Freeing up the books market is great news for readers

G says:

07:50am | 17/07/09

And what about those franchisees that buy in bargain basement remaindered books that they could sell at $4 to make a profit, but instead inflate the price to $15?  I don’t believe it will result in books being much cheaper but rather pad out the retailers profits while providing limited choice as overseas editions are firm sale rather than the risk free sale or return model you currentyly enjoy.

Jonathan says:

08:44am | 17/07/09

Dear The Punch,
How much did Mr Grover pay to have this advertisement placed in your internet newspaper?
All this talk of readers getting lower priced books seems to me to be a bit of a coverup for the big retailers increasing their profit margins.  A few years back I lived in New Zealand for a year.  This was well after their establishment of an open market, and guess what?  Books are more expensive there (even with the exchange rate taken into account) than in Australia.  I spent most of my time in 2nd hand bookshops as a result.  I don’t believe for a second that we will pay siginificantly lower prices for books under this new system: I reckon that the lower wholesale prices will merely be used to increase the profit margins of these big retailers.  Mr Grover is not a bookseller, he is a retailer, and I don’t think even he believes his story of booklovers celebrating this decision.  He and his big-box retail cronies, on the other hand, will be dancing in the street.

Disclaimer:  I worked as a bookseller in successful independent bookstores for over 10 years.  These stores were all profitable without the need for parallel importation, massive discounting or container loads of remainders.  They thrived because of excellent service, understanding the needs of the customer and impeccable taste in literature. 

Dymocks could learn a lot from the humble local bookstore.

yornup says:

09:19am | 17/07/09

G, I think that may just be the point. This is the CEO of Dymocks we’re reading here. I somehow doubt the savings will be passed on faithfully by Dymocks (and others).

kim at allconsuming says:

10:35am | 17/07/09

I’m so conflicted on this topic. All I seem to be hearing is either the ‘toughen up you molly-coddled bunch of writers’ or the ‘our world as we know it is DOOMED’ arguments.

Apparently it means cheaper books for consumers, better profits for book sellers but lower incomes for writers?

That doesn’t strike me as a particularly good outcome.

Steven Danno says:

10:36am | 17/07/09

For many reasons this will spell the end of the independent bookstore. So now we will have Woolworths not only telling us what to eat, what to drink (Dan Murphy’s), what petrol to put in our cars and now what to read. Dymocks is a joke, if they are so interested in passing on cheaper prices to their customers why aren’t they passing on the wholesale rates they already get from their publishers instead of bumping the prices up “to what the market will bear” in Grover’s own words (ABC Radio yesterday). Make no mistake if this P/C report is accepted the big retailers will have bent us over and we will be saying thank you for the privilege of being allowed to pull our pants down for them.

Eric says:

10:55am | 17/07/09

Do people still buy books from shops? I get all mine on eBay now.

TAW says:

11:43am | 17/07/09

Mr Grover, how much cheaper will books be once parallel imports are introduced?  This question has not been answered by anybody because it is likely that book prices will remain the same.
If I am going to pay the same for books, I know I would prefer to see my book dollars go to Authors, Publishers & Printers in Australia than to retailers who are not investing in the local industry.
Give me a guarantee that books will be cheaper and tell me by how much and then I will consider your proposal.
And blaming the internet is just nonsense.  5% of books in Australia are sold online.  Even if that doubles, it is still smaller market share than our independent booksellers.

MD says:

01:27pm | 17/07/09

Funny, every time I go into a Dymocks the books are all at or close to RRP.  Given that you guys get better prices from the wholesalers than the indie stores do, why should we believe it when you say that if the wholesale price goes down, you’ll pass it on?

Andrew says:

01:33pm | 17/07/09

Removing parallel import restrictions will be good news for the Australian consumer. Having lived in Japan for 12 months I was baffled at the fact that imported English books were cheaper to buy in Japan than locally produced English books are in Australia. Furthermore as a University student who is forced to fork out up to $150 for one textbook with a total textbook of up to $1300 per year I strongly welcome any improvements to the competitiveness of the book market that will result in lower prices for consumers.

Australian Publishers are just running a scare campaign because they realise that once parallel imports are allowed they won’t be able to hide behind legislated protection of their markets and will actually have to be competitive to be profitable rather than charging ludicrous prices to inflate their profits.

Sean Cotcher says:

01:48pm | 17/07/09

SC says:
Firstly I have advise that I work for one of the doom saying publishers that Don mentions. 
This debate has been emotive from the start and the facts are never really stated.  Fact Dymocks currently get better terms on certain titles each month and don’t pass those saving onto the customer. Fact Woolworths want access to overseas remainders.  Fact The US and UK have closed markets which protects their local industries and jobs. 
All Dymocks want to do is squeeze local suppliers for higher discounts so they can pocket more profit, they are unlikely to pass any savings onto the end customer.  So finally Fact aside from perhaps more US remainders being dumped into the Australian market books are unlikely to become cheaper in an open market.

A Music Publisher says:

02:22pm | 17/07/09

“Last year a record amount of royalties was paid to a record number of recipients for sound recordings in Australia. Hardly the sign of an industry in decline.”

What’s your source on this? Was this an intentional mis-representation of the facts, or a statement made out of ignorance?

Whilst there have been record royalty payments from APRA, and whilst PPCA reported growth in earnings, neither organisation has anything to do with sales of music. APRA collects for public performance on behalf of songwriters, and PPCA for public performance of sound recordings - NOT sales of physical/digital product. The results of APRA and the PPCA are completely irrelevant to the topic of parallel importing.

In fact, no figures are published on royalty payments for the sale of physical/digital product because the major record companies do not disclose this information.  The closest you could get to information on actual sales of music is what’s published by ARIA, and they only report on wholesale market figures - their last report stated that sales were up by volume, but the dollar value of the market was down 7.91%
http://www.aria.com.au/documents/YE12-08.pdf

So, yes, the public will benefit from the restrictions of the book-selling market being removed, but the publishers themselves will suffer - they will need to supply items at much lower cost to be able to compete, and the reductions in profits will force them to downsize and will reduce their ability to invest in new writers - which is exactly what happened to the music industry.

The Australian Publishers are right to be running a scare campaign - they’ve seen what happened to the music industry, and have good reason to be afraid.

stephen says:

11:24pm | 17/07/09

If these authors can’t make a living under the new rules, then perhaps they should find another job.
(Capitalism, heh)

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