have also uncovered the implicit elitism in the defense of the status quo.
And you think this is social democracy in action? Tosh…
ginja – I assume you are not trying to be insulting to me (perhaps someone else) – you want me to pay an extra 60% – 100% on every single book I buy – Australian or not.
I’ll bet I have more books by australian authors on my shelves (and on the floor and on the table and under the bed) than most of the people defending the subsidies I pay to publishers.
I’m more than happy to pay Australian authors an extra $5 a book (or even sling a bit to publishers of oz authors) .
But why should I pay a USA or UK or .de publisher or someone an extra $10- $20 and more (see above) every single book I buy. How on earth does that benefit australian authors?
Ginja @ 74 nails it, in my view.
Because maintaining some exclusivity for Australian rights enables local publishers to be profitable in a small market and thus Australian authors to be published at all.
@76 – ShaneG:
Egan is an exception to the rule. In discussions of local sf publishing, the point is made again and again that while genre fiction (particularly speculative fiction) should be more translatable internationally, in practice it runs up against the barrier that it is very difficult to interest international publishers if you are a first time author – unless, perhaps, you can demonstrate some success in a local market. While, in theory, one could pitch books and work with editors via online technologies, the way the industry actually works is premised on face to face contacts and the easy availability of authors to promote works in person. Returns on fiction are usually very low, and no one would start paying for first time authors to do book tours in larger markets except in exceptional circumstances.
I’d go back to the points I made about self-publishing and publication on demand @ 58. Pulp Fiction, incidentally, will only stock self-published books (or books from very small presses, which often amounts to the same thing) at a price, and then not always.
Are publishers really so parochial about which authors they will publish? As in, will an American publisher reject an Australian manuscript simply because the author is not American? If so, then maybe I can see there being some kind of case for preserving the Australian publishing industry. If this isn’t the case though, and the goal is instead to get books published that would normally be rejected by a publisher simply for the sake of having “Australian” books in print, I really wouldn’t consider this a worthy goal. (Non-fiction is the obvious example here of course, but I suspect this is only a small portion of Australian publications)
“Because maintaining some exclusivity for Australian rights enables local publishers to be profitable in a small market and thus Australian authors to be published at all.”
I just don’t agree that the above argument is convincing.
You’re saying that Peter Corris or Garry Disher or Peter Temple or Coetzee or Tsolkis or Cate Kennedy or Michelle de Kretser or Les Murray, some of my recent Australian purchases, wouldn’t be published if I didn’t pay more for all my books?
I don’t believe it.
Who’s publishing the 25 year old Tsiolkas in 2009, FXH? Returns to authors are going backwards already, or at best remaining static, in large part because of the actions of large retailers in denying shelf space to any books where the author doesn’t already have a name, and because of the concentration of ownership in publishing and retailing that’s happened over the last decade. All this is well known – there is stacks of empirical stuff written about it, that isn’t hard to find.
It is already more difficult for Australian authors to publish, and they make less money from it. One can talk about online publishing and retailing all one likes, but in order to make any impact currently, you need access to print, marketing and distribution. To some degree, the online market is already driving down returns to authors. That’s a point taken into account explicitly in the making of this decision.
I’ll say for the umpteenth time that I’m not arguing for the permanent maintenance of the status quo, but that all the relevant factors need to actually be taken into consideration, and not just some purported consumer sovereignty (which in my view ignores the actual propensity of larger retailers to re-inflate their margins after they kill their competitors).
@83
Not necessarily because of nationality, but the Australian author would really want to be living in America and preferably writing about an American setting. Again the caveat is that you can build a rep here first, and that it’s somewhat easier in genre fiction, but still, as I just said, you will have a much greater chance of success if you are resident where the market is.
@Ginja
Not at all. What people are asking is ‘why should I be paying more for non-Australian novels’ (where the definition of Australian is vague at least). Popular fiction is, well – more ‘popular’, than literary fiction.
How do you categorise works by John Birmingham (not his Felafel book but the alternative history World War 2.0 and Without Warning series), Marianne de Pierres or Matthew Reilly? AFAIK all of these authors are published off shore – yet all are Australian authors – their works certainly show a certain Australian viewpoint even if not set in the country. I know that Matthew Reilly writes unashamed airport fiction but Pierres and Birmingham write novels with depth and characterisation – perhaps not literary but certainly not shallow.
To me the whole point of fiction is to submit ideas to people – it doesn’t diminish those ideas to express them in a popular setting. The same concepts presented in ‘War and Peace’ are in ‘The Stand’ – the first is a struggle to get through, the second is gripping reading because of what happens between the thought provoking moments.
As I pointed out in an earlier post it would be more economical (and perhaps more profitable) to self publish these days. Given the limited amount of promotion shown for the currently protected works I don’t see how removing that protection would harm the authors in any way. Nor would it make any difference to the local publishers.
I really would be grateful if you read some of what I wrote in response to you, as well as to others, ShaneG.
Birmingham’s first book, Felafel, was published in 1994 by Duffy & Snellgrove, an independent Australian publisher, which went out of business (in effect) in 2005.
That’s my point to FXH about new authors. Many of the ones whose titles are now carried by international publishers had their careers nurtured by Australian publishers, of which there are now fewer than in the 1990s, and many of these titles would not now be stocked in the chains.
I’ll also repeat myself, yet again. There have been substantial empirical studies done on the economics of publishing and bookselling in this country, which are not difficult to access. They contradict many of the assumptions a lot of people on this thread are making. It would be useful, in my opinion, if people sought to understand exactly how writing, publishing and bookselling work in this country before jumping in to denounce “protectionism”, etc. As I said before, if you think that the PC recommendations would have brought about cheap books, I doubt that’s so over the longer term, and it would have been to the cost of those who write in Australia as well as readers.
I also know it’s apparently old fashioned to be concerned about things like a vibrant national culture (or “elitist”) but I continue to believe there is value in maintaining and fostering creativity and debate in this country about things that are particular to this country.
There’s not even a plan for a phase out of PIR though – they could have given the industry warning and a number of years to adapt. But instead there was just a blanket rejection of any changes.
Chris, I doubt the Productivity Commission is the right body to determine what mechanisms would be most appropriate to support Australian writing per se. In any case, I know for a fact work on this is going on elsewhere in the bureaucracy.
And as Rundle pointed out, correctly, and as I have reiterated a number of times, the real sticking point here is the US-Australia FTA. Had that not been in place, it would have been much easier to reach a compromise which could have supported Australian publishing and writing through some other mechanism than the maintenance of parallel importation restrictions. The effect of the FTA is to reduce the freedom of maneouvre the government has, and to bring about the benefits to overseas outfits in publishing and distribution which make books sold into the country more competitively priced. I don’t know that’s been taken into account by a lot of the people who were pressing for the immediate implementation of the restrictions, but it underlies what I’ve been writing.
Patrickg at 51: You are being misleading in invoking the benefit to Rupert Murdoch’s publishing interests in Australia to justify your criticisms of the Government’s decisions on book imports.
Murdoch’s flagship The Australian has been leading the charge against this decision before and after the event..
So you would have us believe that Murdoch is countenancing a threat to his economic interests by his Australian publications in the interests of Australian book buyers.
I picked myself up from the floor laughing at this implication.
Was it ignorance or a desire to deceive to forget about Murdoch’s publishing interests in America and the UK which stand to benefit by the change you favour? You can see them at http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php?c=newscorp
As reported this morning in the Canberra Times:
“In a move hailed by publishers and independent booksellers as a win, restrictions on the importantion of books published overseas will remain in place.”
“MUP boss Louise Adler said Australian consumers were already far better served than British and US book-buyers and the real issue was larger chains overcharging.”
“The owner of the Paperchain bookshop in Manuka, Maxeme Tall, said the decision was a boon for independent sellers…’and the thing is, there never was an guarantee that books would be any cheaper.’”
“Coalition for Cheaper Books chariman, Dymocks chief executive Don Grover, vowed to continue the fight…Mr Grover said the decision threatened the future of Australian booksellers. ‘The Government has given the green light to overseas retailers who pay no taxes. We are just allowing them to flourish at the expense of Australian retailers.’”
This decision is worthy of Black Jack and the Country Party circa 1968.
I have been immensely frustrated by the fudging and quite deliberate ignoring that the book industry has two separate parts in Australia. Firstly publishing – either Aust authors or Australian editions of overseas books (and for the most printed in East Asia). Secondly distribution of books published and printed overseas.
The dominant providers of books that retail in Australia are from multinational companies who make most of their profit from distribution. They will argue that the profits from the restriction, the closed markets of distribution support their local publishing programs. And to some degree this is true.
However, these publishers make decisions about what to publish not on the notion of improving the cultural climate in Australia, but on potential sales, either for the first book or the author’s second or…. Mark commented about Penguin publishing Indig. titles would not have otherwise seen the light of day in a bookshop. And in the 70s and 80s this was the case. While we had book bounties in place paid for by the Commonwealth government that effectively subsidized any risk, any cost in terms of the production of those titles. When those bounties disappeared, so did many of those publishing programs.
Mark also commented #58 about the difficulty of getting published:
(b) Local publishers often will only publish if there is a course guaranteed to set the book as a text;
(c) Even if you have a proposal or a manuscript suitable for publication as a monograph, publishers will often demand the author subsidise the costs of publication.
So how the hell is the current arrangement addressing that? It is not.
We have a situation where a closed market for DISTRIBUTION of books is highly profitable for the distributors who frankly are engaging in price gouging either by not addressing the distribution inefficiencies in their supply chains, and the largely unexplored and unexplained consequence of having Australian divisions of multinationals buying their stock from their parent companies to resell into a market where there are NO controls or competitive pressures on the prices they set.
Yes getting an academic Australian specific title published in Aust. is difficult. And publishers such as MUP or UNSW Press who in the past were avenues for this publishing have altered their publishing models by becoming more trade orientated in order to simply survive. Without subsidy, academic publishing struggles in Australia. University after university withdrew its support for their own presses. Did the multinationals rush to fill the gap? No. Because they couldn’t make a profit. ANU, Sydney Uni have burgeoning e-presses; Uni of SA have just announced their intention to set up something similiar. All using POD & ebook models.
But the bitter irony for an academic title written by an Aust. academic and published by overseas publishers (talking to a honcho from Palgrave UK, he remarked that Aust. academics were grossly over-represented in their lists on a population stats) which is then ‘distributed’ back into Aust is that less and less frequently will stock of that book be sitting in a warehouse here. It will have to be indented, imported, taking 4-6 weeks to arrive. The same book you can procure from Book Depository at 50-60% less and in one week. So how the fucking hell this is benefiting the reader, the author, or scholarship in Australia escapes me.
And yes Coles & Woolies do want to gain market share in book retail – but there is clear evidence that their shoppers represent new markets, new buyers, and certainly people buying books at much lower quantities than people buying books from bookshops. Yes of course publishers are terrified of buying groups such as these being able to pressure them by threatening them with overseas stock procurement. Their habits in terms of wholesale price bargaining are appalling – ask any apple grower at Batlow. But leaving protectionism in place does not address the problem of market dominance and wholesale prices.
This decision ignores the ability of the individual consumer to buy in an unregulated international market. Frankly, it will ensure that multinational publishers will continue to DECREASE their Australian publishing schedules in books with marginal or no profitability as has been the case since the removal of book bounties, and entrench inefficient book distribution systems. Be careful what you wish for? Yeah be very careful.
My god, someone still reads the Grimes! Grace I tend to agree with Maxeme but only because the abandoning PIR for CD’s didn’t in itself make for cheaper CDs, what it did do and its pretty evident if you look around, is begin a period of restructuring in the way recorded music was sold which favoured chains and discounters. Now of course physical media music retailers are all threatened.
Over at crikey there is a long post by Jack Robertson where he refers to the PC plan to directly subsidise writers (also mentioned in Emerson press release) which I wasn’t aware of and sounds like an idea which might have been worth exploring. But the big issue that I mentioned before but seems to be lost in the debate here is this question of eBooks. Australia might be an island but our consumption of gadgets is world standard so you can expect to see electronic readers hitting our shores in increasing numbers. Sure books aren’t going away anytime soon but in terms of writing and publishing there are big storm clouds on the horizon.
It is a terrible decision.
Supporters of the decision are saying two things, simultaneously.
(1) Book prices wouldn’t come down much if the restrictions were lifted.
(2) Small publishers and Australian authors would be hurt terribly if the restrictions were lifted.
These propositions cannot both be true, as a matter of logic.
What we have is the unedifying spectacle of large corporations (the major publishers) enlisting lefties who can always be counted on to oppose anything that has the appearance of market-based reform, even when it is actually counter to the causes they support.
It’s a classic case of Lenin’s useful idiots in action.
And with eBooks comes ease of illegal copying so I’m sure there will be a lot of resistance. Even now people will books and share them via bittorent.
Mark @ 90 – if the government is going to reject the advice from the Productivity Comission they could have also made the decision to publicly give the publishing industry a clear timeline to get themselves organised.
JohnL, I was highlighting the fact that the three largest publishers in Australia, responsible for about 90% of the market are gigantic overseas companies.
Of course HarperCollins (Rupert) wants to keep this in place – it makes Australia a far more lucrative place for publishers than it would be if prices were per book on par with the US or UK. And this is the other thing you ignore, Mark: The huge proportion of money made from this scheme won’t go to your authors r independent publishers. It will be lining the pockets of Random House, HarperCollins and Pengiun.
If you truly cared about the reading culture, you would acknowledge that these big publishers are a) mostly responsible for the current state of affairs and b) as 90% of the market, they benefit from 90% of the extra money. To truly address this problem, intervention should take place on supply-side – the money would go where it’s perceived to be needed, in that case.
You’ve made a lot of calls in this thread that have been refuted: Australian books are as cheap, or only $1 or $2 more; big chains don’t sponsor book speakers or festivals (or not in the right way); independent bookstores won’t be able to buy the kind of stock they currently have for the same prices; reading culture at independents is somehow better.
You’re really only left with: It’s almost impossible for Australian authors to get published overseas. Well this is true and it’s not. Authors like Max Barry actually published overseas first, so it’s not impossible. It’s very very hard, but getting published in Australia is very, very hard too. Furthermore, thinking about it this way posits a picture of reading culture that is strictly limited to books and reading in a certain way, and books of a certain type. Is Australia all the richer for Matthew Reilly? Really?
I’m honestly the one presenting a false dichotomy here, it’s publishers that claim this is be-all and end-all, it’s you and Ginja claiming that the Australian reading landscape is filled gibbering KMart Morlocks, poring over excremental scratchings whilst isolated enclaves of ubermenschen keep the literary flame burning. It’s very divisive.
It’s all good and dandy to argue about the inherent worth of a certain type of book, but if the public isn’t interested, what right do we have to force them to pay? It’s easy to blame this on evil capitalist bookstores and publishers, but it’s the public driving this, and it’s very condescending to say, “Oh you just don’t know how much you love this type of book. Even if you claim not to like it, it’s actually good for you, so shut up and pay.” If people don’t like those books, then I’m inclined to let them. Writers – Australian or otherwise – don’t possess some inalienable right to a vocation defined by the way they prefer. And of course published Australian authors are for PI – they are the winners from the current system.
If this was about other subcultures rather than a book-based one, I can’t help but feel you would have a different opinion.
I’m wondering how people who are against this think new Australian authors are going to be published without them being nurtured by small Australian publishing companies?
Do you really think that major US/British publishers are going to publish the first novel of the next Garner/Tsiolkas/Miller etc? And do people really think that the only interests that matter here are those of the consumer?
I also note that the Productivity Commission say that they may well favour direct subsidy to authors and publishers instead. This implies that the PC think there would be a problem if parallel importing was abolished and instead want to set up a different regime. But to those yelling ‘rent seekers’ (as though this phrase is, in itself, an argument) wouldn’t this be just as bad, or worse? The taxpayer would still be paying for ‘elitist’ tastes. Or do you think all support for authors/publishers should be abolished? And if so, do you have any concerns about what that might mean for Oz culture? Or is that a question which is irrelevant to you?
Fine, Loaded was published by Random House. So yes, it was a big US publisher, not MUP, UQP etc (which as Bernice points out, no longer run the kind of publishing programs they once did).
I find it very telling that the examples you use are all a certain type of Australian literature; I feel that it shows your true concern is not Australian writers, but a particular genre you are attached to. What writers like about Kate Eliot (fantasy)? Peter Temple (Crime)? Yes, I do think they would be published by international publishers.
I don’t think the consumer are the only interests that matter here, but I think they are the prime interest, yes. Because this policy affects far more consumers (or citizens, if you will) than writers, publishers, etc.
But Fine if small Australian publishers are nurturing new authors, opening up the distribution and availability of books is going to affect them how? A first novel is unlikely is to be picked up a US or UK publisher, so no alternative edition would exist. Therefore an Australian print run wont be swamped by a cheaper overseas edition (and to be brutally frank A&R, Borders, Coles, & Woolies aren’t going to EVER be interested selling such a beast). There were provisions in the proposed changes that would have guaranteed exclusive market access for 12 months for an Aust edition. If the book became successful, picked up overseas co-pub deals, all power to the author, but as other people have argued, it would make more sense to subsidise Aust lit production than maintain protectionism. Something that would support small Aust presses in a much more nuanced and effective manner.
Of the authors you listed, Garner’s first book was published by McPhee Gribble before it was swallowed by Penguin; Tsiolkas by Vintage in 1995; and Miller’s first novel ‘Watching the Climbers on the Mountain’ by Pan (division of Macmillan) in 1988. So two of these authors were first published not by my definition of a small Aust publisher, but multinationals. Far sighted editorial decisions that were argued to marketing & production on the basis that those authors would in the medium and long term be profitable to the publisher. Which they have.
Would an open market mean these publishing divisions would disappear? You’ve just argued that US /UK publishers wont publish Aust material – you’re right – rarely do they pick something up til after Aust publication BUT Australians lurve Australian titles. Be they novels, cookbooks, sport biogs or yet another military history. These publishing divisions make a lot of money out of this sort of publishing – there is a market, it is profitable, so I think it highly unlikely that Pan or Random or Penguin will wither and disappear. But what they may do is publish less first novels because they are not profitable. A gap that the burgeoning field of small publishers would love to fill. Have a look at what SPUNC is up to. I’m sure their members would be delirious if Aust fiction publishing was supported by direct funding.
Fine – a direct subsidy to authors would be a lot more transparent and make it more difficult for publishers to just pocket most of the subsidy without doing anything extra. Also you can decide to only subsidise the new authors, not the established ones so its better targeted where it will do the most good.
@ fine
I think the point is that most people dont really care whether or not Australian authors get published. Yes consumers interests arent the only interests that matter but as they are paying the price for maintaining the status quo they matter most. The Productivity Commission suggested subsidies to authors as the current system is disgustingly and grossly inefficient, and a system of grants would help encourage australian publishing (for those people who do want to encourage it) without costing consumers billions of dollars.
And of course the other factor re Aust book prices hasn’t been mentioned here at all – our 10% GST on books. It was argued at the time of its introduction that we would be the only OECD country to have such a tax on knowledge.
So why is there no campaign to reduce book prices immediately by removing the GST? Because the politicians (and by extension, the Aust elecorate)are quite happy to tax knowledge and culture.
So what if we devised a scheme where 1% of the GST raised from book sales was diverted from general revenue and put into a fund to subside authors and publishers? Total industry revenue was A$1,560.6 million in 2003-04. One per cent of GST would raise $1 560 600. 5% of the GST raised would give us $78 030 000. Imagine extending the notion to all GST raised on cultural production & activity.
Thats a bit misleading. In the US there is sales (both local and state) tax on books. Though you can avoid it by ordering from interstate. In Australia you avoid it by ordering from overseas
Also in the EU while paper books are exempt for VAT you still pay it on ebooks and audiobooks.
On the topic of first publications in the 90s, I already referred to the fact that the publishing market was different then, and I’ve noted several times that the interests of publishers and authors are separable. I really don’t want to defend every aspect of this decision, and I’ve stated why on numerous occasions, and I’m disinclined to respond to comments which represent me as arguing what I am not and ignore qualifications and nuance.
On the history of independent publishing in Australia, see Mark Davis:
http://www.overlandexpress.org/190%20davis.html
Mark, I would have hoped that progressive people would be trying to do everything possible to get books into the Australian population via the most affordable means possible. Cheaper books means literacy, learning and knowledge has a greater opportunity to be democratised across an ageing population. Simply hoping that libraries will pick up the slack – especially given that they already have budget constraints and often have to themselves resort to utilising over-priced Australian suppliers – is really not good enough. We need well-stocked libraries AND affordable books in order to build a well-read nation.
I am unsure what the US FTA really has to do with parallel importation – especially when in wholesale terms, in terms of shipping and actual pricing, many books are far cheaper from the UK, European & developing countries (esp. India). Arguments should be based on evidence and I am yet to see the evidence that the majority of TEH parallel importation tsunami would actually occur from US stockists anyway…
A useful source of comparison is in music sales where parallel importation was allowed before the FTA was enacted. The net effect has been cheaper CDs and the enduring survival of the Australian music industry – against the naysayers.
Mark, I’m also concerned about your comments where you actually engage with the PC and their report @ 70:
“…I don’t believe that the PC foregrounds its own ideological assumptions, and I’m not particularly confident that the marginal gains in price for *some* books would really eventuate…”
and @ 88:
“…if you think that the PC recommendations would have brought about cheap books, I doubt that’s so over the longer term…”
and @ 90:
“…I doubt the Productivity Commission is the right body to determine what mechanisms would be most appropriate to support Australian writing per se.”
Mark, what are the ideological assumptions in the foreground of the PC? Simply attacking a professional review body for having ideological assumptions without clearly demonstrating those assumptions is a bit McCarthy-esque really. Reminds me a little bit of what the RWDBs say about the ABC or SBS whenever those broadcasters say something they disagree with. I would have hoped that in this evidence-based age of post-ideological politics, we had moved beyond playing the ad hominem game and were actually happy to engage with the evidence in order to justify a policy position.
Finally, I am not sure that you have read the PC report but when you claim that books won’t actually get cheaper in the long term with parallel importation, it would be really good to frame that statement with a background of actual evidence – as the PC report did when making their contrary statement. In the absence of actual evidence, it is no surprise that some of those opposing the PC report resort to the old “neo-liberal” ideological attacks against strawmen.
I would love someone to demonstrate to me how rejecting the PC report will lead to greater levels of Australians accessing, buying and reading books. Surely that’s a goal all of us would agree on?
forgive me, but all this (very interesting) discussion went on over CDs a few years back – wouldn’t Australian musicians, composers and boutique independent labels suffer collapse and our music culture would be irreparably damaged? The short answer – nothing bad actually happened.
The longer answer IMHO – the increased diversity of genre into the Australian music culture actually opened up opportunity for the boutique labels, here and overseas. The one I’m on has simply gone from strength to strength, extending its market, developing new audiences in Australia. As an Australian artist I have gone from a small little low rent experimental musician to someone who’s now broadly available on Amazon and a whole bunch of other outlets across Europe and Japan…my audience has increased and that’s taken me, as a performer, into the USA and across Asia. I am aware that music is a different form from literature, so perhaps there are inherent differences I am simply not aware of? But in this case I doubt it..the arguments made here sound almost identical…and as I say nothing bad actually happened. As an Australian artist whose product is “boutique” (that is..not at all “commercial”) and who as a consumer also buys boutique, I’m with Patrick g and Fells….i make more money for an obscure product, and I can buy a more diverse product than I ever could, cheaper.
eBooks are perfect for niche writers and parallel import restrictions are damaging the utility of eReaders. have a look at how many titles amazon sells in its AU kindle store vs the US kindle store.
Sorry, Mark, I’m honestly not trying to be belligerent. But if I’m responding to the wrong things here, what are you arguing? Obviously we agree on two issues:
1) The current situation is not ideal
2) The current situation is not even what it was 10-15 years ago.
But I’m here discussing PIR’s and removing them. A hypothetical about what the publishing market could look like, or should like look is kind of immaterial in the context of this decision. And you’ve clearly stated both in the post and subsequent replies that you view the decision as a positive thing and PIR as a net good. I’m genuinely sorry if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick here, but I am responding directly to things that you’ve asserted. If those things are false, or generalisations or irrelevant to the argument, then why bring them up?
Patrickg – please note that Independent bookstores are 20% of the market in Australia, not 1%
Try buying Brian Moore, Colin Falconer, Hazel Edwards, Howard Goldenberg, Alan Dershowitz, Sherman Alexie, Louis Begley, Luxe guides, Mr & Mrs Smith Guides… at a BigW or Kmart.
Remember also that A&R & Borders may be cheaper than Indies on say 100 titles but on the other 20,000-30,000+ titles they charge 10% above RRP. We charge RRP.
Thanks Bernice for your as ever profoundly illuminating comment @94. Can you tell me something more about how the book bounty scheme used to work?
Also, this from Labor Outsider: “Evidence based policy? What a joke!! The dumbest thing about the decision is that it will do little to prevent the long-run adjustments that are necessary in the industry anyway.” Just thought I’d repeat it.
Good comments from TimT and PatrickG too.
TimT: isn’t it snobbish to object to other peoples’ thumbs touching your library book?
Fair point Ginja. But the broader point I was making was that it’s even more snobbish to simply direct readers who can’t afford books with prices heightened by these trade restrictions to the library, where the services are at the whims of the library administration and budget. that is a case of one reading rule for the well-off and another reading rule for the less-well-off. And yes, books that are personally owned are far better than those that are borrowed or browsed in a library.
The book bounty was interesting. It was a Whitlam government initiative which was principally designed to sustain Australian printers who were facing increasing competition from offshore printing. Which ended up having a de facto focus on non-illustrated books – fiction and non-fiction (given the nature of Aust printing technologies at the time of its introduction)
Both multinational and emerging small publishers were given an incentive to focus on among other things, literature or fiction or poetry. We went from 7 literature titles published in 1970 to 200 a year by the end of decade. There were a lot of other factors in play, including arts funding for writers and our own cultural renaissance in the 70s so I wouldn’t suggest the book bounty was responsible alone. But nor do I think that anyone in the Whitlam government had any idea that by effectively subsidising our aging offset printing technologies, it would generate an environmental control of the type of commercial decisions publishers would make about the TYPE of book they would publish.
“But the broader point I was making was that it’s even more snobbish to simply direct readers who can’t afford books with prices heightened by these trade restrictions to the library”
And also if everyone kept going to the library than what would happen to the Australian Publishing Industry!! Library users are clearly a bunch of freeloaders who make it harder for Australian writers to get published
The reason I asked those questions above is because I’m curiuos as to whether people are against subsidy in principle, or just this paticular form of subsidy, as they seem like two very different arguments.
Bernice, a percentage of GST is an interesting idea. I wonder if it would be impossible because of the FTA? The reason I ask is because it’s sometimes been suggested that film funding should be come from a percentage of the gross box of non-Australian fims, which would follow the French funding model. But the idea has always fallen at the first hurdle because it seems it would be too great an impediment to free trade according to the FTA. How true tht is, I’m not sure.
On the wider topic RE: the Productivity Commission – I’ve often wondered if their brief is sometimes a little too narrow – often excluding salient facts that otherwise sway an argument.
I vaguely recall the arguments over Milk deregulation back in the 90’s (I think) and whilst I can see the pure economic argument – there were other contributing factors ignored.
The argument put forward most often was that, because Victorian farmers could produce Milk at a cheaper price, we should stop support for smaller producing regions. But that ignored the fact that the growth of Victorian production was largely based on water taken from the Murray at a highly subsidised rate. Had that expansion happened in today’s climate (both literal and economic), I suspect their viability would’ve been tested.
It seemed that they only looked at the direct subsidy (or regulation) and ignored the fact that their competitive position came from another subsidy.
Another factor it ignored was bio-security. If we centralised production to a single region and we suffered an outbreak of, say, Foot and Mouth, the risk would be that we’d suffer a massive milk shortage and have import supplies (although perhaps NZ would be happy). In the end, that scenario never really played out, although some regions folded, and if anything it could be argued that it has strengthened others. One that comes to mind is Malanda – who did it tough, but seems to be surviving.
I buy 99.5% of my books now from The Book Depository and Betterworld and that amounts to several hundred books a year (and the savings allow me to buy many, many more).
Apart from the huge savings, I find I can get hardcover editions that were never published here. Also, in general, the paper and binding quality of US/UK books tend to be far superior to what’s printed here. Too many Aussie hardcovers (many just the pb edition with a hardcover) and paperbacks seem to have been printed on cheap newsprint which goes yellow in a quite a short time.
Louis Adler suggested today that people buying books online from overseas should be charged GST by the foreign booksellers and the money remitted to the Australian government. This still wouldn’t make a dent in the price difference between books bought here or online.
OK, so some people buy books online to save money. Presumably they can still do that.
Other people prefer to purchase their books in bookshops at a higher price. They can still do that. Some people prefer large bookshop chains or department stores with reduced range and prices. They will presumably continue to exist
Still other people prefer independent retailers with a smaller, more specialised range, at a higher price. These will continue to exist for some time.
Other people like myself prefer a combination of all three.
Others use libraries which they can continue to do.
So this decision should please everybody, especially as it may help protect smaller publishers and facilitate the publishing of new authors.
So it should please most people, but instead seems to have pleased very few.
Have we become a nation of whingers?
To be honest, I barely use Australian bookstores any more because you can get specialist books so much cheaper online. And they’re usually better quality – available in hardcover etc.
I think that, ultimately, this is a Pyhrric victory which will merely delay the inevitable impact of overseas internet booksellers on Australian publishers. More and more people will realise that it’s easier and cheaper to do it online, with a vastly better range
gotroppo@117 – yes -the dairy industry affectively moved (moo-ved)from high rainfall areas, like Gippland, Otways etc where it was suited up to around the Murray (where the land was dry with so not much mud and cold when and where you didn’t want it) and there was almost free unlimited water.
Now its moo-ving back to where it had a natural advantage.
Sadly many southern Victorian dairy farmers got out and capital investment in machinery was dropped while northern farmers around the Murray took over with new equipment and bigger herds and free water.
I think we’ll see a bigger investment in dairy in the high rainfall areas and a return of the marginal land around the Murray to rabbits and wheat or just scrub on salt spoiled land.
better than talking about books – where those who support the general thrust of the productivity commission have been labelled, yobs like Sir Les, philistines for wanting to buy a Dan Brown at the supermarket, crushers of Australian culture for not wanting to pay overseas publishers and book authors a premium on every book, – and more – despite almost everyone saying they would support assistance to australian authors and small publishers.
ALIA Q & A on the PIR
I’ve said this before and so have plenty of people on here. What really vexes me about this outcome and entire debate is that there’s no reason why we need to talk as if supporting Australian authors and independent publishers is the same indivisible thing as preserving PIRs. It’s not. And both vocal elements on both sides of the dispute have acted as if it is. Which annoys me because, again as many have said on here, the noise and smoke of the PIR debate is obscuring the inadequacy of current arrangements, and likewise enabling the perpetuation of business models that are only going to get more and more unsustainable.
Just to take one example of that, academic books are getting more and more impossible for individuals to buy in Australia. As Bernice said. You’re lucky if there’s a local distributor with a copy that’s nearer than four weeks away, and lucky if it’s under a hundred dollars. I recently tried to get my campus co-op to find me a copy of a book on contemporary feminism, by an Australian author, published in June – and it had to come from Germany and would have cost $165. That’s a totally unacceptable situation for everyone involved. The last thing we need is to stick with the crappy situation we’ve got now. It’s time to try something else, and another reason to be pissed off with the present decision is that it seems to have been arrived at partly to give the local industry breathing space to adapt to changing conditions. Yes, I’m sure the likes of Louise Adler are going to show leadership in that department (see above her remark about making local buyers of o/s books pay GST.) As Bernice said SPUNC is a small ray of light in the current gloom, I am looking forward to see what they can do and if they can get some momentum up.
Speaking personally, chalk me up as another one whose book buying patterns will not be much affected by this. I’ll continue to buy most books online from o/s and a smaller number of mainly small press literary novels and the odd poetry book or playscript from Readings.
Well, I buy books on line partly because its cheaper (though if I see a book I really want in my local bookstore I always buy it there because he gives me a discount.) But mostly I buy books on line because most of the books I want are out of print or print on demand and you can’t get them any other way, apart from going to a library, which isn’t much good because you can’t keep them long enough.
I became aware of book depository because of this hooplah. Wow, I will never buy local again. This text book I’ve been eyeing off costs $146 locally. I just bought it for $78 with free shipping. I’m sorry, but Labor’s position is unrealistic – if there’s prices like this to be had, the local industry is going to die anyway.
It tells you all you need to know about this decision that The Australian has launched an all out attack on it – no less than three critical articles on it in one day alone, with I’m sure more to come. Two of the articles come from reportedly impartial journalists Michael Stuchbury and Christion Kerr.
It is of course a complete coincidence that the owner of The Australian happens to be one of the largest publishers in Australia.
And expect Barry Cassidy to follow The Ausralian and condemn this decision on Insiders. On Jon Faine today he was very excited about the papers reaction. As if that was a matter of news in itself.
Definitely lost the plot has old Barry.
Thanks Mark.
Let me just say I’m all for cheaper books and for putting more books in the hands of working-class families – who wouldn’t be?
What I object to is the idea that foreign competition is the only way to bring prices down. This is one of the reasons people like me object so strongly to neo-liberalism: lazy, stale thinking.
Why not try to promote more domestic competition? Why not encourage working-class families to buy books through subsidized vouchers? No, let’s just reach for the easiest option – Australian publishing and culture be damned.
Lots of interesting conversations going on here.
I have been following these developments with interest as I spend a lot of money on books (at least a thousand dollars per year). My spending has dropped off a bit recently as I’ve been out of the country a lot, and I’ve just been increasingly depressed wandering through bookstores in the USA and Europe and seeing just how much cheaper everything is.
I understand the writers perspective, but I am not sure where you get the impression they’d be accepting these “free market ideological arguments on trust”. The PC recommendations are quite clear and it certainly doesn’t look like it was pulled out of thin air.
Your post about Fishpond and Booktopia being cheaper was interesting; I hadn’t heard of either of those places. Picking a book at random (the new Dan Brown), it works out at $27.97 and $29.95 respectively – not including shipping. I can get it sent to me from bookdepository.co.uk for (converted at current exchange rate) $28.76, including shipping.
These restrictions are just going to make people like me buy all our books online and import them. Sorry, but I have zero interest in spending my money to support authors whose books I am never going to read.
If getting published in Australia is hard, then that’s too bad – maybe it’s a sign we need a local Australian publisher that can focus on books by Australian authors? Propping up the industry by making everyone else suffer is just a bad idea.
Also, I also found the announcement on innovation.gov.au somewhat hilarious, encouraging e-readers and e-books. If the media industry can’t stop people pirating CDs and DVDs and HD-blu-ray rips, how do you think publishing is going to go stopping e-book piracy? Answer: they’re not. Pirating a book is about a billion times easier than anything else.
cosmicjester @ 34
They believe it’s better that a thousand retail workers become redundant, rather than one literary darling lose 5% of his income. These workers, like the forestry workers, coal miners and car workers, can all be sacrificed in the name of ‘progressive’ politics.
Of course it’s all based on the fallacy that Random House, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Macmillan are going to start dumping remainders on the Australian market, at the expense of their Australian subsidiaries. I’m still waiting for those dross copies of Blue Sky Mining and Diesel and Dust, Baldy told us, Sony were going to dump on the Australian market.
So I guess Bill O’Reilly, Karl Rove and everyone else with News Corp. stock options should thank all the leftie saps who’ve made their portfolios a little bit fatter.
I was in Borders Parramatta the other day, and amongst the vampire ephemera displayed in their entrance were the books of American author Kim Harrison, selling for AUD 22.95. Yet at todays exchange rate, I can buy them at AUD 11.35 with free postage from the UK. That’s $11.60 that no Australian worker, business or government will ever see any part of, and probably the reason Borders rarely have more than one clerk at their main till.
But Louise Adler is wrong when she says this is over and done with: the way Dr Death is traveling there may be a new government in as little as twelve months, but regardless of who’s in power, the practice of dividing the exclusive rights to a book amongst geographic areas is unsustainable as no one can actually deliver the exclusive rights.
David Harrison: are things so much cheaper in the US? As well as buying a lot of books here I buy a lot of books on US Amazon (there already is foreign competition in the Australian market). When you consider that prices for all goods tend to be lower in the US (economies of scale, strong reserve currency) prices for new books aren’t always great. $22+ for many new paperbacks means that Americans have reason to complain, too. And UK prices are worse.
Ginja: I was mostly referring to just the general feeling of being in the US and browsing through bookstores (I’ve been three times this year and love going to bookstores and stocking up while I’m there. Obviously this method of purchasing is not available for everyone
Using my previous example, that Dan Brown book is comparatively AUD$17.65 after conversion (rounded up). That doesn’t include shipping; IIRC Amazon shipping is typically fairly expensive, though with the AUD so strong at the moment I suspect ordering a few things together would still be massively cheaper than buying in AU.
Lots of older paperbacks – things that are still AUD$20 if you try to buy them here – sell for less than USD$8 in the States. That’s probably the thing that annoys me the most – I’m buying a lot of older titles at the moment (20-40 years old), and I’m still paying almost the same as I would for a brand new paperback. Why?!
I recently bought a series of music books (twelve in all) produced by an Australian music publisher. Some are printed in Australia and some in China. In Australia they cost $45 + $5 postage (they could be ordered directly from music shops but the wait could be up to three months).
From The Book Depository $29 with the free airmail postage.
So Aussie-made books can be sent to the UK and still sell for half the price we pay here.
There is something really wrong with the whole industry.
“What I object to is the idea that foreign competition is the only way to bring prices down. This is one of the reasons people like me object so strongly to neo-liberalism: lazy, stale thinking.”
Ginja, you should change your name to Autarky….It suits your outlook on the world quite nicely!
“What I object to is the idea that foreign competition is the only way to bring prices down. This is one of the reasons people like me object so strongly to neo-liberalism: lazy, stale thinking.”
Ginja, you’re the one who’s going into bat for a cartel of multinationals.
Frankie V.: be careful because you’re about to be exposed to some nuanced thought. I am for multinational publishers if they have a presence here and publish Australian authors. I’m not for multinationals who simply import books into this country – big difference.
Labor Outsider: Autarky’s not automatically a bad thing – I’ve even heard Paul Keating defend our superannuation system on grounds of self sufficiency.
If you’d followed our debates in the past, you’d notice that I’m actually a supporter of free trade. All I am saying is that in this instance there are important considerations aside from price that need to be taken into account – when something as important as culture is involved (a heretical thought, I know).
There are so many more options out there aside from parallel import restrictions on the one hand or complete free trade on the other. One of the more interesting proposals is a hybrid of the two.
Don’t you ever get bored in economics departments? The answer to every question is usually so alike and so bland. Why can’t economics be more creative and interesting?
This whole exercise has set the economics profession a practical task: lower prices without risking our publishing industry (an important part of Australian culture). Instead of setting about that task, my guess is that most economists would prefer to spout the same old ideology and carp – about as useful to the real world as the efficient market hypothesis.
I haven’t got the PC report just here to search.
Can some one tell me if they addressed Related Party International Dealings and International Transfer Pricing, and arms length etc?
I’m assuming thats where the smoke and mirrors are for the multinational publishers.
Sorry Adrian #126 – bit confused about quite what The Oz attacking the decision does mean. Rupie owns Harper Entertainment (yes they once used to be a publisher called Harper Collins) so if Boyz from Oz were protecting Rupie’s business interests, surely they’d be applauding the decision as Harper would stand to lose if the PC recommendations had been adopted.
Though we shouldn’t discount the possibility that they’re blissfully unaware of the connection. Or is this the first wave of Rupie’s attack on copyright as we know it (given that he has now decided ‘fair dealing’ is anything but unless he’s making money out of it)
FXH- very very interesting question.
Report is here http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/90265/books.pdf
I’d choked on my weeties over the methodologies in Appendix D, but I’ve perused the report again and I can’t even find a sniff that “Related Party International Dealings and International Transfer Pricing, and arms length etc” have been in any way raised, addressed or brought into deliberations. The publishers sure as hell didn’t raise it.
The behemoths of publishing/distribution do have very complicated relationships with their parent companies; in one case, they are not ‘owned’ by the mother ship in the UK, but by a parallel publishing company that in turn owns the mother ship. So apparently they have a ‘fraternal’ relationship with the UK.
I was always quietly delighted that Penguin owned by Pearsons since the 1980s had Madame Tussard’s as one of its stablemates. The enmeshments of modern capital.
Australia Post is probably pretty happy about the situation
Its pretty inefficient though – flying a whole lot of books in small parcels rather than being able to send much larger quantities by seamail and have a local stockpile.
I think its actually the authors and the books they publish rather than the publishing industry which is the important part of Australian culture. The publishing industry in its current state may not be necessary and from the previous comments is operating quite badly for emerging authors.
I would consider having cheap books but a drastically smaller local publishing industry to be market failure. On reflection, I think the broad public would see it that way, too.
If you were to say that we can have cheap books, but dramatically fewer publishers willing to print, say, histories of Gallipoli, or the fall of Singapore, or Kakoda, I think a lot of people would say that’s not much of a bargain. Many ordinary readers would have a serious problem with that.
Thankfully we have a government that can see the bigger picture. As is often the case, the Rudd Cabinet has shown more judgement than many at LP.
All you neo-libs out there will just have to go to bed knowing that there is a smallish corner of the Australian economy that has not been opened to the ravages of international competition. How will you sleep tonight? The horror!
“price transferring” “arms length” “related parties” are terms that do not turn up in a search of the .pdf report
It would seem to me that these would be fundamental issues to examine in any report like this.
But Ginja, don’t you know, markets never fail, only governments.
The sad thing is Ginja, that as Laura and so many other people have stated, they no longer buy most or any of their books from local bookshops. And given the price differentials, why in god’s name would you? Given the time you are expected to wait for it to arrive at a bookshop when you do order it, why bother?
Distributors will then reduce their stock and range even further; most academic titles are firm sale as far as most bookshops are concerned so why bother stocking something perhaps three times the online price. We end up with less access to books. Less new knowledge and ideas and information readily available on a bookshop shelf.
This should not have ever been allowed to be posited as an either / or argument. It is not about wishing for some Chicago School wet dream of the free market. It should have always been about addressing real world circumstances and ensuring the free flow of knowledge, not obscuring outdated industry models behind cries of cultural genocide.
Yes the sad thing is that this will see my local bookshop just slowly but surely go down the gurgler. They were never cheaper than even Readings who are expensive except it did buy you the privilege of being ignored and/or condescended to at the famous Hawthorn branch.
On the Penguin UK website (and Pearsons acquired Penguin in 70s, not the 80s – sorry), I came across this:
“In my capacity as a reader I applaud the Penguin Books; in my capacity as a writer I pronounce them anathema. Hutchinsons are now bringing out a very similar edition, though only of their own books, and if other publishers follow suit, the result may be a flood of cheap reprints which will cripple the lending libraries and check the output of new novels. This would be a fine thing for literature, but it would be a very bad thing for trade, and when you have to choose between art and money – well, finish it for yourself.”
George Orwell, New English Weekly, 5 March 1936
Orwell would go on to earn significant sums from US book club sales – newly emerging markets unimagined in 1936.
You are living in a fantasy world. The competition already exists, and has for ages. Anyone with half a clue will be buying their books online, exporting their dollars to the economies of other countries. As soon as e-book readers become ubiquitous then you’ll have the problem of e-book piracy, which I guarantee you will make all the other problems look trivial to solve.
Mark, how can you support was is in effect a poorly-targeted, wasteful, opaque and regressive consumption tax on books (which, incidentally, is increasingly circumvented by the middle-classes for whom international online shopping is becoming routine)? Is that really the best that Teh Left can do in the name of Australian authorship (vs Australian publishing) and cultural diversity? Say it ain’t so.
BBB
Let’s be frank though, how many of us really buy online because its cheaper? I buy an increasing % of books that way (probably now 30%), but thats because I cant be arsed hunting for 2nd hand titles I’d bloody never find anyway in real time.
Of course, If I’d come across them book-browsing I wouldnt bother even clicking a search button – but I just dont find certain academic texts I need. So I go online.
It looks cheaper at first, sure but by the time youve paid postage – and far more than you estimate since only certain ones can be “bundled” & come separately from different booksellers – its a whole lot more. And then they charge your credit card for international transfer fees. The savings are WAY less than people make out above.
But you cant beat the convenience!
I dont buy heaps of news stuff, but why would I do that online when I can instantly gratify at a bookshop, and actually enjoy myself while Im at it?
You know what? I think the arguments for the current set-up DO look kinda weak under sustained scrutiny. But I trump that hand with this left bower: F*CK YOU FTA! Its blinkin outrageous that we arent allowed to do anything else.
So screw you buddy, we’re keepin our stupid restrictions. Now piss off, cos I’m reading this slightly over-priced book and you’re standing in my moonlight.
The FTA is a complete red herring. It prevents PIRs in respect of Australian authors only (since that would apply copyright protections differently as between Australian and US citizens). However, the FTA does not, as far as I know, prevent new and expanded direct subsidies to Australian authors and to Australian publishers of those authors. Which is no doubt why the PC rejected the former (citing the FTA) and embraced the latter (the latter being preferable on any sensible application of social democratic thinking). Teh Left’s support of PIRs is almost at the stage of wilful blindness and demonstrates a shocking lack of creativity.
BBB
Lefty E @ 149
No postage costs if you buy from The Book Depository and they usually arrive within a week. Betterworld’s postage cost is a flat-rate one which I think is around $7.
You’re right when it comes Amazon though and that’s why I won’t buy from them. Often the postage is more than the cost of the book and they take forever to arrive.
The link below is to a list of largely academic titles. The UK prices are as shown online from The Book Depository. They do not charge any postage to Aust, and if in stock, usually arrive within 10 days. Authors in bold are Australian based, though published by overseas publishers; whilst titles in red are Australian published (though not necessarily printed).
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/5/22/1103390/BerniceBlogbookprices.pdf
which was in reference to this:
http://bbb-bernice.blogspot.com/2009/10/pricing-knowledge.html
Even if Adler’s unworkable offshore collection of GST were to happen, it would not on the basis of these prices make enough difference to force? encourage? buyers back to Australian retailers (or publishers – the effort publishers and distributors are now making to sell direct to consumers, bypassing bookshops entirely, which will only increase with ebook provision, doesn’t seem to worry anyone?)
Can’t we just have an open-ended tax credit scheme for Australian publishers, where the credits are calculated by reference to income earned from the publication of Australian authors? If diversity at the publisher level is a real consideration, you could even have a higher rate for smaller publishers (e.g. those achieving <$20 million in turnover per annum, as for the proposed R&D tax concession). Anything but the truly mindless PIRs.
BBB
It seems to have been the best the Right could come up with too, BBB!
Yes. But surely it’s embarrassing for Mark and others here to support the clearly regressive and wasteful PIRs whilst belittling the Productivity Commission in circumstances where the Commission’s preferred approach is more progressive and far more likely directly to benefit Australian authorship. If you consider yourself of the left and are being outdone on the social democratic front by the likes of the PC, then I’m afraid something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
BBB
It was LP that put me onto the Book Depository, and in one thread, Readings lost another customer. FXH’s price comparisons above are universal in my experience – not only do BD have the books you want, they have them at a great price, and they’ll have them in your hands in more or less a week.
Earlier in the year, I was happy to listen to the independent booksellers and publishers, but it was ultimately Bernice’s legendary post on the issue that turned my head 180 degrees on the subject.
I can only agree with the majority here – the decision is ludicrous, the justifications hold little water, and as FXH quoth, it’s just another nail in the independent bookshop’s coffin.
OK, I think that we have established that books are cheaper on-line and that this is great for people who buy a lot of books, have internet access (apparently the ‘middle class’) and don’t want to look at the book before buying it.
Can someone then please explain how the PC recommendations if implemented would have saved the small independent bookshops (and publishers?) that are apparently threatened most by on-line purchasing.
Incidentally, downloading of music has not destroyed small, independent record shops either here or overseas, but the larger monolithic chains like Virgin have disappeared. Smaller shops catering for a niche market are apparently thriving, so I am wondering why the same thing won’t occur with books.
The other impact will be the slowing down of innovation in publishing and supply models. Central Book Services have managed to successfully persuade an overseas publisher they distribute to allow for the POD production of a number of titles in Australia, instead of shipping stock in from the US. (And this is a significant issue for publishers to engage with – known print runs provide known costs and profits – POD makes the accountants nervous)
The price of one of those books dropped from $70 to $35 or thereabouts. An Aust printer gets the work, there is no shipping cost, a greatly reduced carbon footprint, no unwanted inventory sitting about in a warehouse.
But POD in Aust is still marginal – true POD is not yet per unit cost effective in most situations. However Lightning Source has been considering setting up an operation here in 2010; and their production & costing models do make true POD on a single copy of a book cost effective.
But will multinational publishers/distributors any longer see the need to engage with a significant remodelling of their production and supply chains given that their inefficiences have been guaranteed protection in the retail market within Australia? Until sales to offshore providers (which are not known but merely guessed at) impact upon their profitability, the answer will be no. Capital has a very poor record of adopting innovation unless pressured by competition or government regulation.
If I were making the decision at Lightning Source about whether to proceed with the Aust expansion, I think I’d be shifting my attention to Singapore. Or perhaps East Timor. I’m sure a nice greenfields subsidy could be shaken out of someone.
Adrian at #157 this issue is exercising a lot of minds in the US. Here’s my take on it for what it’s worth.
http://bbb-bernice.blogspot.com/2009/10/pssstt-wanna-buy-book.html
There are significant weaknesses in the online models – their saving grace is their pricing. But I strongly think smart independents have niches to make their own. IF they are free to source their stock in an unfettered manner. This is another thing that pisses me off about the current situation. You as a consumer can buy your chosen book from anywhere for whatever price you are happy to pay. An Aust bookseller cannot.
Thanks Bernice, I’ll check it out when I have time.
bernice – I’ve wondered why my small local bookshops – didn’t just offer to get any book in you want and charge an extra $5.
It goes like this – you wander into the bookshop on a rainy Saturday after coffee, soy latte of course, and free range eggs (and snuck a look at the Sun which of course you would never have delivered) at the cafe. In the bookshop you casually flip through a few new titles – do a free speed read of a few pages of Dan Brown you’ve been catching up on over the last two weeks and put it back on the shelf.
Striking up a conversation over the background ABC FM with the bookshop person and his sculptured chin growth you ask if he has the new book reviewed by reviewer x in the Age today. “No” he says (in the current scenario) ” It won’t be available for about two months or so and it will be around $34 – sorry- I can order it for you though”
But I’ve thought for a few years what he should be saying is:
” No mate not in Australia for months and it’ll be $34 – but wait two seconds – I’ll order it online from UK for you , cost about $28, and it will be on your front door by next Friday most likely – hows that sound?”
You say “Yeah ok why not seems easy”
He takes $28 off you, uses his credit card to pay Book Depository $24. You pick up a cookbook in the remainders bin and a couple of postcards pay him another $20 or so and walk out happy.
Everyone wins.
Last I said something like this to a bookshop owner I felt about as welcome as Wilson Tuckey at 11 am at a Brunswick coffee shop.
Daphon at 151: as I said above somewhere, if you HAVE to go Amazon (becuase you cant find a title elsewhre), my advice is go amazon.co.uk NOT amazon.com
You’ll find it turns up well inside one week – whereas it will apparently travel from the US by canoe. Must be that free trade thing we have.
Heh, sounds like Gleebooks without the ’sorry – I can order it in for you though’ bit.
I think he was too busy cultivating the sculptured chin growth, but I was waiting for him to say, ’sorry computer says no’, but was sadly disappointed when he just came out with ‘no’, as in ‘no we haven’t got it in stock and I’m not prepared to give you any further information, after all you are only a potential customer’.
FXH – there isn’t really any reason why they couldn’t do what you’ve suggested because they’re not actually importing the book from a wholesaler(and therefore breaching PIRs) but acting as a forwarder. Ingrams the largest wholesaler in the States now offer booksellers a service where they order the book for a customer and have it delivered directly to the customer by post from the US.
Which raises a question I hadn’t thought of – if a bookshop places an order via Ingrams for an edition of a title that does not have territorial rights access for Australia, it is still breaching the PIRs? I suspect legally it would as the bookshop is buying it wholesale but I’m not sure. But it can’t be policed – a pile of an ‘illegal’ edition in a bookshop is a bit of a giveaway; a plain brown box going to a Private Citizen #55848-NL214 is altogether another thing.
Why aren’t any or more of them doing it? Search me. I suspect its why innovate when things bump along. And booksellers put a lot of effort into having good relations with publishers and distributors. They schmooze for extra discount, an author visit, more flexible sale or return rights – it’s a bit self-defeating to run around poking the gorillas with a stick. Though personally I wouldn’t have too much confidence in publishers not happily shafting any retailer if it helped the bottom line. Publishing is, after all, big business.
bernice – s/hes not even acting as a forwarder – just providing a service and charging you $4 for it – by logging on to the net.
Instead of you having to go home – log on – remember the book etc – the book goes straight to the customer’s address from Book Depository.
I can’t understand why they don’t do stuff like that – do the distributors threaten to cut off their supply? – that would be illegal anyway.
Do the publishers/distributors slyly throw around extra discounts and freebies in a random way making bookshops think they are special? Is it sale and return rights?
Most people, don’t mind paying for a bit of service and convenience. Anyone can
charge $3.50 or more for coffee now – but what you are buying and expect is a good coffee, a place to sit, a free paper and a bit of civility and amenity and ability to have a meeting for an hour if you want.
Why can’t bookshops find that service model and adapt it.
No one here seems to be suggesting that they shop on line just to save $2 a book – but when there is bugger all service locally, books can be $40 dearer on a $30 book and they are not available for months after release thats when people go online and offshore.
Just ordered the book I couldn’t get at Gleebooks plus another one from BD – it’s almost too easy, but without the charming stubble grower thinly disguised as a customer liaison officer or whatever it tha sales assistants call themselves these days.
FXH I agree. My first job when I moved to Sydney as A Young Thing was in a venerable independent Sydney bookshop. I was taken along to an Aust Booksellers Association meeting who were as a group trying to come to terms with whether to accept closed markets (PIRs in other words) in return for publishers/distributors providing stock on a sale or return basis. It was excruciating. I kept waiting for George Robertson to walk in. If nothing else, it encouraged me to flee for which I remain eternally grateful.
Publishers can cut off their supply – terms & conditions of the account. They can also merrily adjust discount. But interestingly, there has not been a single case brought to court over a retailer breaching PIRs despite the fact that it does happen. Not as much as it should, but it does happen. Why? Because publishers/distributors have never been entirely sure PIRs would stand up to legal scrutiny. Given the current High Court’s mood on copyright, they should be even more nervous now.
And yes publishers/distributors dispense largesse. And ’special’ discounts. Some not cynically I might point out. Sale or return is not automatic – it is specific to a book, and may only apply within 3, 6 or 12 months of publication. Or may not apply at all. Depends.
And I’d imagine you’d need to charge more than $4 to cover the exchange fee and c/c fees – though if you’re doing it on a personal c/c, think of the frequent flyer points. Which is illegal. Even with the sculptured chin growth.
Well, before I got on the net, my independent bookseller in Armidale used to order rare books over the Internet for me at no extra charge.(eg all the First Fleet journals.) Which is why I buy all my DVDs there, and any books I need he happens to get in on spec that I might want them, even when I might be able to get them cheaper on the internet. Basically, unless I have too many bills I buy something from him every fortnight, regardless of what I might purchase on-line.
This pension I bought the DVD of Forsyte Saga, which, I suspect – suspect because I haven’t watched it all yet – , has episodes never screened on the ABC. And most enjoyable it has been so far, despite the fact it doesn’t have subtitles.
“Given the current High Court’s mood on copyright, they should be even more nervous now”
Do you mean in relation to the iinet issue Bernice? Is there movement at the station w/r/t our copyright legislation?
In addition to booko.com.au — invaluable for discovering the cheapest place to buy a new book, bookfinder.com also does a good job for second hand books, making it easy to take shipping to Australia into account.
booko looks interesting. I usually use http://www.bookshops.com.au which is good for local second-hand, though, if I can’t find a copy of what I want I generally end up buying from the depository or ABE as either is nearly always massively cheaper than buying from Australian bookshops, including the on-line ones. Just so as we’re clear on that.
Laura, no not changes to the Act; interpretation where the ICE decision is more important. The HC was actually quite pissed they didn’t get to define the two terms of copyright. I’d be curious as to whether given that an author’s IP is not infringed by having a non-territorial compliant edition sold here (provided it was not a remainded copy, they would still be receiving a royalty, which are often higher on overseas editions) would the publisher/distributor would have to argue that their failure to provide a copy of the correct edition did not represent an infringement of trade practices act (in the constitutional sense, not Milton baby)?
At the moment a distributor has to supply an very sloppy unspecified number of copies into the Aust market within 30 days of overseas publication, and supply to order within 90 days in order to retain territorial rights. Which a cunning lawyer could argue does represent restriction of trade – the premise being that one book is not interchangeable with any other. If you want Lord of the Rings, you don’t want Garner’s The Spare Room instead. In order to get the particular book you require, the current arrangement prevents a retailer from obtaining THE book elsewhere if the holder of the rights does not supply within a timeframe that does not lose the retailer the sale. Is this a restriction of trade?
bernice – I don’t know enough about bookshops cost structures and despite the tsunami of special pleading over the last year or so I’m none the wiser about much at all like average costs, marginal costs, profitable lines, vertical integration horizontal integration etc.
I find it hard to believe its all so mysterious that a good spreadsheet can’t be provided with some examples. Because I’m not even against a levy or some assistance to small bookshops if it helps Australian authors. But its hard to support anything that only relies on rhetoric and bluster and in some cases outright lies.
I’d accept that $4 per transaction might not be enough – but there must be some model that will work for small bookshops (I’m assuming they are a good thing)
It’s going to be a bad time for small bookshops. When supermarkets came in thousands of small grocery shops closed up. Then years later Health Food Shops opened up and thrived – a bit more niche but filling agap the big super markets couldn’t fill. Then butcher shops all over town when to the wall as people got their meat from supermarkets and butchers didn’t know how to respond. Now their butcher shops springing up everywhere and doing god business by doing what the supermarkets can’t do – add a bit of value with pre prepared cuts and helping people get good meat rather than just chewy bits of animal.
I’m disappointed that the PC didn’t get into International Transfer Pricing (at least in the main report) as I suspect thats where the real info and tax dodging and book cooking goes on.
In fact you are the only person that seems to know what they are talking about. You mention that Oz author sometimes (often?) get more royalties on an overseas edition (would that be higher % or higher $ figure)
As I said, the Rudd Government has made another wise decision.
Those tight-fisted neo-liberals here have shown yet again how indifferent they are to this country and its culture. Most probably hold it in such contempt that they would doubt we even have a culture – certainly not one anyone should care about.
Why don’t you all just buy your own island – call it Ayn Randia – where you can buy all the cheap stuff you want free from “market distortions”? Instead of a parliament you could have a $2 shop.
Sorry FXH if I miss the point – not quite clear what you’re asking.
Not only is there a huge difference between a chain store such as A&R and an independent in terms of say discount off RRP (their margin); there is also large differences between independents.
Chain store on frontlist (new releases) might get 55% on titles. Usually about 50% I believe for backlist; the supermarket chains get a bit more(book retailers would sooner pluck out their eyes than tell anyone what discount they get apparently). Large independents are usually on 42-45% – particularly if they belong to a buying group such as Leading Edge where I think they get bigger discounts again on selected titles. Wee tiny stand alone independents might get anything from 20% to 35% off RRP – discount is determined by volume. More you buy, the more discount you get. Education publishing is however lower – often 25% – 33%.
Recommended retail price is that – a recommended price, but for the most part, most booksellers stick to it to ensure margins. I’ve been told that bookselling has the second lowest margin in retailing; only CDs and DVDs are lower. Unlike the US & UK, Aust booksellers do not pay for freight on books supplied by the majors.
Something else often forgotten is that any seller sets the price to that which the market will bear. Until the rise of online bookselling, it was tedious and expensive to buy from overseas. Given that Australians are the highest per capita consumers of books, the pricing structures were viable as far as the seller was concerned. Which is also why presumably the PC report’s methodology re prices as laid out in Appendix D compared bestsellers between the UK, US & Aust to determine price differentials – these are the premium goods in the marketplace in terms of demand.
Australian authors generally receive 10% royalties on books published in Australia, though with some publishers this will decrease as a book ages. Not quite sure what the standard is for ebooks – looks like the US rate is going to settle at 20% but here? Still a marginal area (and access to ebooks for consumers is pretty shambolic, particularly in retail settings).
In the US, there is usually variation between hardback and paperback royalty rates; hardbacks are usually 10% and slide upward if sales reach certain figures (usually best seller level). Paperbacks vary between 6-10%. However, I don’t know anyone publishing in the States as Aust authors receiving under 12%. I suspect this is because they were already established authors here and had greater bargaining power? And a damned good agent. Don’t under-estimate that.
With royalties, more and more publishers are shifting to a percentage of nett sales to the publisher, not a percentage of the retail price. Given the huge range in discounts retailers can receive from 20% to 55%, it pleases the accountants. Remainders, the Trojan horse of doom as far as authors were concerned re the PC report, do not pay royalties to authors. Anywhere. But some authors have anti-dumping clauses in their contracts – the remainders cannot be sold into markets where a viable edition is available.
Bernice, re: ebooks, you’re right, it’s a similar percentage. Generally this is very bad news for writers though.
Amazon – who sell the vast majority of ebooks (still a tiny portion of the market), frequently cap their ebook prices at $9.99 – roughly the same price as a “mass market” paperback. The catch is it’s a new release that’s typically in hardcover, where – as you point out – authors get much more for royalties, often because of both net cost, and percentage.
Worse (from an author’s perspective), Amazon is using their market power to effectively erase import restrictions, so they sell US content (ebooks) on Kindles in the UK, Aus, etc. The real kicker is that they don’t cap the price in those countries. Who pockets the difference? You guessed it: Amazon.
The only reason we haven’t heard more of an outcry from authors about this is because ebooks – riddled with DRM, on shitty & expensive readers with poor distribution networks are currently an infinitesimal part of the market – most of the time they’re not even making the money spent on ‘digisiting’ the copy.
But if this changes, it will alter publishing and its networks in a truly unrivalled way. The mp3 conversion of the music industry will look very tame in comparison. Of course, this is assuming no real competitors to Amazon emerge (publishers themselves, eg), and Amazon doesn’t fall afoul of any anti-competition laws.
Bernice thanks _ I wasn’t really requesting you to give a well thought through tutorial – although I ,and many others, do appreciate it.
I’ve read a lot about this over the years and I can say with some authority that your various clear and patient explanations untainted by self indulgence, on a variety of blogs are the best by a long shot.
Better than PC, ACCC, assorted lobbyists, almost all Australian authors and most publishers, the AFR and the dailies. Even trumping parliamentary library reports. You should gather it all together on a web site. Bloody brilliant.
Thanks from all of us.
I meant to add before it submitted:
I reckon the 10% to authors is a bit lean. I’d be happy to pay a further 10% surcharge that was guaranteed to go to Oz authors on prices up to say $40 declining to 5% over $50 or something and reducing when sales are over 20,000 or something.
The PC may not have talked about international tax transfer pricing, but they did point out that more than 60% of the value of the import restrictions goes to overseas authors and publishers, rather than to Australian writers.
This must be one of the most inefficient industry/cultural support schemes yet devised, particularly when the restrictions don’t even target books of cultural merit.
It means that local consumers are paying higher prices to support Dan Brown novels! Brilliant.
Patrickg #175 – not sure that I agree with you about the manner in which Amazon is selling in ebooks into the Aust market, bypassing territorial rights.
With the new International Kindle and its wireless download (can anyone comment on how well that works?) yes Australian consumers can download ebooks. However the titles that are available HAVE to have clear instructions from the originating publisher that yes they do hold territorial rights for ebooks to the Aust market (and by extension, contractual arrangements with the author(s) allowing the dissemination of their IP in the digitised format). It is the legal responsibility of the originating publisher to ensure that the information they provide to Amazon is correct.
In fact, ebooks offer publishers the opportunity to once again have adequate control over territorial rights. As it is internet based, each user comes with a handy ISP which immediately identifies their geographic location. Which can then be matched to the stated territorial rights for the particular ebook they are requesting. For books now in the public domain, this does not apply. Which is why Amazon had that god-awful stuffup with Orwell’s 1984. A ‘publisher’ had merrily told Amazon they had held copyright for an ebook edition in the US market. They didn’t (Orwell’s copyright is fiercely defended by his son, Richard Blair) – though you can download it from Project Gutenberg Australia because in Australia, Orwell is in the public domain. An American ISP would prevent download of that.
So Bernice, I didn’t say what I meant there. See here for a better explication of what I was trying to say.
A useful role for the PC would be to review the assistance in the CPRS for EITEs, electricity generators, and owners for gassy coal mines.
Agreed Peter. The approach taken here in relation to PIRs and there in relation to the CPRS suggest a very weak government unwilling to upset anyone, which is odd given the ALP’s utterly dominant electoral position.
BBB
That is quite easy to get around if you want to, especially for small files like ebooks where you don’t need a lot of bandwidth (just bounce off a server in the country you want to pretend to be in). From what I’ve seen in practice for things like audio books they use your postal address for credit card details to decide which country you reside in. But the bigger worry of ebooks for publishers is that DRM doesn’t work and if they don’t make it easier to buy them than it is to just torrent them for free, then people will do the latter.
Apparently most ebook resellers are using c/c details; however one of the fellows from Stanza spent some time in a presentation venting his frustration at resellers not utilising ISPs as geographical identification. I gather he believes most people are less likely to organise access to a ghost server than find a way around c/c details.
Adobe have just announced big expansion plans re ebooks – presumably further development of ADEPT, and as ePUB is now emerging as the mobile device friendly file format it will be ‘interesting’ to see how their DRM processes evolve. Which also makes Amazon’s use of a modified proprietary mobi file format look more like a grand case of inbuilt obsolescence.
Filtering by IP address can be quite error prone though. There have been lots of smaller sets of addresses (class C’s) issued originally in one country but now used quite legally in another country.
I’m quite confident that pretty much any DRM scheme they come up with will fail. Though I do only buy ebooks in formats that I know are easy to break (thanks Microsoft!) – I want to make sure that I can transfer them to new devices in the future and not have to rebuy them in a few years time. Book publishers should look to the experience of the music and movie industries to see what works (many people will buy if its easy enough) and what doesn’t (DRM). Baen Books (http://baen.com) are an example of a publisher (sci-fi/fantasy) that sell their ebooks with no drm at all.
A wee bit more fuel for the fire, from Clay Shirky, academic & commentator:
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/11/local-bookstores-social-hubs-and-mutualization/
I buy all my books through book depository. In the last few months, my wife has told ALL of her friends about book depository, several have thanked her, and none of them buy books locally anymore.
The PIRs will be reversed as soon as Rudd and Co. realise that an ever increasing percentage of bookbuyers buy their books from overseas, and it’s destroying Australian book retailing. This is simply a matter of time.
Finally, I couldn’t care less if the useless elitist Australian publish industry shrivels up and dies. Actually, I could care… it would be GOOD, based on their current rent-seeking behaviour. In the meantime, I’ll buy every single book from overseas, and save about 50% on each.
I’ll happily use fishpond. At least I can get aussie books from there, it delivers pretty fast and has got great prices. Sort of over Amazon, and booktopia are fing useless. Anyone use seekbooks? Haven’t tried.