Restricting the debate
The storm swirling angrily over Australia about the retention or removal of parallel importation restrictions (PIRs) on books is shitting me up the wall. As a disclaimer, I don’t know enough about PIRs, trade barriers, taxes, tariffs, copyright or publishing to fully comprehend the magnitude of this issue.
I skimmed over the infamous Productivity Commission Report into PIRs, partly in an attempt to understand why books are so expensive in Australia to start with. The figures from both the commission and its discontents don’t seem accurate or encompassing enough to assess the effect that removing PIRs would have on Australian publishing. Personally, I’m more interested in what the report from the government working group will say.
It irritates me that some people have forgotten that Australian publishing is not pristine just because its products are books, and not divorced from the sooty economics of a market system. This debate has been postured as a David vs. Goliath: the fierce, heroic muckrakers of the publishing industry (for PIRs) and the cold, hard rationalist proponents of neo-liberal economics (against PIRs).
The language is irksome.
Take this example:
Try Coles, Woolies, Target, Big W… who want to restructure the Australian publishing industry into a rapacious beasty feeding on the souls of Australian literary producers
And comments like this, on Ben Eltham’s reading of Guy Rundle’s article on PIRs:
It worries me that Philistines – that is, economists – want to be in charge of this debate.
And this:
Right now, a war is being waged in Australia, and if you take pleasure in reading books, then it threatens to directly damage this enjoyment. The worst part? There’s a decent chance you know nothing about it. This dispute has been hidden from the public. Instead, it is being fought in silent trenches by real heroes from the literature and publishing world.
Such platitudes are a tactic by people in favour of retaining PIRs: a suggestion that those angling for cheaper books or with legitimate queries about why PIRs should remain, are complicit in a devaluation of Australian culture. You’re with us or against us.
Why has the ‘cultural value of books’ intermingled with the PIR debate? It’s warranted that people question whether removing the restrictions is worth what may be lost in the process, but to conflate the two issues is manipulative and I don’t like it.
I have a tremendous appreciation for Australian publishing, small press and independent booksellers, but I’m tired of reading responses to this debate articulated in self-important language. Anyone who hints that I’m dealing a blow to Australian book culture by hesitating to support laws I don’t fully understand can sod off.
Some time ago, there was an article in Crikey by Meanjin editor Sophie Cunningham:
‘STAND by for elegantly expressed outrage as authors and publishers respond to the Productivity Commission’s recommendation to end the ban on importing books,’ says The Australian, expressing the kind of contempt for writers, culture and language which has fueled this debate.
Was the opening line a tad snooty? Perhaps, but The Australian raised a strong point. This morning I bought three books from Book Depository—an online book distribution service offering free shipping to Australia. One of the books—a paperback edition of Stefan Aust’s The Baader Meinhof Complex—retails for $45.00 in Australia. Through Book Depository, I bought it for AU$20. There are no territorial restrictions placed on books I order online and they save me more money than I can afford to ignore.
The industry is not at the point where online sales are outstripping direct sales in stores, but it’s a slice of the pie that will gradually get bigger—perhaps to the point where who wins the PIR debate will no longer matter.
I like the point you make about how some are sliding “cultural value of books” into the pricing and import debate. A prime example of market mystification: books are more culturally valuable if they are more financially valuable.
This argument can — and has — been more usefully flipped: if books are of such value to a national culture, surely they should be cheaper, more accessible.
It strikes me, too, that many of the smaller publishers — Sleepers etc — are operating on a level that makes this debate entirely irrelevant to them. As it has been for small indie labels in the music case (where PIRs were similarly removed and online distribution gone bananas).
Or perhaps I’m just living in the delirious afterglow of receiving my Book Depository order yesterday.