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| Blogs > rm_mazandbren > The Complaisant Husband |
Paying Double for Nothing
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Paying Double for Nothing Drop me in the middle of the Australian outback and I am pretty sure that I would survive. The skills are a bit rusty and if a few teething problems don’t kill me then I should be right. Hand me a fishing rod and I would invariably starve to death. In an intermittent fishing career stretching back to childhood I have only ever caught the dreaded blowie- and a wicked case of dehydration and heatstroke when grandad forgot to check the fuel tanks on the dinghy and we had to row back to shore on a day that rarely dropped below the century. My stepfather, by contrast, is the original fisherman- rod, hand line, whatever- he would often come to our house with a big esky full of the produce of the sea. This was, of course, before he moved in and my mother was still at the stage where she was trying to share his interests; and fish just was not one of them. He stopped fishing soon afterwards. But now that he is retired and he has worked through the A-Z of Barbecues and Woodworking, it has been decided to get him out of the house and fishing again. This was decided about six months ago and though I doubt that he has actually been fishing, by God he has an impressive collection of equipment- including a computer program that helps calculate the tides or something. We had brought him a present already but it had cost less than half of what we had budgeted and so decided to buy him a book on the best angling spots in the state- if it was available. Alas not. Having not been in a bookshop for a couple of months I decided to take a quick tour of the shelves. The average book title in Australia costs somewhere between 50% and 100% more than the same title would in the US or UK. The reason for this is a ban on Parallel Import Restrictions, the gist of which is that a book published in Australia within 30days of its release elsewhere can not then be imported into Australia. The theory is that such restrictions protect Australia’s literary heritage by protecting us from a flood of imported books; it reduces competition to Australian Publishers; and allows higher residual payments to Australian authors. The downside, as noted, is that Australian readers pay a lot more than readers in the UK, US or Canada. It has been much in the news here lately because the “sociopaths in business suits,” as one critic calls them, from the Productivity Commission, in a masterful 500page tome of their own has decided that, to put it succinctly, this is crap. In fact, according to the researchers at the Commission, none of the three main goals have been met; Australian owned publishers have been brought out by UK and US publishers leaving only the University Presses and a few niche publishers; these Australian Publishers inadvertently skew the figures because they publish a lot of small run titles, thereby making it look like the industry is publishing a lot of Australian literature; and Australian authors are not paid much more than their overseas counterparts- in the case of the niche publishers a lot less because not enough copies are printed to make a minimum cut off. And still we pay a lot of money for the pleasure of reading. The problem for a lot of these niche publishers is getting their books on the shelves at the bookshops, Australian readers still being largely devoted to the local bookshop rather than the department stores and supermarkets not least because a good 50% of titles are of the Mills and Boon variety. The same is true of the University Presses; whilst dealing heavily with academic material, obviously, the good folks at MUP and QUP in particular are not averse to using down time on the presses to publishing Australian literature. Being interested in Australian stories and history, and with an enquiring mind, I often hunt high and low for those rare bookshops that actually sell these titles- the problem being that by the time I go back to buy more the shop has closed or they have ditched these publishers. Walking through the local, franchised, bookseller today I was not surprised to see that the shelves were devoid of titles from the Universities or Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Even the State Library has cut the range on these publishers, probably the last place that I knew of that had an extensive range with the demise of the Government Print Shop. Now, I will readily admit that a lot of the books are crap; but there are also some gems in the rough. And while I think a lot of them are crap, it is not to say that other people would disagree. Except that a lot of other people don’t have the time and inclination to spend a whole day tracking down a bookshop that publishes these books. And why should they? According to the logic of the PIR, these books should be on the shelf of their local bookshop. If we look at the titles on the bookshelves of our local stores, two things stick out. The immediate thing is that unless you are writing about Cricket, AFL, Rugby League or Australian Military History, then you have no chance of being published. Even in an area like cookbooks, formerly dominated by Australian household names, have been overtaken by this year’s offerings from the celebrity chefs (including the masterfully titled How To Eat, Nigella Lawson- where does the line form?). But a deeper investigation, consisting of opening the flyleaf of a few hundred books, will reveal that 95% of the titles are copyrighted with US or UK publishers. So unless you write in one of the few remaining blessed genres and for the major publishing houses, you have no chance of seeing your book in the local bookshop. Still not seeing the benefits of paying all that extra money under the PIR. You can actually take this a step further. I am an avid fan of fantasy fiction, less so of science fiction. Australia’s two main authors of said fiction are the inestimable Sara Douglas, whose web page has a helpful guide to being published in the genre, and Garth Nix. In fact a perusal of the bookshelves at most Perth bookstores will reveal the startling surprise that these are our only two authors in the genre- and Nix is the only one published in the last decade- Douglas was discovered back in the 1980s. On the shelves at the moment is the complete range of Terry Pratchet, JK Rowling, JRR Tolkien, David and Leigh Eddings, Terry Goodkind, etc, etc. All foreign authors, all published by foreign publishers and I still have to pay twice as much as UK and US readers so that they can share the shelves with Douglas and Nix. And the same is true for every genre- one or two Australians- often ‘discovered’ last century by Australian publishing houses subsequently brought out by Americans and Brits. Why? Because under their contracts, foreign authors get paid x-amount per book; by publishing in Australia the publishers get a greater percentage of the profits because the PIR lets them charge up to twice as much for the same book! A similar state of affairs existed in the music industry a few years back. The same arguments for retaining the Music industry’s own PIR were made; but when ripped away the Australian music industry actually expanded. The music conglomerates lost their profit advantage on international artists but found it on local artists- nobody could import what was here already (at least legally). Even as the rest of the music world is experiencing declining profits, Australian subsidiaries have actually done quite well because the number of Australian artists has expanded exponentially. If the publishing industry’s PIR was removed, then a similar profit incentive to find and publish Australian authors would be the most likely result. But far from tackling the cultural elites, St Kevin not only excused himself from the challenge but from the decision. Given that his entire cabinet can be expected to be future<b> writers </font></b>perhaps they should have excused themselves from the decision too. In the end Australian readers are being shafted by a clique of greedy<b> writers </font></b>keen to preserve their niche, foreign publishers keen to preserve their profits and a government that loves to have its picture taken with celebrity authors, sports stars and other celebrities. For the poor especially it is double betrayal; not only do they stand to benefit most from lower prices and better access to books but the party that is supposed to represent their interests is the party responsible for this decision.  In truth is there no beauty? I am not in love; but i am open to persuasion. |
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The poor don't read books.Also you will find more liberal party authors with books out at the moment.While we're at it lets import everything we use and need from overseas as it is cheaper and easier than making it here. Sobriety is a serious business and business has not been good.
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given you are well versed on life in Australia, can you compare things there to here in the US. Primarily, i am interested in knowing if your cost of living is worse than ours, and is your Federal Government more or less invasive into your personal freedoms. I know pretty well that Canada and the UK are both worse than here on both issues... But I always hoped that Australia was one bastion that might give me a place to escape to...
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