Lili Wilkinson

RECOMMENDATION 1
The Government should repeal Australia’s Parallel Import Restrictions (PIRs)
for books. The repeal should take effect three years after the date that it is
announced.

RECOMMENDATION 2
The Government should, as soon as possible, review the current subsidies aimed
at encouraging Australian writing and publishing, with a view to better targeting
of cultural externalities. Any revised arrangements should be put in place before
the repeal of the PIRs takes effect.

What’s a cultural externality, I hear you ask? Well. Let’s see.

The consumption of culturally valuable books, and the ideas they contain, can help diffuse social norms. Where more people come to understand the unwritten rules of a society, their actions become more predictable or ‘trustable’ to others, facilitating social and economic exchanges… More generally, the reading of books of cultural value may help individuals to feel more connected to, and to be more productive within, particular social groups or the wider society, to the benefit of all.

…the ideas embodied in some books have had far reaching impacts. Most obviously, the core ideas that were embodied in books such as The New Testament, The Wealth of Nations, Mein Kampf and The Female Eunuch have had major impacts on how societies operate.

…another way that Australian books could generate external benefits is if they make Australia a more ‘marketable’ identity to the eyes of foreigners.

So basically, the only books that should be supported in Australia are a) “culturally valuable” books that make us better people (in a creepy Orwellian-sounding way) and b) books that Americans will want to read.

Here’s a couple of other choice excerpts:

It should be noted that while books are an important source of such educational benefits, they can also arise, for example, from (educational) television programming and, increasingly, from the internet.

and

In the Commission’s view, linking the amount of support to sales will generally be desirable.

To summarise: FAIL.

(you can read the full report here)

For those of you who didn’t see last night’s Lateline debate between Garth Nix and Dymocks CEO Don Grover on the proposed lifting of Australian territorial copyright, here are the salient points.

Firstly – what’s territorial copyright? What are parallel import restrictions and why do we have them?

Basically, there’s a law in Australia where, if a book is published in Australia within 30 days of it being published overseas, an Australian bookseller cannot import and sell the international edition. Now there’s a proposal to remove that restriction. The people in favour of getting rid of it say that it will make books cheaper – we all know that books are cheaper in America, we can see so on Amazon.

But why are books cheaper over there? Two main reasons. The first is that the US is a much bigger pond than Australia. There’s more people to buy books, therefore publishers can print more, at a lower cost. The second is that, because of the big pond, most books in the US come out first in hardcover (which is expensive), and then later in a very cheap mass-market edition, printed on very low-quality paper with inferior binding.

In Australia, we generally don’t print in hardcover, because there aren’t enough people to buy the books to make it financially viable. But that means our first edition paperbacks are pretty high-quality – usually a B or C format, and on good quality paper and embellished covers.

So why not remove this territorial copyright? What purpose does it serve? A few, actually. Firstly, both the US and the UK have full territorial copyright – they don’t even have the 30-day rule. They fully protect their publishing industry and authors against imports from other countries. The only country, in fact, to remove its territorial copyright is New Zealand, a country with almost no local publishing to start with. And there is no evidence that it has resulted in cheaper books.

But here’s the main reason. If it is cheaper to buy an overseas edition of an Australian book, chances are the consumer will do it. Which means that the Australian publisher doesn’t get the money, and the author gets a much lower royalty. With less money flowing through Australian publishers, they become unable to support the smaller books, the niche books. The books that might not sell a squillion copies but are still worthy of publication. Australian authors will turn to the US and UK markets for publication, instead of publishing locally first. In order to appeal to overseas markets, the Australian-ness of their stories will be stripped away.

Dymocks CEO Don Grover has this to say: “I don’t think the Australian consumer cares (about buying Australian products), they care about price”. He obviously has a lot of respect for his customers.

And let’s talk about booksellers for a moment. Customers are already shopping in an international market – you can order any book you like from the US or the UK as an individual, online or through your local bookshop. Australian booksellers are already having to compete with Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk – so why shouldn’t they be allowed to import cheaper books?

Because if we did lift the restrictions, how long do you think it would be before an Amazon.com.au sprang up? With a US-owned Amazon warehouse in Australia, how many Australian booksellers would be able to compete with the scale of Amazon, without the overseas shipping costs? Not Dymocks, that’s for sure.

Ex-Premier Bob Carr is a member of the Coalition for Cheaper Books (along with such august establishments as Coles, KMart, Big W and Dymocks). He says that our current comparatively high book prices are resulting in kids who don’t read*. He says that the average book price is $35, which is driving consumers away from buying books for their children. This is a very irritating non-sequitur. Because sure, if you average out all the books in the bookshop, including coffee-table books and cookbooks, the average price is $35. But go into the children’s and young adult section of a bookshop, and you will be unlikely to find many books that cost over $20.

My next book Pink, is set in Melbourne. It mentions Flinders Street and trams and the GPO shopping centre and many other places. When it gets published in the US, it won’t be set in Melbourne anymore. The footpaths will be sidewalks. The Mums will be Moms. Maths class will be math class, and Ava’s high school will no longer be named The Billy Hughes School for Academic Excellence, after an ex-Prime Minister. And that’s fine, for my US readers. I understand why those changes need to be made. But for Australians to have to read the de-Australianed version because it’s cheaper? It’s just wrong.

(this post is a modified version of my submission to the ACCC)

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*Will somebody think of the children! Let them have cheap books! Mandatory internet filters will make them big and strong and put a rose in every cheek… Or is that Vegemite?