Federal Cabinet has rejected the Productivity Commision recommedations that were supposed to lead to cheaper books for Australian readers. Restrictions on the import of books published overseas will remain in place. Here are some quotes to help clarify the situation.
Consumer Affairs Minister Craig Emerson "with intense competition from online and ebooks changing the regulations is unlikely to effect the availabilty of books in Australia."
Dr Emerson is rumoured to support the changes, Peter Garrett to be against them.
Australian Publishers Association chief Maree McCaskill "the decision ensures the Australian publishing industry a dynamic future."
Coalition for Cheaper Books chairman and Dymocks chief executive Don Grover "the decision threatens Australian booksellers future and helps overseas reailers who pay no taxes to flourish."
Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commision chairman Allan Fels questioned the FedGov commitment to micro-economic reform and pedicted job losses as readers "flocked to cheaper online alternatives.
Melbourne University Press editor Louise Adler "Australian readers are better served than those overseas and the real issue was larger chains overcharging.

To me the main problem is, and now remains, that it is cheaper to import overseas books directly myself than it is to go to the local book store and buy them. As far as I can tell, this is because the book stores can't import books directly. Instead they most pass through a "local" publisher who takes the opportunity to line their pockets before passing them on.

The apparent justification for this is it is the only way local publishers can survive, and with them local writers can't get published. Effectively they are saying if we give the local publishers a monopoly so that can rip off customers, they will use the extra cash to publish more Australian works.

Who knows. Maybe it even works. But it is killing off the local book retailers, who now find they are only competitive when selling locally published books. That isn't exactly an enormous market. This is because their customers by-pass this cosy monopoly arrangement by importing overseas books themselves. They are only importing them one at a time, but it still ends up cheaper than the local retailers can obtain them for in bulk.

Anyway, all this is probably not as important as it seems now. We are at the dusk of the dead tree era. It and the publishers that live off it have had a good run - 300 years or so. In a few decades I expect it will look like the CD industry do now - a relic of a bygone era. Presumably with its passing we will get new rules. Hopefully they are a bit saner than the ones we have now.

We are at the dusk of the dead tree era.

Let's not pour oil on a burning fire.