Sharyn's Archives

It's not often you get authors protesting. In the general manner, writing is a solitary occupation, and we rarely even get to socialise, let alone get het up over political machinations. Not so this week.

 This week saw some very concerned authors protesting outside Dymocks in the center of Brisbane. Why Dymocks, and not Angus and Robertsons? Because Dymocks has become the public face of the Coalition for Cheaper Books, who have lobbied the government to end restrictions on parallel importations. Among other things Dymocks emailed all their book lovers loyalty customers asking them to sign an online petition to to Productivity Commission, stating that they want the restrictions lifted. What they hadn't thought about was among their customers are authors, because we actually read too. And some of us were on that email list.

And this angered us in many ways. because absolutely everyone agrees that lifting these parallel importation restrictions will damage the Australian publishing indutry, as our market is flooded with cheap books from overseas. Effectively Dymocks and their ilk, are pushing for something they know will mean Australian authors will not be able to get published, unless they are already known, because there will be little to no publishing in Australia any more. They are actively campaigning for the loss of jobs in the printing, and publishing industries, at a time of global financial crisis.

What they aren't prepared to do, however, is come clean to the Australian public is how much of a percentage of the books that they sell stay with the company. In this regard book sellers are not like petrol retailers, who make the least from the product they sell, and GST can't be blamed, because it's only ten percent, and both the US and UK have their own sales taxes too. Someone is earning a lot from Australian books, and it's not the authors, illiustrators, editors, copy editors, cover designers, or printers.

But it has got us talking, Sheryl Gwyther, one of the authors at the Brisbane protest, has blogged about it here Jennifer Fallon blogged about it last November, and mentioned the interesting fact that Bob Carr, former Premier of NSW is on the Productivity Commision and the Board of Dymocks. Hmm. The Australian Society of Authors put in a joint submission to the Commission. We've been talking to each other about it on email lists, author sites, and through writing groups. Because what this means is far fewer of us will ever get the chance to be published.

If you happen to agree, and don't want to see the end of Australian authors in print, then please let the Productivity Commission know your thoughts.