Like many ‘emerging’ Australian writers, I’ve been concerned that the government is thinking of lifting parallel importation restrictions (PIRs). This is legislation that helps Australian publishers compete by giving them the opportunity to publish works over here and keep out overseas editions of the same work. Virtually all countries, including the US and UK have similar legislation. It is almost certain that without PIRs, imported editions of popular books at lower prices (possibly remaindered books, and most of them, if they came from Australian authors, edited and censored to suit their primary, overseas markets) would make life very hard for Australian poublishers and thereby reduce the number of new Australian authors who could sell their work. For lots more on this subject see the Saving Aussie Books website.
Today, however, I read a blog post by Joanna Penn that made me think that PIRs were not the only, nor the major threat facing Australian publishers. Joanna makes no bones about the fact that she finds books published in Australia too expensive. She has often said she buys books from Amazon.com and pays the shipping and still gets them cheaper. With the huge mark-ups that Australian booksellers put on books, she has a valid point. However, Joanna recently bought a Kindle. In fact, she was probably one of the first people in Australia to have one. And, if you’ve read her blog post, you’ll see one of the main reasons why. A book she saw in a local book shop was available for instant download to the Kindle at about a quarter of the book shop price.
The important message for Australian publishers and Australian book sellers in this is that Joanna states flatly she would not have bought the book from the shop. It was too expensive, but, on the Kindle, the price was right.
Joanna is at the leading edge of a wave of change that is going to sweep through this country in the next couple of years. As an early adopter of e-reader technology she is among the first of probably millions of Australians who will buy these devices and use the wireless connectivity built into them to buy books – from anywhere in the world.
Australia has a book-selling infrastructure that is almost guaranteed to encourage rapid adoption of e-readers now that the first have arrived. Even when I lived in a Brisbane suburb, my nearest decent bookshop was 30km away (in the city, where parking costs a fortune). Now I live in the country, my nearest good bookshop is 150km away! (I don’t count the K-Mart that is a mere 60km away.) I rarely get to a book shop to buy books. I buy books from Fishpond.com.au (when they have them) and Amazon.com (when they don’t) or I go to the library. When I buy e-books, I tend to get them direct from the publisher where possible. It won’t be long before I get my own wireless e-reader and stop using Australian bookshops altogether.
There will come a tipping point, in five or ten years, when the number of people using e-readers and the number of books published electronically means that books printed on peper will be printed in smaller runs and will start rising in price – on their way to becoming rare, luxury goods. PIRs seem almost irrelevant in the face of what’s coming.
well said, Graham – it’s been something that’s troubling me. I can’t afford to buy books, yet i’m hoping to sell one, lol.
I just read that e-readers are coming to NZ in the next six months or so! very exciting to hear that it’s finally happening, even though I may not purchase one until the prices are reasonable.
I use the library personally, we don’t have spare cash for me to spend on books – though I do get vouchers for my birthday, it’s the one time a year I venture into a book store!
Lol. Yup, a real dilemma faced by all struggling authors no doubt! I look at $25 paperbacks and think they’d have to be bloody good to justify that much money. On the other hand, $5 for an e-book would not need debating at all – it’s the price of a coffee in Brisbane these days!
I think a lot of Kindle’s appeal as an electronic gadget will be with teenagers and younger adults who generally don’t read fiction, so I think less of a market will be lost Australian publishers from people downloading fiction from overseas.
Wangaratta does have a Collins bookshop, which I buy from and use gift vouchers at, I even order books there, it’s not like I lack anything to read so I can wait. I only use Amazon to get books not published in Australia and I don’t find it much cheaper with regards to speculative fiction, especially when our exchange rate is lower. Non-fiction books seem to be most mentioned when talking about books being cheaper overseas.
When book pirating takes off, Amazon will have made its own bed.
Graham.
Cassie, there must be a huge pent-up demand for e-readers in Australia and NZ. At, say, $250, a $15 to $20 saving per book downloaded means they soon pay for themselves.
Graham, when my own book is published electronically, it will cost US$5.50 – say AUS$6. With no postage to pay, that makes it a hell of a lot cheaper than anything you’ll buy in a book shop (except from the remaindered bin). My point is that electronic books will push print books out of teh market once enough people have bought e-readers.
As for book piracy, that is already a considerable problem according to my publisher. Joe Konrath believes that pushing down e-book prices to about US$2 is the only way to stop it.
So an author will get from zero to 20 cents a download, unless they bypass publishers and booksellers and sell it themselves, then they might get the whole $2. Which is what they get about now per book, but they will be spending most of their time marketing and their own money on editing etc.
At $2, I can imagine most ebooks that are downloaded will never be read, just accumulated and forgotten about and then deleted when the ereader’s hard drive fills up. Who reads all their emails these days? Whereas, if a novel costs $30 you are more likely to want to recoup your investment by reading it, and its physical presence will remind you of its existence.
Even if ereaders and their ebooks were free, I’ll still be filling my bookselves up with paper books – and occasionally, when time allows, finishing reading one of them.
I would be more interested in print on demand books, where I could ring up the post office and ask them to print up a book to be delivered the next day in the mail. For those who buy so many books that price is an issue, without the bookstore, wholesaler and transport costs, such a book should be about 50% cheaper then they are now. And your publisher would be happy to, they would still be publishing some of those books.
Graham.
e-books are the future. I have fought in the rear guard for many years decrying the use of this technology and fondly tslking up the benefits of print. Then I used an e-book reader. Nothing competes with it unless you can carry a dozen or so books with you. I read about 4-5 books at a time, reading each one at a whim. An e-book reader lets me carry one object and do it all, anywhere.
The old argument about an e-book at the beach (it’ll get wet! Horrors!) seems to me to match the sheets fading line of thought that accompanies daylight saving.
I like physical books and will still buy them from time to time until the price becomes too ridiculous. But that’s got nothing to do with the story, it’s because I’m a collector.
terry
Graham, Joe Konrath’s argument is based on his own experience of how his books sell and in what quantities. Have a look at this post of his: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/10/in-defense-of-print.html and this one: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/10/kindle-numbers-traditional-publishing.html They are both excellent and informative. Essentially, he is saying that the huge volumes you sell at low prices more than compensates for the bigger per-item income from high prices. As a writer, at low prices you make lots more money.
POD may well grow big in the interim, before e-books take over, but this game is always going to end the same way.
Terry, don’t remind me! I live in Queensland where the ‘sheets fading’, the ‘curtains fading’ and the ‘upsetting the cows’ arguments are still the majority position. Maybe it will be the last bastion of print books too and people will move here from other states just to go shopping in a good old-fashioned book shop
Lordy lord, I’m so conflicted about e-readers.
Pro: love love LOVE the idea of multiple books on one snazzy little baby in my pocket on the plane (you know, for all the jetsetting I plan to do once I’m a rich and famous author). Con: can NOT make a decision for the life of me – I need to handle one before I can justify spending the spondooliks, coz it needs to FEEL as good as a book (especially since no matter what I’m reading, the object I’m holding isn’t going to change). Ditto on looks.
Pro: all the arguments about the benefits of digital publishing resonate for me. Con: all the arguments about saving Australian publishers resonate for me.
Pro: an e-reader will pay for itself in about five minutes, the way I read. Con: an e-reader is a significant investment and if I choose the Wrong One, I’m stuck with the literary equivalent of an 8-track.
Add to this my natal sign of Libra and I’m completely stuffed. I’m going for a lie down. Pass the smelling salts.
Janette, theat pretty much sums it up
Since the only wireless e-reader available here is the Kindle, and you can only buy that from Amazon by mail order:
Pro: you only have one choice – decision made.
Con: you only have one choice – bummer!
Hi Graham, I am thrilled that I made you think about this issue. I have not tackled parallel importation on my blog as I have many US readers, but you have picked up exactly my point. I am also British and used to very cheap books. I would buy a stack every weekend, maybe 4 for the price of 1 Australian book.
Cheaper prices are BETTER for authors and publishers because you sell more books. Most writers are readers anyway, we buy stacks of books, in any format we can! I’m glad you also bought up J A Konrath’s post on making money on the Kindle. I asked Amazon when they will let international authors/publishers onto the platform and got this reply
*******
Thank you for contacting us regarding your interest in selling your title in the Amazon Kindle Store.
We are in the process of expanding our Digital Text Platform to accept international publishers. However, we are not yet accepting publishers through DTP without a U.S. address and bank account.
We will contact you once we have completed our transition. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Thank you, Amazon.com
*******
At least that means it is coming!
Thanks again Graham – you got my point without me even making it!
Hi Joanna, You always give me something to think about.
It’s great to see that Amazon is actually making the changes. Thanks for sharing their response. I do have concerns that Amazon and Google are going to have a global duopoly on ebook publishing amd retailing one day. They’re not moving very quickly, but they’re still moving faster than anyone else.
On the other hand, at least they’re doing something while the rest of the industry wrings its hands and wonders which way to jump.
By the way, Joanne, I’m “also British” too, and I too remember how cheap some things were over there (like air fares!) If there wasn’t so much sunshine going free over here, I might even miss the old country
And the even bigger con re Amazon – we are extremely unlikely to hear the Australian voice in a Kindle format. As you quite rightly point out, Australian books will be reframed for the global market.
A free global market isn’t really free. Those populations with the greatest buying power set the rules. When books become simple commodities, and price the only consideration, tiny markets like Australia have no power. Market pressure takes all those magical, individual and eccentric voices and squishes them into a kind of homogenous word-gloop.
Graham, I know you resist the pressure to write for a market, and so you should. Perhaps the future landscape will be Amazon & Google on one hand (think McDonalds and KFC) with authors direct-selling their e-books on the other (the literary equivalent of the Slow Food movement).
Sigh. Another lie-down in order, I think.
As much as I want to protect Aussie books and Aussie authors, there’s no way around it – our system is broken, overly expensive, and customer-unfriendly.
I remember arguing for the complete removal of import restrictions earlier this year (until Mr. Nix came onto my blog and <a href="http://www.ruzkin.com/?p=258" title"pointed out that I was completely wrong") and I understand now the necessity of some level of cultural protectionism… but even so, $25 for a new paperback is shameful, and it’s no surprise that our sales are constantly dropping (I see it every day in my bookshop, and we’re doing WELL compared to other locals).
Whether it’s the removal of GST on books, a massive overhaul of our publishing system, or the complete abandoning of print and a nation-wide move to electronic media, something MUST be done to the price of books if we want to keep this country reading.
I vote for the removal of GST, hands down. Governments in other countries have been unafraid when it comes to protection of a unique culture through tax and other economic incentives (eg France, Ireland, Wales). Yes books here are way too expensive, but being the only English-speaking country NOT to protect its publishers from cheap overseas editions is loony.
And by the way, if you think it’s paranoid to believe the Australian voice may disappear if Australian publishers disappear – check out the recent story about Amazon’s new patent for the substitution of synonyms at http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2009/10/30/amazon-software-patent-shakespeare-copyright-infringement/id=6999/.
While the apparent purpose might be prevention of piracy, even this commentator recognises the potential to take Shakespeare and turn it into ‘plain English’. He thinks it’s a GOOD idea, and I’m not getting into a debate about the merits or otherwise of making Shakespeare accessible (or dumbing it down – you choose).
But wouldn’t this be a neat tool for an editor who’s decided Graham or Terry or anyone else has written a corker of a story, if only they’d kept the language a bit simpler. Or more American. Or more British.
And with a bit of fine-tuning, perhaps readers will have access to it as a Kindle feature. Replace words you don’t like (personally I’m not a fan of “rubber”, have never liked the way it sounds). Every reader has their own version of Tom Sawyer (oh, I’ve deleted the word “cuss” from my edition, m’dear). Or Lord of the Rings (“I didn’t like ‘orc’ so I made it ‘politician’ throughout…”)
Hm, I think I can feel another short story coming on…