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It’s been a week of bureaucracy gone nuts. The book battle over the parallel important restrictions on books being recommended by the Productivity Commission goes on . . . having heard a few more debates on radio it seems to me the core issue is not about providing cheaper books to Australian readers but helping big business increase their profits. One of the major book chains pushing for the restrictions to be lifted (which favour Australian publishers, authors and infrastructure by giving them a 30 day period before foreign editions of books can enter the country) says they have to compete with the internet. Everyone has to do that these days. But the particular chain of bookstores who buy their books from publishers at 45 to 50 percent discount, could pass that on by reducing the sale price of books and modestly reduce their profits. And while the bureaucrats say books can be bought cheaper overseas, they obviously don’t do much in the way of comparative shopping.
Books are heavily discounted in some bookstores here which bring them within a dollar or two of buying from overseas. The big book sellers, ie discount chains, want to squeeze out the little guys. And the most stupid thing of all, the Productivity Commission suggests that a now flourishing and profitable publishing industry be blown apart and to compensate for this, writers should instead be subsidised by grants through things like the Literature Board. So you, the taxpayer will pay. There will also be fewer books published by Australian writers, they’ll be too busy writing grant applications instead of books, and certainly no popular fiction (ie commercial books) will ever get a Literature Board grant. And printers, small publishers, small booksellers and all manner of people who work in allied fields will certainly lose jobs. It’s utter madness.
I wish Mr Fells and the rest of them would pull their heads in and go away and read a good book. And Mr Rudd and Mr Garrett should ignore the Report, bury the whole mess and forget it every raised its ugly head. PS. Shameless plug. An old friend of mine who worked on the Women’s Weekly when I started, Robin Adair, has written his first book and it’s terrific. The Running Patterer is a detective novel with a difference set in colonial Sydney. Buy it while good debut Aussie novels are still being published!
Cheers
Di’s latest book The Islands, published by Pan Macmillan, is now on sale.
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