Comments on: PC goes all the way: Get rid of book restrictions

By: alison croggon

alison croggon — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:19:54 +0000

The Productivity Commission itself admits that there is no guarantee that books will be cheaper. It simply assumes that they will be. No doubt some books will be cheaper, but if the reason that Australian books are (arguably) more expensive than UK and US editions isn’t because of PIRs, but for other reasons, then it’s not going to make a lot of difference to locally published books. Except, of course, that there will be fewer of them. There is no mechanism in place to ensure that any savings on cost price would be passed on to consumers - and Dymocks, which notoriously has offered books at higher prices than the RRP, doesn’t exactly have a great record in this regard.

By: deccles

deccles — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:50:45 +0000

Only people who buy books from Coles, B igW and Dymmocks may benefit. Coles, BigW and Dymmocks will benefit as their margin on books will increase. There will be less Australian books published so everyone loses. It’s a disgrace that Bob Carr’s article in the Australian does not disclose he’s on the board of Dymmocks.

By: JamesK

JamesK — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:53:25 +0000

“I can’t see who else would benefit if these suggestions went through.”

What about the general public who buy books?

By: alison croggon

alison croggon — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:00:22 +0000

I just read the report. The whole tone of it is contemptuous towards the publishing industry in general and literature in particular. There seems to be a faint sense of outrage that writers should think they can make a living from their own intellectual property. And there’s a punitive whiff in their suggestion that the success of the publishing industry was effectively stealing money and skills from other parts of the Australian economy. Wtf? Isn’t this about competitiveness?

One question puzzles me greatly, and the Productivity Commission at no point explores it (except with a small gesture that explains nothing). Territorial Copyright is a right in all English speaking countries (aside from New Zealand). It is therefore operative in the US and the UK, the major markets where these (highly disputed) comparisons of book prices were made. If PIR does exert such “upward pressure”, why are these other territories such paragons of cheapness? Surely there must be other factors at work than PIRs if books here are more expensive than in the UK and the US? (One can think of several things - GST, increased freight costs due to larger distances between cities, different labour costs, etc etc). Why did the commission just assume it was PIRs? It reads like they made their mind up before they even began the study.

More surreally, why is the PC suggesting that literature is better supported by the government than the so-called free market? Weren’t we trying to make the creative industries more sustainable, not less?

Anyway, the big end of town - Dymocks, Woolworths etc - won their victory. The other big winners will be international publishers, who now have a whole new market to exploit, while their markets remain nicely protected from us. I can’t see who else would benefit if these suggestions went through.