gluefingers

niki:

There’s been some fuss lately about the price of books in Australia. In order to “stimulate” the publishing industry, multiple socialist laws have been put in place that add huge taxes to imported books, and books published in Australia must have a significant percentage manufactured in Australia.

Sounds nice, yes, but these huge extra costs mean that books are often many times more expensive in Australia than anywhere else in the world. It’s often significantly cheaper to buy books online from Amazon, including delivery fee. And most of the time, because Australian books cost so much, it isn’t cost effective for bookstores to stock a wide selection of titles. We have no large bookstores anywhere near on the scale of bookstores in Europe or the United States, despite a “thriving” publishing industry.

These laws have come under review in the last couple of months but the authors, publishers, and ~*~artsy~*~ left who profit from them, either financially or morally, have successfully kept the laws in place. We’re keeping an industry in operation that would not naturally be able to survive, and rather than increasing quality or efficiency, socialist laws keep it in operation at a reduced capacity. And as Amazon’s customer base in Australia expands exponentially, the laws strengthen to keep books more expensive in order to continue to bolster these, ultimately, failing industries. Authors and publishers win in the short term, but everybody loses in the long term.

One of the consequences of this series of laws is that Australia must pulp more trees in order to fulfil this phantom industry’s false economy. We cannot profit from cheaper and more efficient processes in other major publishing regions (such as the publishing mecca of Singapore, which has no large forests being an island city-state), nor do we, sadly, have the technology to produce paper ourselves using greener methods that are within reasonable bounds of price.

There’s this feeling that I cannot yet name, nor can I fully express using the English language, that washes over me when I learn that the same people who fought to keep the publishing laws in place are the same people chaining themselves to trees and barking down pulpers. Advance Australia Fair!

sure; the method of production of the actual physical book needs some attention.  but that’s not what this is about, is it?  it seems more about an attack on the “~*~artsy~*~” left that you seem to hate with an argument that looks well strung together, but only in comparison with the vast abundance of tumblr tripe.

the taxes on books are necessary in order to support the australian literary industry.  no, this “industry” would not be able to survive on its own.  no artform would.  australian publishers and printers closing would mean no available course for most australian writers, the end of university presses.  the stupidity of australians is reflected more in an ignorance of the invaluable nature of art, not in their inability to fight bare knuckled for every last cent, as you seem to be implying is the best course of action. 

if you want cheap books, go to amazon.  but consider that the abolition of these taxes could signal the end of an artform that is not only a varied range of australian writing, but is reflected in a huge number of independent and specialist bookstores that, put together, have a much wider range than is available in the massive chains that operate in the US - whose example you seem to be arguing we should follow.

finally, ‘socialist’ and ‘artist’ aren’t insults.  the reflex, redneck reaction against these terms is more indicative of the stupidity of australians, at least to me.