At a panel discussion at BookExpo America, Atria's Judith Curr told conference-goers that the Australian publishing industry and its book market—still relatively new since its release from being a U.K. or Canadian territory in 1946—is surging. But is that market, and perhaps the very vibrancy of Australian literary culture, under threat?
On June 30, the Australian government's Productivity Commission is set to decide whether to recommend a change to the rules on parallel imports for books: a controversial plan supported by a major bookselling chain and a department store, but strongly opposed by the vast majority of the Australian literary community, which maintains that the change would render Australia's hard-won territorial copyright moot and severely harm Australia's publishing business. “What they propose amounts to a return to the colonial days,” author Richard Flanagan told attendees of the Sydney Writers Festival in his closing address on May 24, “when Australian companies merely sold books from another country, and we bought with them notions of life that bore little relevance to our own world.”
At issue is a provision many in the literary community say has helped fuel the rise of Australia's publishing industry, a parallel import restriction (PIR), adopted since 1991, that states that if a book is published in a local edition within 30 days of its foreign publication, Australian booksellers must sell the local rather than foreign version. The Australian Productivity Commission's draft report has recommended keeping the 30-day rule—but has also recommended that the protection period be limited to 12 months, rather than the term of the copyright. And if a work should become “unavailable” during that year of protection, the protection period would end, and imports would be allowed. “The commission recognizes that the PIRs provide certainty to local publishers to invest in the publication of new titles,” the draft reads. “But current provisions seem overly restrictive.”
Supporters of the rule point to a quickly growing—if still vulnerable—publishing and literary culture, an industry that went from virtually nothing to some A$2.5 billion annual in sales within a matter of decades, returning some A$75 million in tax revenues to Australia's coffers. Government statistics show there are now some 4,000 book publishers in Australia, although, the Productivity Commission's report adds, a handful of large publishers account for most publishing activity. From 2007 to 2008, statistics also show that locally authored works accounted for 40% of total book sales in Australia, and that foreign rights sales for Australian authors have also “grown strongly.”
Those who support the rule change, however, say the restrictions don't necessarily help local authors and mean higher prices for consumers. While the report suggested that PIRs led to “upward pressure” on prices, it conceded there was little solid evidence to back that up. A coalition led by major bookseller Dymock's and department store Coles-Woolworths, dubbed the Coalition for Cheaper Books, recently released a price comparison that showed that books by authors who appeared at the Sydney Writers' Festival, including Flanagan, were between 25% and 40% cheaper when purchased online from a U.K. retailer. The Association of Australian Publishers, which strongly opposes any change to the PIR, released its own price survey in April. It found that Australian book prices were “highly competitive” with books from the U.S. and U.K. markets—cheaper, even—and slammed the commission's vague claim of “upward pressure” on prices as “not holding water.”
Why Change?
For his part, Flanagan told some 400 gathered for his closing address in Sydney that his books are not cheaper in Australia when imported in foreign editions; that, despite deep discounts on Amazon.com, with currency adjustments, shipping and tax, his latest novel, Wanting, was actually more expensive on Amazon than in an Australian bookstore. He stressed, however, that beyond the argument for cheaper books, a greater sense of purpose united the opposition to the change in the PIR: the vibrancy of Australian literature.
“The concentration of ownership of book retailing in the hands of one or two chains, as in Britain and the U.S.A., has been catastrophic for the book industries in those countries,” Flanagan asserted. On the other hand, “the Australian book retail sector—with its strong and varied mix of independents, chains and discount department stores—is regarded as one of the healthiest and most diverse in the world, enabling large volume, large variety and price competition.” The Coalition for Cheaper Books, Flanagan quipped, was little more than a “Coalition for Bigger Business.”
With the Productivity Commission's proposal due to be delivered to the prime minister on June 30, its fate remains unclear—although increasing opposition among government officials has given hope to those opposed to the change. The bottom line, say opponents like Flanagan, is, why risk removing the PIR and possibly damaging a growing, vibrant publishing industry when there is little evidence to support the benefits of the proposed change? “Australian publishing over the last four decades is an extraordinary cultural achievement,” Flanagan notes. “Today we sell more books per capita than most nations. We read Australian stories from cradle to grave, and the best of our writing is judged around the world as globally significant. It is also an outstanding commercial success, a story that might warm the heart of the coldest free trader.”
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