Parallel imports
At the moment, Australian booksellers aren’t allowed to import books from overseas if they are also published locally. But that might all change, and the publishers and authors of Australia are not happy.
Basically, parallel importing of books would mean that consumers would have to pay much less. With the US dollar nearing parity with ours, and the cheap price of books over there, the price of imported books could be significantly lower than locally published titles.
But that also means that, with people buying less Australian books, there will be less Australian books published. Australian writers will have to try their luck in the US market, and then receive a lower royalty. Also, we’d risk losing unique Australian language and stories.
Here’s Garth Nix’s take.
And Nick Earls.
And Justine Larbalestier. (and more here)
And pieces in The Australian here and here.
July 16th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
this really sucks! So much YA and children’s fiction from America is really mediocre and often has a less than subtle ‘lesson’ to be learnt. (My home country of Canada has had to deal with it for decades!)
Australia’s literary voice is unique and I’d hate to see it drowned out by publishing companies with more money than taste.
If people are already buying this stuff overseas via amazon etc. good for them! Let them continue to purchase it that way. It only takes a week or two to arrive by post. But please keep it off our Aussie bookshop shelves.
I’ll be passing the message on.
July 17th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
i have to confess that when i worked in a bookstore, i occasionally cross imported things when i liked the cover more. …
however. i’d like to hope that it might open up the wide variety of excellent YA american novels that never seem to see the light of day in australia. i guess it falls in the hands of independent bookstores, and libraries with CDP that allow for a wider number of american titles.
i’d think though, most Quality bookstores are going to keep buying australian titles, and people’s hunger for quality australian literature isn’t going to fade in a hurry. i’m cautiously optimistic.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
This argument is not about buying any old book just because they are cheap. The publishers love this argument to be about culture because it means they can maintain their monopoly and charge us all really high prices. Also people are buying so many of the books from Amazon that it will end up causing bookstores to consider closing and who will promote Australian publishing and writing then?