The draft report, which has been criticised by the Australian Publishers Association (APA) and Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) has also attracted mainstream media coverage including a piece in Melbourne's Age newspaper by Text publisher Michael Heyward, who said the report's findings were ‘contradictory and confusing'. Heyward also focussed on the importance to publishers of sales of backlist titles, which he said would be at risk should the Commission's recommendation on 12-month PIR protection go ahead.
Concern for backlist titles, copyright protection
‘At Text, many of our best backlist titles have their biggest sales after the first 12 months,' wrote Heyward, pointing out that backlist sales have accounted for 40 to 50% of Text's sales over the past two years. ‘It's a typical pattern. Kate Grenville's The Secret River sold five times as many copies in its second year as in its first. We published Peter Temple's masterpiece The Broken Shore in August 2005 and it has now sold 10 times as many copies as it did in its first year.'
Allowing parallel importation of titles after 12 months would mean ‘open slather for the dumpers, the remainder merchants, the low-royalty free riders', he said. His concerns are echoed by Black Dog Books publisher Andrew Kelly, who wrote on his blog that ‘the 12-month idea doesn't recognise that it takes time to build an author or a book'. ‘It allows protection from importation when there is no risk of a book being imported.'
Similarly, the Australian Literary Agents' Association (ALAA), in its response to the recommendations said the Commission's draft report failed to recognise that ‘12 months is nothing in the life of a book'. ‘Marketing a book is merely the beginning of a successful book's life. Books establish themselves within the community by word of mouth, that is, slowly and they last for generations. Under the proposed new regime just at the time an Australian book is finding its way in the market there would no longer be territorial copyright for the author.'
In a letter to WBN, Scribe publisher Henry Rosenbloom made the argument (later echoed on his blog) that the draft report was ‘deeply misleading about the US and UK laws on [parallel importation]'. ‘It describes these two biggest English-language territories as "also having parallel-import restrictions, although without time requirements for first publication". This is a bizarre way to obscure the fact that the UK and UK don't limit parallel imports--they prohibit them,' he wrote.
The Australian print industry body Printing Industries has also criticised the 12-month recommendation, with CEO Phillip Anderson saying the recommendation that ‘parallel import restrictions apply for only a limited period of time ... will have the effect of reducing the number of books printed in Australia, particularly reprints'. ‘The Australian book printing industry is just as dependent upon the reprinting of existing publications as it is on printing new books, and now it looks as though this revenue stream of books published overseas and printed locally is in jeopardy,' said Cliff Brigstocke, CEO of OPUS Print Group.
'On the right track': Dymocks' Grover
However, while many criticised the draft report's recommendations, Don Grover, CEO of the Dymocks chain, told WBN he thought the Commission was ‘on the right track'. While he thought the Commission's recommendation to allow parallel importation after 12 months did ‘not go far enough', he said it would nonetheless mean there was ‘an appropriate competitive tension on books older then twelve months'. ‘It means book suppliers will need to improve and sharpen their pencils--competition brings that,' he said. ‘It does still say though that books that are younger than twelve months [are protected], he added. ‘It means there'll be a continuation of a lack of competitive tension [on those titles].'
Submissions ‘largely ignored'
‘It has been tasked to abolish territorial copyright, and is itching to do so,' wrote Rosenbloom of the Commission. ‘But the mountain of submissions presented to its enquiry have denied it the evidence it needs. So its recommendation is a fig-leaf; beneath it is a hostile intent of highly disturbing proportions.'
Outgoing Leading Edge Books managing director Chris Burgess gave WBN his personal opinion when he stated that the draft report ‘displays such determination to ignore the submissions it has already received'.
‘The general feedback from member stores and publishers at the Leading Edge Conference was that the draft report is a very disappointing document,' he said. ‘It seems unfortunate that after a six-month consultation process, with so much time consumed by all parts of the industry on submissions which, differing though they were, attempted to give a comprehensive perspective of the place of territorial copyright in the Australian book market, the Productivity Commission has released a draft report which seems to have largely ignored or glibly downplayed the hundreds of submissions and come up with their own vision for increasing the productivity of the industry.' Calling the Commission's vision ‘inconsistent and empirically flawed', Burgess said it would ‘almost certainly result in a significant transfer of income, jobs and intellectual property to overseas interests'.
Disagreement over price findings
Grover, whose company made a submission to the Commission as part of the ‘Coalition for Cheaper Books', told WBN he thought the Commission had ‘clearly identified that the Australian public pays too much for books' and that this was ‘a good and fair analysis'.
‘[It] debunks the misinformation being put around about Australian prices being cheaper than overseas, which is rubbish,' he said. Nonetheless, Grover thought the Commission still had some explaining to do.
‘There's a lot said in the document about culture but again no-one quantifies it and says "this is the positive impact of spending money on protecting culture",' he said. ‘I think that's an issue.' ‘But,' he added, ‘great that there are some roundtable [discussions] coming up that will, I hope, clear that up.'
Disagreeing with Grover on the Commission's findings on prices, however, were Burgess, who said ‘the report itself admits [its findings on pricing] cannot be substantiated' and Rosenbloom, who said that ‘the most it can offer about prices is a mealy-mouthed comment that parallel-import restrictions "put upward pressure on prices" (in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary)'.
‘The Commission asserts that there's a lack of price
