As the Productivity Commission's inquiry into parallel importation regulations comes to a close, Dymocks has taken the extraordinary step of using its Booklovers loyalty scheme to urge its customers to campaign in favour of an open market.
In a letter emailed yesterday to all of its Booklover customers, Dymocks CEO Don Grover writes: ‘We need your help to bring you cheaper books [...] The current law stops us buying books at the lowest price to put in our stores for you to buy. Under the Dymocks proposal, copyright will still be protected; authors will still receive royalties and publishers will still be paid for the rights they hold. Removing the import restrictions will open the book market to international competition. This will stop local subsidiaries and agents of overseas publishers charging inflated wholesale prices.'
Referring to the Commision's most contentious proposal, Grover writes: ‘Most books are purchased within 12 months of publication, therefore this recommendation will not result in cheaper books for you.'
‘Dymocks and the Coalition for Cheaper Books believe Australian booklovers deserve better. [...] Dymocks believes that the Australian book industry should be driven by the Australian book buyer and not the local subsidiaries and agents of overseas publishers,' he writes.
The letter then asks Dymocks' customers to sign a petition in support of this position, which will be presented to the Commission.
APA warns local children's books ‘threatened'
The APA has continued its criticism of the Productivity Commission's proposed changes, saying that ‘Australia's extraordinary success story in children's books is threatened if the Productivity Commission recommendations are accepted by the Federal Government.'
‘Because of the extraordinary success of independent Australian children's publishers in selling innovative and creative books in many overseas markets, they will be at particular risk from the Productivity Commission's recommendations,' said Andrew Kelly, MD of Black Dog Books and a member of the APA's board.
‘Children's books are a long-term investment requiring intense collaboration between authors, illustrators, designers and publishers, and they increasingly include complex and expensive support material for teachers. To recoup that investment, publishers need a long lifecycle for books and wide international sales,' said Kelly. ‘We've worked extremely hard over the past couple of decades to open up overseas markets, and now the Productivity Commission wants to cripple us.'
ASA response
The Australia Society of Authors (ASA) has also rejected the Commission's draft findings, with executive chair Jeremy Fisher saying: ‘If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'
‘Why in the face of recession would any government accept the wishy-washy changes proposed by the Productivity Commission?' said Fisher. ‘There's no evidence they'll produce more Australian jobs or reduce book prices. The system behind Australia's most successful and self-sustaining creative industry definitely "ain't broke".'
ASA chair Anita Heiss added: ‘However, we are profoundly grateful the Commission has concluded the [current] restrictions are important to maintaining our national culture. It's about time our culture was recognised for its own intrinsic value, and we're not measuring everything as an economic commodity.'
‘Now let's get parallel importation off the table and move on,' Fisher said. ‘It's great that our industry has received this attention, but it's misplaced. What we need now is an industry tribunal or commission that can implement some standardisation, and we'd be interested in seeing that in author/publisher agreements, but also to come up with unified responses to Google and changes in the supply chain.'
UK publishers call proposals ‘catastrophic'
The Bookseller's Catherine Neilan reports:
Publishers in the UK have joined their Australian counterparts in warning that the Commission's proposals could have ‘catastrophic consequences' on the industry. There are also concerns that the value of Australian rights would be diminished by the proposed one-year window.
Jamie Byng, MD of Canongate, said the consequences ‘would be as bad as the Net Book Agreement going [in the UK], which now a lot of people recognise was damaging to the industry.' He explained: ‘If this goes ahead, you will have brand-name authors being shipped all around the world for the smallest amount of money possible. It undermines the very fabric of the publishing business of each local publishing community in any country. Imagine if this were to happen to Britain. It would have catastrophic consequences for the depth and breadth of the publishing industry.'
Simon Juden, chief executive of the Publishers Association in the UK, warned that if the proposals became law they would detract from investment in local writers. ‘Any erosion of territoriality risks damaging indigenous cultural output -- it risks leading to a global monoculture, which nobody is interested in.'
Round-table discussions
Round-table discussions between the Commission and industry stakeholders have been held in Melbourne and Sydney yesterday and today. The roundtables are intended to allow feedback on the Commission's ‘discussion draft' ahead of the deadline for final written submissions and the Commission preparing its final report.
WBN will report of the outcome of these sessions as soon as information is available.
Due date for final submissions
Final written submissions to the Commission must be made by Friday 17 April. See the Commission's website for details.
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