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A cautionary tale…
Rudd ducks again: book import slug stays
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So we retain parallel import restrictions on books. Those of us who don’t buy our books online will continue to pay too much, with the bulk of that extra cost going to overseas authors and publishers. There is, after all, something admirable in having a protectionist scheme that mainly protects overseas jobs. In the scheme of things, it doesn’t matter a great deal. There are far worse policy sins to complain about. It’s not a patch, for example, on the amount of money we waste on the local car industry — significantly increased by the government last year — that even with the drop on January 1 still involves a 5% slug on consumers who dare to buy an imported car. And it’s a tiny, tiny fraction of the amount of money we waste on middle-class welfare. The problem is, it’s hard to shake the idea that this government simply won’t take tough decisions, decisions that are good policy but that someone, somewhere, will be upset about. True, some of the cuts to middle-class welfare back in the Budget were sound, and involved some political pain. Taking on Telstra also involves some potential pain, although given the contempt with which that company is held in the community, probably not much. But if it can’t take on some authors, a protected publishing industry and its relevant unions when it should have consumers and big retailers on its side, to end a system that mainly benefits overseas publishers, what chance of it ever taking on serious opposition? On big issues, when it counts — such as on the CPRS — the Rudd government has an unimpressive track record of standing up to vested interests. However, a small consolation for the decision is Craig Emerson’s fascinating press release, which I reckon is, in its own quiet way, the press release of the year. Emerson, of course, lost the battle in Cabinet for reform. The normal result of such defeats is for ministers to grin and bear it, issue a press release saying what a great decision that government has come up with, and move on. Cabinet solidarity and all that. Not Emmo. Instead, his office issued a decidedly truculent effort that in effect said the whole industry was going to be buggered by online purchasing anyway so it didn’t matter whether there were reforms or not.
On the face of it, Emerson is saying that there’s no need for reform because the publishing industry model is under dire threat. Peculiar logic, but exactly mirroring the industry’s own argument. But it gets better. An evidently thoroughly underwhelmed Emerson also says that the industry did itself out of assistance from the government. “The government has decided not to commit to a new spending program for Australian authors and publishers,” the press release says, which obviously implies there was a program to be considered in the first place. The PC advocated just such a program in its recommendations — albeit after a review of current support for local authors, and in preference to the more obscure support program that is currently paid for by book buyers. Evidently Emerson took a support program to Cabinet. It, along with the reforms, is now dead. The press release concludes “the Australian book printing and publishing industries will need to respond to the increasing competition from imports without relying on additional government assistance”. Cop that. In the face of what will become a threat to its very existence, the publishing industry had the chance to get additional support from the government, and successfully argued that it shouldn’t get it. Good work. Guy Rundle adds: My esteemed colleague is certainly right about the iniquities of PIR. In the old days of imperial preference — when Britain retarded Australia’s industrial development in order to maintain it as a cheap agrarian supplier and non-competer — machinery imported from non-empire countries would have to be ritually dismantled and re-assembled at the docks. PIR has the same level of absurdity. Ireland has no PIR or territorial copyright — last time I looked it had a pretty healthy literary culture. However, the pro-deregulation mob has only themselves to blame for the loss, because they never seriously addressed the main problem that PIR abolition would create — remainder imports that would see Australia’s most successful authors gain no royalties from sales of their books. Let’s say Fred(erika) Bloggs publishes a detective novel here. It’s a success and a steady seller. A US publisher takes a punt on it, with a 20,000 US print run. Publishers work on the salmon principle — publish 10 novels, one will make it upstream and pay for the rest that die in the rapids. But that means the publisher then has 19,200 copies of the Decaf Latte Murders on their hands. They sell them down to a remainders broker at a $1 a copy — cheaper than pulping them — and the broker sells them onto bookbarns, for the three-books-for-$10 table. Without PIR, a book chain could buy the US run of the Latte Murders and sell them at $7.95 a pop. Since the book is still a steady seller in Oz, it makes sense. But the author gets no royalties from these sales, and they crowd out the oz edition sales. Since it’s full-time authors who are most likely to have an international edition, the move would be a unique killer of professional authorship. It’s also iniquitous to have an author’s work on a shelf at their local bookshop that is making money for everyone but them. If we believe, as we do, that cultural work should attract a royalty-wage, cross-territory remainder sales are simply theft. The simple answer would be to protect Oz authors specifically. But we can’t do that because the US-Oz free trade agreement prohibits this, and this is the thing that really needs changing. The free trade/hayek/alcan foil hat nuts never acknowledged the real problem of remainders (saying that authors shouldn’t sign up to such contracts is ludicrous — no one offers non-remainder contracts). But most campaigning authors (there were exceptions, such as Shane Maloney, usually authors of some political nous) never made it clear that this was the objection, preferring not to break solidarity with publishers, and willing to give the impression that the Australian public owed it to support their tale of love and anorexia in Northcote. This is a reprieve, not a victory. PIR has 10 years, tops. Time for authors and publishers to advance more positive plans for supporting local cultural production — Ireland’s system of tax breaks for artists might be one place to start. Start they must. |
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45 Comments
Yes.
But Guy, you start by saying “Ireland has no PIR or territorial copyright — last time I looked it had a pretty healthy literary culture”, but then say that “free trade/hayek/alcan foil hat nuts never acknowledged the real problem of remainders (saying that authors shouldn’t sign up to such contracts is ludicrous — no one offers non-remainder contracts)”.
So which one is it? Ireland must have “solved” this problem. Could it possibly be, if PIR was removed, that authors would actually get paid for remainders, or up their fees for non-remaindered books accordingly? Are you seriously suggesting that 100% of books would be remaindered (or a large enough proportion to not make writing worthwile)?
And I would put “Proud to be a free trade/hayek/alcan foil hat nut” on a bumper sticker. If I knew what it meant
Guy is correct - the Australian publishing industry better think itself lucky this time, and get on with looking _seriously_ at what it’s going to do in the future (something that it’s terrible at doing).
Angus,
writers in Ireland are not taxed. Ireland does not have a publishing industry. Irish writers are mostly published in Britain where territorial copyright applies. Guy’s expertise is vast, his turn of phrase entertaining and his evidence always worthy of closer examination.
Given the Productivity Commission’s failure win government support for its dodgy statistics and unsupported claims, perhaps it should conduct an enquiry into itself. Surely it is inconsistent with neo-liberal principles that privately-owned right-wing think-tanks like the Institute of Public Affairs have to compete with a government-funded free market think tank like the Productivity Commission.
We grovelling around in what’s left of the CD industry read this debate with a sense of deja vu. Was our downfall due to import restrictions being lifted? (yes, apparently the same logic for books didn’t apply to CDs). Well no it wasn’t. Did it make CDs cheaper? No it didn’t. Other factors did. The same factors that are about to hit books and movies. You can spend your time rallying against imports and illegal downloads (ah those were the days) or you can work to get a new business model up now. As the canary in the mine, I’d suggest starting to innovate really bloody quickly. Chirp chirp cough.
@Hugo, “Guy’s expertise is vast, his turn of phrase entertaining and his evidence always worthy of closer examination.” Well put!
However, are you (and do you think he) suggesting that 100% of books would be remaindered (or a large enough proportion to not make writing worthwile)?
@Hugo:
” Surely it is inconsistent with neo-liberal principles that privately-owned right-wing think-tanks like the Institute of Public Affairs have to compete with a government-funded free market think tank like the Productivity Commission”
Uh, what? Was this a tongue-in-cheek comment, or were you being funny?
The main problem, as Guy points out, is the US book industry, which is awash with remainders. For mass-market paperbacks, a recent survey found a return rate from booksellers of 47%, most of which would hit the remainder bins. That’s an average across all titles, and the figure would almost certainly be higher for titles originating outside the US, given the well-known insularity of US book buyers.
But without PIR, wouldn’t the oversea’s publishers who bought the rights to the book be able to sell the unsold US versions through Australia directly, without having to sell them as remainders? The US versions would then still return a royalty to the author (though a little bit less than the Aus royalties).
This seems to be a victory for the Australian Publishers, not the authors. (especially as Aus books only make up only a third of all books published in Australia). Free Trade beats protectionism any day of the week.
@Scott, I think that this is a short term solution for Australian publishers until they get (they are already getting) run over by Amazon et. al.
@Jenny, the flodded by remainders line of argument seems to be as follows:
(1) If publishers can ship books anywhere, they can print more books in the US, and then if they don’t sell these books in the US, they can ship the “remainders” to other countries.
(2) Guy says that “no one offers non-remainder contracts”. What he means is that publishers currently do not offer authors royalties for these remainders.
(3) No profit for authors.
It seems to me that if (3) happened, then authors would negotiate their own deals with technical intermediaries. They just won’t work for free. We will see what is already happening in the music industry to some extent - musicians selling directly from their websites, or through a technical intermediary (Apple iTunes) bypassing publishers and managers.
The book equivalent of iTunes for music is Amazon.
Angus
1 - as i hinted the Irish combination of direct grants plus tax breaks would be one way to make up for the problems of local publishing in a post PIR regime. That would include grants to publishers, for publishing Australian books.
2 - you can’t offer royalties on remainders because they are onsold. Publishers pay their royalties according to sales reports from bookshops. Remainders are sold as a job lot to brokers for virtually nothing. Since the publisher is onselling remainders at a loss, royalty payments on assumed sales would deepen the loss.
@guy, Ireland’s ‘rich literary culture’ appears to me to be pretty similar to NZ’s: quite a bit of local publishing with a small, local market (no doubt pretty heavily propped up by gov’t subsidy), with the vast majority of mainstream books coming from outside (the UK for Ireland, Australia for NZ). Australia’s rights-buying culture has been successful in the past 20 years in developing Australia as a publishing country (of overseas-originated books as well as more and more local ones), not just a distribution destination (with a little bit of insular local publishing struggling around the margins).
@angus except that Amazon require such huge discounts from publishers (&/or authors if they choose to self-publish) that dealing directly with them makes little economic sense. And if you do deal w Amazon, they’ll likely sell your book at a loss-making price, which in turn makes other retailers on realistic margins look ‘expensive’ and which drives down the consumers perception of the value of books. Making the retailer into the publisher isn’t the answer.
The huge challenge is what Guy calls the ‘salmon principle’ — publishers have to believe that every book they choose to publish will be successful, but equally they admit that only 2 in 10 are really commercially viable, and good sales for those 2 will underwrite the other 8 (3 out of ten break even and fully half never recover their costs). For a market the size of Australia, with the costs involved, $30 for a local-authored title is actually a pretty reasonable price — the author might just make $3 of that, the publisher might get back $3 in profit if they’re lucky (20% of the time) and the retailer will think they’re very lucky if they clear $3 as profit (average profitability of Aust book retailers is about 2-3%).
If discounting by Amazon, Book Depository, et al, convince us as consumers that US$9.99 or 5 Pounds is the ‘correct’ price for a book, and Aust publishers and retailers try to match that, they’ll soon find themselves selling books at below production cost, and surely that can only lead to fewer local books being published, fewer overseas books getting a local edition with proper promotion (author tours, writers festivals, etc), and fewer bookshops …
Clearly the world of books urgently needs to find some new, sustainable, international business models: retaining the PIR status quo isn’t a solution (and I bet it’ll crop up again within the next 5 years), but publishers and authors feel that it is at least keeping government out of their hair and letting them deal with the issues on their own terms.
Thanks Guy. Informative and insightful as always.
I do agree that your point (1) is the prefereble solution. Although I think that tax breaks are a far better option than some Australia Council equivalent doling out grants (i.e. our money) to those that it thinks most worthy.
And your point (2) is well made. But I still don’t think that remaindering will happen on a large enough scale to bankrupt authors if PIR is removed.
@Tim, please fill out this form:
Question 1 - I would like:
- PIR
- No PIR and no alternative;
- An alternative to PIR (please specify):
I don’t think Amazon would be making a loss on $10 a book, so the production cost is less than that. Author tours? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. Certainly I’m not prepared to pay $20 on every book I buy to subsidise them. Festivals? No.
@Meski, an interesting point. Think of your favourite (living) author. Would you be willing to pay $20:
- for an autographed copy sent to you?
- to meet your favourite author in person?
- to receive an advanced copy of the book, or of all future books?
- to receive s limited edition (say to 500 copies), specially printed, copy of the book?
- etc.
Seth Godin (sethgodin.typepad.com) a marketing guru discusses (coined?) the concept of “True Fans”. The theory is that if you have at least, say, 1000 True Fans, who will buy everything that you create, and who are willing to pay extra for access, or exclusives, or just because they this that the artist is fantastic. Then you can thrive.
Did you know that you can comission First Dog on the Moon to create cartoons just for you? I may very well be a True Fan of FD.
@meski Amazon may have huge turnover, but *it has never made a profit* and it has always admitted it consistently makes losses on its own sale of books, but makes money from third-party sellers using its services, cloud computing, etc. The Book Depository model can’t be sustainable — they can’t afford to continue discounting *and* offering free international shipping. Bookshops such as Readings and Gleebooks hold over 250 author events every year & the Centre for Books & Literature that’s about to open at the State Library of Victoria will coordinate over 1000 events each year. Festivals: personally I don’t like ‘em that much (I prefer to read than to listen to authors talk …) but 10s of thousands of people do, and go to writers’ fests in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Byron Bay, Brisbane, Perth and elsewhere year-on-year.
@Angus, I’ll vote for option 3 please (or is it 4?), maintaining PIR and territorial copyright to protect local publishing, but with alternatives including removing GST from books &/or making it apply to overseas orders coming into the country; and while publishers were aghast, I think that the booksellers’ suggestion to reduce the 7- and 30-day rules makes quite a bit of sense and there is likely to be continuing pressure by retailers to allow them to import if a local publisher/distributor is overpricing a title &/or is slow to release it.
@Tim, oh no, you are a protectionist!
You want the PIR AND no GST on books! And some sort of “overpricing” and/or slowness threshold rather than just letting people import!
And you otherwise seem so sensible. This is bad.
Angus (3.29pm) Tim_Coronel (4:44 pm).
“The book equivalent of iTunes for music is Amazon.” Absolutely not, even if it is not clear if you mean books or e-books. I presume the mention of iTunes implies you meant e-books. I hope authors haven’t sold their digital rights in the same contract for the print copy rights or they will end up getting their usual raw deal, which is nothing like iTunes. Apple is essentially a platform for self-publishing in which Apple take 30% and the author keeps the rest. In the future it should be up to the author if he splits his cut with publisher, editors etc. That is, if the authors are smart. Seeing as how authors are mostly technically challenged and actually low in attention span for this kind of thing, what is most needed is an e-publisher in Australia that looks out for their interests. As other bloggers have sadly noted, Australia has an awful complacent record on innovation on this front.
Amazon are putting the squeeze on the entire publishing chain and this includes authors. Oh, and in this globalized digitially connected world, Amazon charge Australians about 20% more than its US customers. With its current policies it does not seem like Amazon will dominate this area. Since there has emerged a universal technical standard for e-books there is no reason why there should be a single dominant player but on the other hand hardly anyone seems able to get the whole digital experience nailed like Apple do. You’d be nuts to buy a Kindle and start creating a library that was locked into that device (even if it became cross-platform with the ipod/iphone earlier this year).
At the risk of sounding like the needle’s stuck in the groove, I have yet to receive an answer to my question: “If territorial protection is good enough for the US and the UK - both major suppliers of English-language books - why is it wrong for little old Australia?”
@Michael, you make a number of great points. Some comments:
(1) I agree that the book equivalent of iTunes for music is not currently Amazon. But PIL will ensure that it (or something like it) soon will be. And the iTunes of ebooks may also be Apple if the reader is the iPhone.
(2) And yes I am talking about physical books, but I think that this line of argument applies to ebooks too.
(3) I don’t think that authors are “mostly technically challenged”. And when you say “low in attention span for this kind of thing” do you mean low in attention span for ways to earn a living - I am not an author, but I assume that authors take a keen interest!
(4) I agree that you would be nuts to buy a Kindle. But you say that “there has emerged a universal technical standard for e-books”. Really? The proprietary Kindle one? ePub? PDFs? We’re not even down to VHS vs Betamax yet - never mind a winner!
@Perry, just found this answer:
http://www.cheaperbooks.com.au/faq-but-why-should-australians-give-up-territorial-copyright-if-the-us-and-the-uk-don%E2%80%99t/
GST should be kept on books but it is quite iniquitous that Amazon and BookDepo purchasers avoid GST (and that is me). I note that if one buys from Amazon in France they charge you the French TVA (if I recall, it is 5.5% not the usual 19.5% for most goods! Maybe a lower GST is a more enlightened policy than just zero tax on books). Gotta say it is only sensible.
And as I showed in my tables a few months back, if you added GST plus the postage Amazon was not so competitive for the popular books. I agree with whoever said it that BookDepository cannot possibly be a sustainable operation.
@Michael: There is no universal technical standard for e-books.
Angus (6.09pm). No not the iPhone. I am hoping the rumours are true about the Apple “Slate” possibly due Q1 2010. See here
wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/10/tablet-print-2/
Slight diversion, but I believe that the greyish e-ink Kindle just isn’t the right interface in this day of incredible quality screens on portable devices such as iPhone/pod, and most laptops. So as great as the concept is (easier on the eyes and very long battery life) I think existing screens or other new tech will win this one. Funny that Apple Mac started life with a black/white screen but there is no way they will revert to that for any new device.
Re Universal standard, perhaps we are not quite there but I understood the Sony and Nook both used compatible default standards also cross-compat with iPhone. Need to check further — though too lazy as I have no intention of buying such a device until we see what Apple do and whatever evolves next year (u standard being certain).
BTW, the notion that prices would fall if PIR were to be removed is fallacious. The price is set according to what the market will bear (Economics 101). Given our small market size and high distribution costs, I’d be surprised if there was any noticeable reduction in prices.
“The free trade/hayek/alcan foil hat nuts never acknowledged the real problem of remainders (saying that authors shouldn’t sign up to such contracts is ludicrous — no one offers non-remainder contracts). “
Alcan foil, yes, well, that would include me, I expect.
1. I doubt it’s as anywhere near as common as has been claimed to have an o/s remainder that’s still selling significantly at home.
2. Even if one is, the owner of all those $1 copies has to reckon it’s worth shipping them down en masse to try to cannibalise those retail sales likewise. In the internet era, why anyone’s going to do that rather than set up a website and shift them direct to shop-around punters who’ll bear the freight costs themselves escapes me.
3. Even if they make that commercially odd decision they’re hardly out of the woods in the ‘floods of cheap imports’ stakes. Local publishers have the home ground advantage, ntm (presumably) the actual, um, author’s backing in squeezing out the interloper. So, for example, when Toni Jordan’s Addition got a local boost off her MF longlist here - even with thousands of unsold UK editions remaindered/log-jammed overseas - her local imprint released a sexy new version. I’d have backed them to easily fight off - commercially - any UK attempt to dump their surplus into the warmed-up market here. That is, local publishers aren’t commercially passive in this; nor do local sellers particularly want to poo in their local nests, presumably. The local industry’s - even including big bookchain sellers - not some kind of bizarre unpeopled vacuum, run by automatons who want to hurt literature and screw our own writers. Is it? If so, it’s not government’s job to save your industry from itself.
4a. Re: those contracts you so haughtily dismiss: the way books are produced is changing in fundamental ways and that includes the deal side. Authors and agents are going to have to grasp - like everyone else has over the last 30 years - that contractual law and workplace negotiation actually matters on a singular basis, in a climate in which industry-wide protections are goners. ‘Standard contract’ is the oldest hick’s dupe in the book. I just don’t think you are right, by the way, I think there are such things as ‘remainder pulp’ clauses and…oh, look, what do I know, I’ve never even seen a publishing contract, have I. But it’s a contract. It’s a negotiation. Before you sign up, you fight to get what you can down. Write better books, get more negotiating grunt. I doubt Dan Brown has much trouble from cannibalizing remainders. Could be wrong, Guy, me in my tin-foil hat.
4b. But this is not simply about authors and publishers, anyway. Far more important in the ugly and anachronistic matter of remainders are the downstream deals between publisher and through-distributor and outlets, etc. The big end of the industry has been lazy and self-interested - not to mention enviromentally criminal - in the matter of planned-for surplus stock for years. No other industry on the planet would get away with the sustained, built-in wastage of hard copy publishing. Game’s up, tree killers; way past time those who churn out tons of excess dead tree they know no-one will buy; who ship them all over the joint at great carbon footprint; who pulp them after a month at yet more AGW cost, and start all over again…got their industrial poo in one sock and were made to take responsibility for - made to properly factor in the cost of - their unwanted dead tree products. Sorry, but that includes writers. (As for the Oz printing sector, why they aren’t madly tooling up to pwn the coming bespoke PoD era has got me buggered.)
5. Finally, there’s us, the readers/buyers. Remember us? Just because we ‘can’ buy a slightly cheaper US remainder doesn’t mean we ‘will’. Especially if we know what it means for the author’s income, which even if we don’t by now rest assured we’ll be made aware quick smart. Hey - maybe we’ve even taken all the sprayed cultural xenophobia of the last X years to heart, Oz writers; maybe we, um, don’t want to read Cloudstreet in an Yank accent any more than you want to write it in one, either. Maybe we, um, are capable of making purchase choices with half a view to helping out Australian literature all our ownsome, ie without needing big mummy government rules to ensure that not only do we have no choice but to do so; not only are we told how to do so; but we are told to do so in an untransparent and, frankly, culturally railroading way that is also (just by the way) laughably inefficient, wasteful and misdirecting of that extra money we’re clearly willing to shell out. All such that - among much else, true - ambitious publishing players like Lousie Adler and Michael Heyward can run around playing Important Cultural Icon & Big Swinging Publishing D**k rolled into one. Champion.
Australian writers who we agree are in want of and worth subsidising don’t need these charismatic figures strutting around the joint in their name, and they don’t need PIR’s. What they need is $20,000 put quietly each FY year into their bank accounts by the Literature Board with no questions asked. And then they need to be left the f*** alone, to write. This stupid, stupid campaign by a handful of loud-mouthed industry egotists has just waved bye-bye to the PC’s practically begging offer to throw more cash at Australian literature in just such a useful, efficient, targetted way. How many more would-be pens might we have thus funded with a greatlyexpanded direct allocation? 500? 1,000? This decision is a rotten one, most of all for Australian writers. A real own-goal. Check out the ‘careful-what-you-wish-for’ tone of that press release, and weep.
I tried numbering this comment, in an effort to cut myself short. It didn’t really work. I’m very sorry. I will take my tin-foil hat and stop hogging space now. Thanks v. much for it.
@Michael, let’s divert. There are no rules. I agree with you about the colour screens. And I am a geek and am excited by the coming slates, but will you read it on the train? I think you are more likely to read on your iPhone (or an equivalent). If I had a slate on a train, I’d watch video (tv / a movie etc.) on it.
@Perry. Er, the price is set according to what the market will bear except when you introduce compulsory tarrifs to promote societal aims. This:
- can be good - for example, the US Clean Air Acts (and global equivalents) cleaned up the world. As would a global tax on carbon (hey, I can dream); or
- it can be bad and just inflate prices - for example, the first home buyers grant, and the PIL.
@Jack. Well said! I wouldn’t delete a word of your post if (God forbid) I were your editor. Crikey should just publish your whole post tommorow. Why don’t you just copy and paste it into an email to boss@crikey.com.au …
Perry,
I think you need to pay attention to all of Economics 101.
How is it fallacious when it can introduce competition? e.g. $200 yank textbooks when the uni bookshop could get the same version from India for $70 and sell those instead. Pretty sure that sort of thing would cause a drop in price.
Also, US and UK territorial protection is good for them if they produce a majority of their own content - which for the USA is certainly going to be the case. This then at least keeps money in the country.
In Australia, where the large majority of content bought is foreign, this means we produce extra profits for foreigners at our own expense, which is very dumb on our part. Said media companies signing up for free trade that says you are not allowed to privilege Australian authors over the foreign devils is hardly supportive of the locals, either.
Somewhat ironic that this comes out pretty much at the same time as the release of Kindle For PC.
Which will make importing books by individuals even more popular than it was!
Angus (6.34pm). The reports and blogs (from o/s of course) suggest otherwise. Even initial sceptics have surprised themselves to find that they are actually reading more with these devices (but not tiny screens like iPhone). The additional tools like bookmarking, highlighting and then auto-listing with links for the whole book of those things you have highlighted etc. mean that in some important ways they can be superior to standard books.
I don’t know about you but years ago I decided to stop treating my books too preciously and started violating them with red underlining and margin notes etc. I wish I had done this with all the books I had read years ago — because I find myself wasting large amounts of time re-reading/searching etc. I also am a serial abuser of those little post-it tabs. I love having a library of physical books but it is all getting a bit of a mess and I suspect e-books will rescue me.
Incidentally don’t encourage Jack. He promised me ages ago he would try to say what he wants in less than 500 words!!
Guy’s right about the salmon; one makes it upstream to spawn and perpetuates the Australian publishing industry so that lots and lots of authors who would not stand a sprat’s chance in Hades of getting published, actually make it into print.
And yes, those few salmon are usually(but not exclusively) from the great ocean of popular writers who sell in the millions worldwide. Without them, there is no local Australian publishing.
Let a few chain stores make a few extra bucks, make little difference to the price of books here, and turn local publishing into a desert.
That’s one choice.
Fortunately we will not turn into Ireland any time soon and have our entire book market run by foreign publishers, who will be less than an interested in putting out our local talent into this little pond.
For now, we’ve made the other choice.
@Blue Tyson: You assume that competition results in lower prices. It also produces a concentration of market power (witness the Coles/Woolworths duopoly). I’m sure that the Coalition for Cheaper Books would have no difficulty with that outcome.
However, my point is that for Australian publishers who are faced with a relative small market and therefore high marginal costs are not going to drop their prices to an uneconomic level, otherwise they would be pushed out of business by oversees publishers with much lower marginal costs, given the size of their local (even more protected) markets. Is that what we want? Our own industry seriously diminished for the sake of a possibly lower price at Dymocks?
BTW, we already have parallel importing of books. Strangely, Dymocks makes no attempt to reduce prices on those books.
“What they need is $20,000 put quietly each FY year into their bank accounts by the Literature Board with no questions asked.”
…ha,ha!
So now it’s the ‘gubbnit’ who should be doling it out to everyone with a laptop?
If you don’t let a local publishing industry wade through the slush piles, pick out some promising ones, take a commercial risk and give ‘em a go, then how in hell will any “Literature Board” do it? A lottery?
What a pile of confused drivel (and invective).
Rather, more likely that an industry that runs on the smell of an oily rag and the dedication of people who love books can pick better prospects than a government appointed board of apparatchiks.
Ok, Perry, competition results in a concentration of market power, but protected oligopolies don’t? That one doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Actually, Dymocks is cheaper here than Angus and Robertson and much cheaper than Borders.
As far as I recall, publishers set prices they will sell at, do they not? So if Dymocks is _forced_ to buy high priced ‘Australian’ (they may just be UK or US imports anyway with new stickers) editions they don’t have much choice. If they have the freedom to say, get stuffed, I’m getting mine from Hong Kong, then why wouldn’t it be cheaper? If they keep all the money then I think we will notice, and laws can be changed back.
The last time PIR were improved in pro consumer fashion the industry prospered - so now it would be bad?
However, there is another factor - would you rather Australian chains with shops on the ground here do better, or more and more money bypass them directly to go to the Book Depository, or fishpond, or Amazon, or fictionwise, or whoever. Because no Australians at all getting any money in this situation except some transporters or credit card companies.
Some people might be happy to pay higher prices, but more and more will say how much can a koala bear and look elsewhere.
Thanks Angus. Thanks heaps. And, yeah, touche, Michael. It’s just that when even first-class domes and digits like Guy’s fail to tap-tap-tap through the mechanics of something like remainders in a weightless internet age, you want to pull your own hair out. Or would, if you didn’t wear a tin foil…etc. FWIW I think there is a very marked perception-divide in this issue b/w established book writers who I think tend to make certain unexamined presumptions about publishing (and, by definition, are those who also have the authority of incumbency), and the rest of us wannabes in whose writerly lives the book publishing industry has thus far featured only as the source of heart-breaking single par letters. That, you know, spell our names wrong.
Of course Guy’s going to tell us ‘no remainder’ contracts etc don’t exist, isn’t he. He ain’t got one. And - equally of course - I’m going to find every reason to call for a change to the oppressive status quo (man) of how books get made. Cuz mine, uh, like, don’t. But both our own axe-grinding aside - everyone’s free to decide what everyone else’s ‘real’ motives in this debate may be - nothing will change the awesome, exhilarating truth, writer dudes all: rejoice, rejoice, we are living through a genuine and very rare moment of cataclysmic epistemological revolution, and the worst - the most poignant - possible thing to be at such times is…well, an incumbent authority in the Old Ways who refuses to let them go. All of them. The lot. Rule a line…and start from scratch, from first principles. It’s all up for grabs, dudes. Oh, the sheer thrill of it. The joyous, liberating thrill.
PIR’s have ten years in ‘em, Guy? Mate, it took Elizabethan England half that to start putting the new mode through its paces. Do. Not. Look. Back. You’ll only turn to stone, me fellow scrivs. You and your prose’ll only turn to dead, heavy, old way stone. Clunk.
Now. I really do promise I’ll shush for a while, MJ! Jack R.
@ Tim_Coronel
“Amazon may have huge turnover, but *it has never made a profit*…”
This urban myth really needs to die.
For those who are pensioners or similarly purse-pinched, check out http://www.booko.com.au. which lists the prices of many books from different sellers, e.g. Ronson’s ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’, The Book Depository UK - cost including postage (free) $12.85; A & R $21.95 + $6.00; Readings and Abbey’s $24.99 + $6.50 OR Brown’s ‘The Lost Symbol’, The Book Depository UK - $26.59 (free postage); Readings and Abbey’s $39.95 + $6.50; Shearers $44.95 + $6.95; Collins $49.95 + $6.95, OR Cunningham, ‘Plants of Western New South Wales’, Bookware $211.00 (free postage); Glee Books $264.00 + $10.00 postage. OR Helen Garner, ‘The Spare Room’, The Book Depository UK $12.95 (free postage), A & R $21.95 + $6.50; Borders $23.95 (free postage).
Booko isn’t comprehensive but it’s a good start, as few dollars here and there make an enormous difference to me. I included postage as others mightn’t get out and about too often either.
@gef05 actually you’re right about Amazon, I’ve been called out on this elsewhere and looked it up. Amazon has reported net profits and paid dividends to shareholders since 2002. However, it consistently operates on a debt of (I think most recently) US$1.5 billion.
I’d like to ask Guy Rundle if Penguin Australia, did not exist, and none of the other local publishers existed, just who would have published his latest work?
I saw it for 22 English quid, or double the Australian price, on the internet, or 16 quid second hand.
Penguin Australia distributes for a number of smaller local houses, a practice that is replicated by some other larger international publishers with local arms. All the small houses that rely on them for warehousing and distribution would vanish over night without PIR.
So Guy, I hope you send Jamie Oliver a Chrissy card this year, because without big sellers like him giving Penguin Australia a profitable business, your book simply would not exist on paper. Mark it “To the salmon” with thanks from the “Sprat”, eh?
@Tim
No worries. I remember Rupert Murdoch slating them (Amazon) for not investing dot com boom money in things like parking garages because nothing online would ever make money and the bust was inevitable. Oh ye of little faith.
/end threadjack
I’ve just finished reading my third book on my newly acquired Kindle, books cost around $10. Don’t think I’ll ever purchase another paper book for recreational reading ever again. I am amazed at the simplicity, usability and overall experience of using Amazon’s system of Kindle purchases.
Only two problems, George: Amazon offers a limited range of titles (for the moment at least) and only a percentage of those titles are available to Australian buyers.
@Tim: I’m not so worried about them operating on a debt. Countries do it, Companies do it, individuals do it. (You got a mortgage?) It’s only a problem if you can’t service it, and if Amazon are paying dividends, it seems likely they are servicing the debt.
@Angus:
(quote)
Think of your favourite (living) author. Would you be willing to pay $20:
- for an autographed copy sent to you?
- to meet your favourite author in person?
- to receive an advanced copy of the book, or of all future books?
- to receive s limited edition (say to 500 copies), specially printed, copy of the book?
- etc.
(/quote)
yes, maybe, yes, yes.
If I’m getting that, I’d go for a licensing system, where I could get a license for a ltd ed book, plus a ebook copy (on the basis that you don’t want to handle ltd edition books too much, and a license to read a book doesn’t matter about the media, but the content)
(quote)
Did you know that you can comission First Dog on the Moon to create cartoons just for you? I may very well be a True Fan of FD.
(/quote)
and you can get Dilbert hand signed stuff, and xkcd.
Aside:
Hey Crikey, how about supporting ‘reply to comment’ style, so this becomes easier to read?