In its final report on the parallel importation of books, it recommended the lifting of all restrictions after a three-year adjustment period; the rejigging of financial assistance to the book industry; a new survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics; and a review of the brave new world after five years.
It said the current legislation, under which Australian publishers have 30 days to publish editions of books published overseas or face competing editions, stopped booksellers from importing "cheaper or better-value-for-money editions". - http://www.theage.com.au/national/publishers-fight-cheap-books-20090714-dk61.html
They're called the The Productivity Commission, and right there I point out the first problem. This recommendation comes from a group whose sole purpose is to explore how books can be made cheaper, how the industry can be more efficient, how price tags can be more satisfying for consumers. It's a commission whose inherent purpose is always going to completely ignore the content and industry of books, because it is launched from the side of the consumer.
Sometimes, if you want to maintain good quality local industry - hell, if you want 'good things' to exist at all, you need to avoid the path to cheap. Cheap doesn't mean good. It doesn't mean better quality. It doesn't mean safety or security. It just means that in the long run, some company is making more money off its consumer. If you buy something cheaper, it usually means somewhere, some corner was cut. At the end of the day, the marketplace is looking for a higher profit margin. Are TVs cheaper now? Yes. Are the more expensive ones better than a TV off Safeway's shelf? Certainly.
And just because rules are installed that allow for cheaper books to be imported doesn't equate to a consumer getting cheaper books. There is a chain of supply between the overseas publisher and you at the checkout. Let's look at an example:
Dymocks currently sells Ivory, by Australian author Tony Park for $32.99. Let's say Dymocks buys the book from its Australian supplier for $25. It's making a $7.99 profit. Now let's imagine that the parallel import law is changed, and Dymocks can buy the book from international publishers for $19. Let's also say it's been three years since the law changed, and Dymocks had been selling select books at low prices during special sales to commemorate the law change, but that slowly faded as people forgot the ruckus. They now have the opportunity to make a $13.99 profit by selling the book at the regular price of $32.99, a price we are all used to paying. Do you really think Dymocks, a large corporation who have always said they're about the price of books, a company whose directors, by law, need to do what's best for the company, are NOT going to increase their profit margin? What does history tell us? Does it tell us that large company directors do what's good for the little people? NO.
An example brought up in the debate is a very similar situation that occurred about 10 years ago with the music industry. CDs used to be protected by local copyright laws, meaning locally published versions had to be sold first. The same argument - that we can get cheaper CDs! - was put forward and ultimately won out. In the above Lateline link, a pro-change supporter said this:
PROFESSOR ALLAN FELS: I think the record industry story is very clear. We removed the restrictions a number of years ago. Prices did come down, and the local music industry is flourishing. It's flourishing like never beforeUm... really? Because the way I see it, we had a massive collapse in independent music retailers (who sold far more local bands than the majors do now), our own Mushroom Records disappeared and every band who wants to make it has fled to the States or Europe while our local industry is flooded by half baked talent rejected from Australian Idol. Meanwhile, CDs are still around the $30 to $40 mark.
As an entrepreneur, I like to hope I have a bit of an understanding about industry and business. If I was running a local publishing house instead of a video production company, I'd be horrified by this turn of events. If they suddenly told me that Australian TV no longer must have x amount of hours of local content, but can freely import cheaper TV 24-7, we'd be decimated because the big companies that own and buy do not care about local content, they care about the bottom line. There's a responsibility of members of an industry, from the producer through to the seller, to actually support the local industry it's a part of. If its own members start rabidly undercutting or going overseas, the local part of the industry shrivels. It's good to have cheaper elements to keep companies going, but the sacrifice is quality and local support.
The biggest argument among all this is that books are not a bland, heartless commodity. A book isn't a TV. It isn't rice. It's a work of art that one person dedicated his or her entire soul to producing. The end result isn't a buyer or consumer, it's a reader. An audience member. This isn't a product they're buying, it's a holy tome, something that has the potential to touch them deeply, stay with them for the rest of their lives. It's also something written by an Australian, for an Australian. Gleitzman, back on 9AM, told us how overseas, they print versions of his and other Australian authors' books that change phrases, sentences, paragraphs, entire locations and settings to remove the Australianisms and replace them with more familiar American alternatives. When a foreign publisher publishes our books, they change them, then sell them back to us at a cheaper price.
So the real question you have to ask is do you want Possum Magic to be about a squirrel eating twinkies?
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