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Caucus debate misses the point, chapter and verse, on books
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You may wonder why the most disciplined and controlled Labor Caucus in history has chosen book imports for its first halfway-significant rebellion, two years into government. Major industrial relations reforms that infuriated the union movement have come and gone. “Tough but humane” has become the government’s motto on refugees without complaint. The CPRS has been waved through. But parallel import restrictions? That’s the line in the sand, apparently. Concerns have been brewing for some time. In the weeks after the Productivity Commission handed down its report earlier this year, there was chatter that responsible minister Craig Emerson was not talking to Australian publishers and that he was too influenced by “the big retailers”. As part of the deal to head off the issue at Tuesday’s Caucus meeting, Emerson promised more consultation with Caucus and “stakeholders”, meaning the publishers. Resistance to the removal of the decades-old ban on imports has got momentum because it combines progressives and the industrial Left. The AMWU has been fighting the PC proposals from the outset and successfully moved a motion at the ALP National Conference establishing a working group to “consider” the PC Report. The AMWU’s print secretary, Lorraine Cassin, worked on the group with Bendigo MP Steve Gibbons, who initiated this week’s Caucus motion to defeat the PC reforms. Cassin led a delegation on the issue to Canberra last month. The maintenance of the existing bans also draws support from cultural protectionists across the party, who buy local industry arguments that greater foreign competition will erode Australian culture. This is despite evidence from the Productivity Commission that as a protectionist measure, parallel import restrictions are a gross failure, because the majority of the financial benefit flows offshore to foreign authors and publishers. This debate has been going on since the early 1990s and it is still conducted like it is the early 1990s, when ordering books from overseas was the sole province of retailers. The internet has put foreign competition in book sales a click away. With a strong Australian dollar, it is far cheaper and easier to order books online from Amazon than it is to go to a retail outlet. And unlike the early days of Amazon, they only take a few days to arrive, rather than weeks and months. From that point of view, the entire debate about parallel import restrictions looks quaint and irrelevant, unless you confine your book-buying strictly to Australian subjects. It will become more irrelevant as online delivery of books becomes established and accepted. I have no interest in Kindles or any other form of electronic reader. I like to own books. I like building a library. I buy hardbacks so my library will last. I have faint hopes that my children will keep and expand my library and hand it on to their children, in the unlikely event that they ever tear themselves away from Xbox and World of Warcraft. But I suspect in 10 years’ time, or a little longer, I will sound just like those audiophile nerds who still talk of the “warmer sound” of vinyl recordings. As unlikely as it seems, I don’t see why electronic delivery of books won’t do to the book industry what downloading did to the music industry, although at least publishers have managed to establish a model for legal, profitable online distribution. In that they differ from the recording industry, which appears to believe suing everyone will protect them from the future. But either way, the future for book retailers does not look especially bright. The most appropriate role for government in an industry on the cusp of such a major change is not to meddle or regulate, but step aside and let consumers take the lead. The debate about parallel import restrictions is in fact one about symptoms, not causes. Despite being, according to authors and the publishing industry, a bunch of crazed, child-eating, goose-stepping econo-Nazis, the PC understood this and that’s why it recommended that, in addition to removing the restrictions, the government review taxpayer support for what it termed the “cultural externalities” of the restrictions. One of the more fascinating parts of the PC’s final report was its discussion of its clearly preferred approach of more directly subsidising Australian works. This is the issue that should engage cultural protectionists, not the parallel import restrictions themselves. Direct subsidies either to authors or publishers, aimed at encouraging Australian works, would be more efficient, transparent and effective than the current system of indirectly subsidising them from consumers via higher prices. But authors reacted against that proposal, demeaning direct support as “handouts”, claiming to prefer, in Tim Winton’s words, “getting fair recompense for our labour in a marketplace”. There’s no fair recompense at all, of course, because consumers are paying too much. Authors just prefer that their subsidies be hidden, rather than open. As the PC correctly noted, “it is a choice between explicit taxpayer support for the cultural externalities associated with Australian publishing or a private, implicit tax on book consumers, underpinned by the PIRs. That choice should be dictated by the intrinsic advantage and disadvantages of the two forms of support.” Authors and publishers can vilify the PC all they like, but that perfectly sums up the debate. For people who believe in support for Australian culture, the issue must be how effectively and transparently that support is provided, particularly given the publishing industry is on the cusp of major change driven by online delivery. That’s why the Caucus debate about the restrictions utterly misses the point. |
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28 Comments
Yes!
Parallel import restrictions for books is an attempt to legislate against the future. These restrictions are doomed to fail in the face of Amazon imports, and actually stop online competitors of Amazon in Australia from starting up.
In 3 to 5 years time, authors will have missed the window of being able to set up an authorised online distribution channel that punters are willing to pay for, and most will buy from Amazon (or an equivalent, possibly Apple) or just pirate e-books.
Think it won;t happen to books? It has happened to DVDs (the video stores are closing down), and is happening to music (remember when there mas a music store in the Bourke Street Mall?).
Territorial restrictions are a nuisance, but not insurmountable, you just set up an address in the US (google usa2me) set up a debit card that uses that address, and you’re set! US based companies that don’t ship to Australia because of licensing issues now will.
@Meski, yes but why would you do that when you can just buy from Amazon? The parallel import laws stop you from buying books overseas, bringing them to Australia, and reselling them. They don’t stop you from buying direct from a US company.
So basically this is stopping people creating an Australian version of Amazon books that can import overseas content. So publishers can charge different prices for books that are actually manufactured and printed in each country.
It’s like DVD region codes. Ultimately doomed to failure, while increasing prices in the short term and encouraging readers to by overseas rather than in Australia.
Other than that I’m all for it.
Angus, you’re confusing two quite different things: *individuals* can order any printed book they like from anywhere in the world, and Australian bookshops can place single orders on behalf of customers for any printed book they like from anywhere in the world. What Australian bookshops can’t do under the current legislation is order and stock on their shelves overseas editions of books where a local publisher holds rights.
When it comes to e-books, however, online *retailers* both in Australia and overseas are enforcing geographic restrictions and are refusing to sell e-books to Australian customers unless there is an Australian version of the ebook (even if it’s a book by an overseas author). So, with the newly released Amazon Kindle, Australian customers can legitimately buy ebooks by Stieg Larsson but not by Dan Brown; they can buy Stephenie Meyer but not Jodi Picoult. And thus far, you cannot buy a Kindle ebook of anything by Tim Winton, Peter Carey, Peter Temple, Christos Tsiolkas or most other well-known Australian authors. But as Meski intimates, if you want to trick Amazon into thinking you’re an American, you can buy the same range of Kindle books as our US cousins.
oh, that was weird, my email address is somehow recognised by Crikey under the name of my predecessor. Andrew Wilkins did not write that last comment, Tim Coronel did. (sorry, Andrew!)
@Tim, yes it’s an interesting distinction. With physical books, we have the parallel importing laws. But even if these laws are revoked, when you “buy” an e-book, you merely “buy” a licence to read the content (usually available at different prices in different countries).
It’s the publishers who are enforcing the geographic licence restrictions. But I’m not so worried about that. If the ebook publishers don’t see the light, people will just download pirated copies. The only reason why movie studios are not yet in the same dire straights as music distributors is that broadband (for the larger files required for video) is not yet everywhere. It will be everywhere soon. E-book files, on the other hand, are much smaller even than sound files.
What I would like to see is an Amazon (for physical books) competitor in Australia. This won’t happen under the current parallel importation laws, and (if the laws are not revoked soon), everyone (which I define here as my mum) will learn to buy from Amazon and never go back.
The window is closing.
@Angus Estimates are already that up to 10% of Australian book sales are going to Amazon, Book Depository and other O/S based online stores. Of course, there are already quite a number of online bookshops operating in Australia, both independent ones such as Seekbooks, Booktopia, Boomerang, etc, as well as sites for our bricks-and-mortar chains. Interestingly, the long-established Australian bookselling chain that shares part of its name with you has recently revamped its website and is currently sourcing the great majority of its books from UK and US suppliers (as they’re in a bit of a Mexican standoff with local publishers … but we won’t go into that), and is confident that this is legit as it believes online orders are by definition ‘single customer orders’. So, in effect, this Australian online bookseller is already acting in the way that ‘an Australian Amazon’ would. However, it’s online prices are usually much *higher* than many of its competitors, both online and bricks-and-mortar. Go figure. Also Fishpond operates as a .com.au but is actually an NZ-based company, so is getting up the nose of Australian booksellers by sourcing in an open market and not paying GST.
@Tim. Thanks for that information. Especially the 10% number. Very interesting. It seems that the battle is already almost lost. And these online guys are obviously minnows or expensive incumbents.
What’s funny (in a sad way) is that authors should be fighting to get rid of these laws, but they are instead fighting to keep them. If we Australians buy all our books from Amazon, do the authors think that it’s likely that Australians will buy more, or fewer, Australian books?
@angus currently, the only Australian-authored books you’ll find on Amazons are ones where an Australian originating publisher has sold US rights. Very few Australian publishers list their own books on Amazon as they want to sell overseas rights (and they’re understandably wary of the huge discounts Amazon demands and the vast market power it wields). The great fear is that publishing in Australia is a very marginal business as it is and anything that imperils the cash-flow of Australian publishers (i.e: any loss of the revenue they get from selling local editions of OS books) will lead to far fewer Australian books being published in the first place. So, ‘If we Australians buy all our books from Amazon’ then Australian authors are correct to be very concerned that we will be buying far fewer Australian books.
by the way, something of an aside, but it’s very important for non-publishing people to understand that while there are global publishing companies, there are very few global books. Publishing is a keenly territorial business and there is no automatic correlation as things stand that a book that is published by, say Penguin in the UK will also be published by Penguin in the US, Australia, Canada or NZ. An author’s agent will do all they can to sell rights territory by territory to the publisher they feel will best represent that book in that market. So, a book may be first published by Penguin in Australia, but rights will be sold to say Canongate or Faber in the UK, Little Brown or Knopf in the US and perhaps to Random House Canada.
@Tim, but isn’t that quibbling? You can still buy these Australian books on Amazon (i.e. civilians like me don’t care who the publisher is, we just go to Amazon)? From the Borders top 10 bestsellers today:
Brightest Star In The Sky by Marian Keyes
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
New Moon by Mark Cotta Vaz and Mark Cotta Vaz
Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
Breath by Tim Winton
Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
An Echo In The Bone by Diana Gabaldon
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Two Australian authors (better than I expected). Zusak and Winton. Both available on Amazon?
but … Winton and Zusak will only make 1/2 royalty on sales of that US edition back to an Australian customer (who will be freighting a bunch of paper half way around the world on a plane). The US editions of Australian books are often re-edited to ‘de-Australianise’ them, so it’s not ‘the same book’. And most figures from Australian bookshops put the sale of Australian-authored books at 40% or more, so 2 out of 10 (earning half, and more than likely sold at a discount off RRP) isn’t anywhere near equivalent to the local scene. The Australian book industry may well need more competition, but suggesting we can just replace the local trade with individual imports from Amazon doesn’t cut it.
Let’s hope a lot of MPs read this lucid and compelling piece. Since that economic illiterate Gough Whitlam got hold of roughly correct ideas about tariffs (and made a colossal political blunder) the ALP, at least outside its NSW union support, has become pretty intelligent on economic matters - again excepting matters the unions can stuff up. Hayden, Keating, Walsh, Emerson, perhaps Tanner, et al. give reason for optimism. So it is a shame to read of this regression.
Still, the Coalition still has much of its economic virtue attached to ideology rather than nuanced analytical intelligence or deep understanding, so, how do you assess the Coalition’s capacity to make sense of this issue?
I’m not an industry insider, so I can only speak from my own experience as a reader. I read mostly romance books, and I’ve met readers who have rooms filled with books, so as a market segment we buy a lot of books. Many of these books are foreign imports, but we still buy them from independent bookshops despite Amazon and The Book Depository (free shipping!). Why? Well, we love to browse through new books. We love to talk about them and build relationships based on the mutual love of reading. Bookshops like Dymocks aren’t losing readers because of online shops, but because they don’t provide the same level of service that we expect from a non-discount shop. The other day I learned that there’s a Dymocks store on Collins St with a staff member dedicated to nurturing the romance shelves and their sales of romance have spiked. My local independent store which specialises in genre fiction told me their sales have actually increased despite the fact that they can’t compete with online stores on price.
My personal opinion is that the PIR debate isn’t about book prices as many of its detractors would have me believe. It’s about not disadvantaging local authors in the face of overseas import restrictions. As a consumer, PIR has zero effect on my ability to buy books at the cheapest possible price.
Now, we can argue about whether or not the current business model for publishing and the way rights are sold and distributed are sustainable, but that’s a different discussion. Also, my understanding is that PIR doesn’t apply to digital books and that their territorial protections are covered by some other restrictions relating to digital copyright.
Excellent piece, one that hints at the real stoush that underlies this contrived debate: the matter of artistic subsidy, and how it is best delivered. This ties in rather well with the Rundle and Fenely pieces on Keating and Tozer. PIR’s are really a sophisticated framework of patronage, underpinned by the public but controlled by a set of self-appointed cultural commissars. That this nominally non-public sector branch - I am thinking the Louise Adlers, Henry Rosenblooms, Michael Heywards of local publishing - are energetic, innovative, visionary and extremely competent (and, as should go without saying, deeply committed to Australian literature) - does not compensate for the fact that they are a relatively tiny cross-section of the Australian cultural mix (as are the authors who directly benefit from PIR’s), whose work (and the cultural perspectives it reflects) are effectively being subsidised to a disproportionate, and less-than-accountable, degree than should be the case with public monies. When you get a bloke like Heyward wandering around trumpeting his ‘big end of town’ credentials in this debate on top of that - despite Text getting ten grand in grants to fly to Frankfurt FY before last - you start to get a bit fed up with that sector’s self-annointed status as cultural pillars AND big swinging d*cks, all in one.
I am a strong supporter of direct subsidy, preferrably linked to tangible output in some way (NOT sales, but work, output, product, creation). So, it would seem - if the PIR lobby wasn’t too knee-jerk anti-suit to realise it - is the PC. (Talk about a turn-up: writers whining about the possiblity of more public grants!!) Because the benefits of PIR’s are hazy in provenance (especially when it comes to the tiny of number of Australian writers who actually DO benefit), and disguised in the clothing and language of free marketry, they are far more insidious in skewing the Arts&Cult mix in this country than open, direct and accountable subsidy delivered by the peer-assessment/review Arts Council. For all the whining it is easy to do about the AC, in fact, it has a pretty handy record of careful, conscientious, fertile and scrupulously fair delivery of limited taxpayer funds. Plenty of mainstream stuff gets funded, but a pretty good whack of edgy - even doomed-to-remain-fringe - chancers, too. It’s easy to diss the official, direct subsidy and grants system as over-bureacratised, stuffy, ‘safe’ and slow, but - frankly - I will take it, any day, over the self-aggrandizing, unaccountable and culturally-narcissistic sheep in wolf’s clothing of the PIR push, kind of a cultural equivalent of the PPP crew, parading their ‘market’ cred and mechanisms about the Arts&Letters sector like cultural Gordon Geckos, all the while trousering all kinds of hidden and quasi-public subsidy on the sly to make the ‘stand-alone viabilility’ talk hold together. For all the supposed ‘trickle down’ effect on Australian writing of PIR’s, my hunch is that most of the claimed ‘on-flow’ that allegedly goes onwards to writers not directly suckling on the PIR teat - ie those small number with o/s deals and for whom higher local retail prices for their books is a noticeable plus - actually ends up funding the grotesquely-obese, over-hyped ‘Australian publishing industry’ as a ‘show’ of and for itself, with all the latter-day ‘event’ bells, whistles and schlepping that this implies. Take a close look at the woefully-underdone state of the Miles Franklin shortlist year - lousy, lousy editing, almost no evidence at all of any particular great investment.
This, for big marquee names like Winton, Tsiolkas, Nowra, from supposed ‘committed’ Oz indy’s like Allen & Unwin. PIR’s, at heart, aren’t funding good local writing, certainly not good new writing. They’re funding local publisher empire-building, if anything.
Amazon gets an almighty plug in this article and discussion so I’ll put in a plug for a better alternative. The Book Depository has discounted prices, FREE DELIVERY and books arrive within a week.
@Tim “who will be freighting a bunch of paper half way around the world on a plane” - no that’s not what I’m wanting to do, I simply want to buy an ebook from a US site and not have geographical limitations get in my face. Although I’m increasingly finding I need to buy technical dead tree books from Amazon because I cant find a local source. Examples:
Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering
Exploiting Online Games: Cheating Massively Distributed Systems
The Art of Software Security Testing: Identifying Software Security Flaws
Rootkits: Subverting the Windows Kernel
Secure Programming with Static Analysis
Fuzzing: Brute Force Vulnerability Discovery
The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Preventing Software Vulnerabilities
While we (most of us) are being economic rationalists let’s not forget that there is still major reform of Copyright to be effected. Just consider this: invent a life-saving drug and you get 20 year monopoly protection. Write a popular romance and your great-grandchildren, or more likely a corporation that had bought the copyright from your estate, will have monopoly protection for your lifetime plus 70 years (90 in the USA). It was 50 years until the Free Trade Agreement with the US.
Think of an author you know (or artist or composer or musician) and try and think of one whose ego, or introversion, wouldn’t elicit the book, painting, concerto or whatever even if only 25 years of monopoly was guaranteed. Now the idiot Garrett has gone for unalienable pensions for artists great-grandchildren by way of a re-sale rights scheme which can easily be circumvented. But let’s try and win these peripheral battles while waiting on politicians to do something about the hard cases of gambling, junk food and real estate development where big party donors are involved.
@Julius: If you invent a drug, you’re going to be patenting it, which is quite different to copyright. That doesn’t make the extensions that happen with copyright right, but its an apples and oranges argument.
@Meski
To say it is an apples and oranges argument doesn’t meet my point. One answer to that assertion is that it is a distinction without a difference since in both cases the question is how to protect intellectual property just enough to encourage inventiveness and creativity but not so much as to give away valuable legal protection by the state for nothing or too little.
But tell me, how does the fact that a patent has to be sought and demonstrated to be useful and novel whereas copyright is just handed to everyone who pours out pain or words or musical notes without too much plagiarism make the two cases “quite different”.
If I have engaged your attention on this I trust you will propagate the need for copyright reform. (I suspect copyright first benefited relative to patents for inventions because the senior members of families in the Lords and Commons wanted to make sure their younger siblings, children, nephews, nieces and cousins weren’t going to be a burden on them and could pick up a bit from royalties if their avocations, or indeed vocations, included a bit of scribbling or painting or composing.)
I’d argue that there is just as much need for reform in the patents area. Google ‘patent squatter’ for some examples. Let’s say there is need for reform for IP generally.
You are probably right about the “just as much need”. The costs associated with patents of all kinds probably add up to a much greater figure when turned into money that anything to do with copyright, even software copyright, and copyright only chips away at the edges of most people’s financial welfare and is undermined by the potential for downloading from some very odd sites in very odd countries. (And my best guess is that the way round Garrett’s misbegotten re-sale rights scheme will be a contest between a sale here of an option to purchase the artwork in Hong Kong and the sale taking place in New Zealand - or maybe online via the Cook Islands).
I would prefer to buy my books at a dedicated bookshop although choice is limited in rural Victoria. However, a new release hard cover book can cost $55 at my local book city. I can get the same thing from Amazon for about $35 including postage. If I wait and place a multi-book order, the postage price per item becomes very reasonable. Just yesterday I placed an order at Amazon for 10 items, a mixture of hard backs, paper backs and graphic novels. The total price was $A188 inc freight. Experience would suggest that I’d have to go to at least three shops in Australia (two chain stores and a specialist comic book shop) to buy these off the shelf and that would have cost $50 to $100 more and taken significant time. None of these books are by Australian authors, but why would I shop in Australia when books are so expensive.
As an alternative to Amazon (which I use mostly), fishpond.com.au do have a “match Amazon price” policy. However, they will not (and this is the bit that I dislike) match an order book-by-book-including-frieght. If you place an order and prove that Amazon have better prices, they will give you the credit for the difference. I gave them the option to simply match the price of a multi-book order and they choose not to. This may suit some readers.
For Australian authors, why not consider self-publishing electronic versions. Instead of self-publishing, consider a cooperative of like-minded authors. Set your own rules for distribution, set up a online store with password protected content and you can receive whatever price you set. I imagine an author might get $3 per book in royalties but you could charge $10 if you published yourself. Electronic books are probably the future anyway.
Absolutely right Bernard - great article. I missed it on the day it was posted here, but I’m catching up on the article and all the interesting comments now.
If anyone’s interested in reading a long essay of mine in support of the removal of PIR’s I’ve posted it here. (Sorry for all the link-wh*ring, btw, Crikey. Still, small mercy that I didn’t just cut-n-paste the lot here, what?!)
I love your article Jack. I can’t believe your novels would be unpublishable.
Ta Jillian, you’re very kind. I’ve got a way to yet, though.
Ha, I wish.
In fact I meant: ‘I’ve got a way to GO, yet.’
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