In the Sydney Morning Herald, Michael Wilding has written an article supporting the Productivity Commission's findings that parallel importation restrictions on books sold in Australia should be abolished: Australians deserve access to cheaper books
Quote:
Books are expensive in Australia. They have been for decades. According to the Productivity Commission, book are currently 27 per cent more expensive than in the US and 13 per cent more expensive than in Britain. The same books in the same language.
The Productivity Commission has recommended that traditional copyright restrictions should be lifted, and retailers allowed to import these cheaper books directly from overseas.
If books were cheaper, we could afford to buy them more often. We would read more. It sounds like an excellent idea. But there has been an extraordinary amount of opposition to this proposal. The reading public would benefit enormously, so who would be disadvantaged?
Something that Wilding doesn't mention, but I suspect he is probably aware, is that Australian publishing is a sheltered workshop, only open to writers with the correct connections and political leanings, and arts grants and rigged literary prizes form the greater portion of their income rather than direct book sales. For these people, it is vitally important to maintain the status quo where they can remain big fish in a very small pond, and high book prices and an uncompetitive market in which outsiders will drown help to facilitate this.
Things don't have to be this way, in the past Australia hit far above its literary weight, with A.D. Hope and Les Murray considered two of the world's best post-WW2 poets, and it's only since so much help has been made to writers (of the right sort) that literature has comparatively stagnated so much that clowns like Andrew McGahan can win the Miles Franklin award.
No.
This increased cost would keep the riff raff away. Further when these foreign imports will be sold here they are often 'remainders' left over and written off - so there will be no residuals for local authors. The ability to bring in cheaper foreign imports will allow the big chains and even new players like supermarkets to further undercut prices further driving good independent bookstores too the wall. And with local publishers driven out of business, who will local authors submit their work to - not to mention the people employed at them?
Additionally I wouldn't be surprised if the breaking down of Australias territorial copyright laws are in fact the first step of integrating Australia with the crazy copyright laws of the US and Europe - you have previously voiced a strong admiration for our copyrights remaining at 50 years and not being hijacked by major corporations, and voiced immense displeasure with the laws elsewhere.
There is no winner here except craven ideology.
Yes.
Then a better way for local authors to deal with this is in their contracts, not in heavy handed protectionist legislation. Besides, even if the author receives no residuals for the local sales of remaindered books, they still received them for the international publication, albeit at a lower rate. So it is not true that they were paid nothing. Also, that people are still buying and reading their works is ultimately beneficial for them when their next book is published, increasing awareness and readership. People will be far more prepared to take a risk on a book for $5 than $40 (or whatever the hardcover price is these days). Here they fall into the same illogical traps that so distinguish the actions of the RIAA/MPAA.
If this so worries them, here is a better idea: That local publishers and authors start a fund to buy up these remaindered imports, since they are cheap after all, and store them in a warehouse for future orders as the work becomes scarce in the local market. It is a well known fact of literary publishing that books become almost completely unavailable a few years after their first print run if sales did not justify a second print run. I recall reading that Anthony Burgess noted that prior to the film of "A Clockwork Orange", that the novel itself was completely unavailable in England, except through secondhand bookstores.
So more books will be sold, to more readers, if supermarkets think it's a good idea to get in the game, yet authors will be worse off? An author needs a healthy market of more readers to survive, unless you advocate that grants committees and literary prize judges are the proper market rather than readers.
That is another issue entirely, and should not be conflated with parallel import restrictions. I have been consistent in both cases, arguing against protectionism for entrenched players.