Ebooks and the damage done. Why publishing is sick in Oz
Posted on 20. Aug, 2010 by JD in AU, Devices
I wrote this as the first in a weekly guest posting spot for US ebooks mega-blog TeleRead. The weekly column is called “The View From Down Under” , with the idea being to let others know my view of what’s happening in digital reading in Oz. I kicked things off with this “state of play” post.
That Australia is a couple of years behind the rest of the West in ebook uptake is probably not news to many. That much of our publishing industry is unintentionally outsourcing the selling of ebooks to overseas vendors may be.
Let me explain – pbook sellers will howl me down, but they do that.
Australians pay too much for books – they want cheaper prices. Australians are legendary gadgeteers – Kindles, iPads, iPhones and their clones are everywhere. The inertia against ebooks has come from the local publishing industry, which is stuck in a protectionist mindset. They want a wall around our territory, rather than smelling the winds of change beyond it.
The great wall of Australia
When last year the Federal Government toyed with the idea of opening up the publishing market here, the industry lobbied the government to maintain our current Parallel Importation Legislation (PIL), which stops retailers from overseas importing and competing in parallel with local booksellers.
They cite the “death” of the local industry, but since this restriction was lifted from the music industry in 1998, the price of music dropped and the local music scene has gone from strength to strength. Australians have spent the best part of a decade paying about $A30 for paperback books (as they once did for CDs). US folks, would you feel ripped off in paying $US27 for a paperback, when you saw those overseas paying less than half that? Thought so.
Booksellers still manage to cry poor, but I still see this as profiteering. A senior publishing insider even confirmed this to me recently, saying big publishing’s plan was/is to bank enough extra profit in the fading years of the pbook to fund the transition to ebooks.
Step 1 went well, but step two largely hasn’t happened yet, and I think most of the industry here is too far behind to catch up to overseas e-tailers.
Cracks in the wall
The critical point in all of this may be that Australia’s PIL laws don’t apply to consumers. Booksellers here don’t want people to know this, and many don’t, but consumers can shop anywhere they like, and an increasing number are.
Although there are no real numbers on this, I suspect the $1.9b local publishing industry has lost much more revenue to Amazon and co. than it realises, with or without geographical book restrictions.
In a global market of non-tangible goods like ebooks, price and availability are almost all that matter. You can shop anywhere, and where there’s a will, there’s a way. Most ebook readers I know have multiple Amazon or iBooks (or equivalent) accounts with US addresses to happily access any book they want at “overseas” prices. All correspondence is by email, so what does a fake address matter?
Do you think those giant retailers are going to police this and lose this growing revenue stream? No, neither do I.
Flickering light?
Australia’s one dimly shining light is REDgroup Retail, owners of Borders and Angus & Robertson chains in Australia, and Whitcoulls in New Zealand. While they left their run to adopt ebooks till the 11th hour, at least they are now doing something substantial. They have developed the only two major ebooks sites in Australasia www.borders.com.au and www.whitcoulls.co.nz where we southern types can buy ebooks across any sort of range and at a decent price. They also have partnered with Kobo to offer their own reader and multi-platform app.
The Kobo costs $A199 here (about $US180) and ebooks hover around the $A10-15 mark, so in my view prices are still too high (especially with cheap ereaders and their overseas competitors’ recent aggressive ebook pricing). But at least they’re “moving forward”. (Note: it’s Federal Election eve here, and that is a political slogan we’ve had rammed down our throats here for months).
The company could even be doing too much. I spoke to REDgroup’s head of communications Malcolm Neil recently, who said it has been a tough year for them.
Sales are down at least 4 per cent across the publishing industry this year (on year) and REDgroup have also invested heavily in ebook infrastructure and development. They even recently adopted a brave “we’ll beat Amazon’s prices” guarantee. That’s a big call (there must have been a lot of fat in those prices, no?) But they can obviously see the long-term gain past the short-term pain. It’s going to be a global market, so you’d better get used to it.
It’s no wonder the media knives have been out recently, talking up the company’s financial woes. Forward-thinking is generally not the done thing in Australian publishing. This kind of schoolyard mentality sniping of the “different kid” is.
But have they left it too late? Time will tell. REDgroup have signed ebook distribution deals with all but one of Australia’s couple of hundred publishers, and I should be able to announce the schedule for this here next week.
However, when your furthest advanced ebook company have yet to start to open the tap (or faucet for those across the Pacific) of local digital releases, you have a problem.
It’s a problem I’m sure the likes of Amazon, Kobo, Google, Apple and
Book Depository would gladly solve for us.
I see two issues; price and availability. An example: O’Rielly’s web site states slide:ology is available as a print or eBook. The eBook is $27.99 in PDF and print $34.99 (US prices of course). Border REDgroup has the print book for A$55.95 but there is no eBook available.
I have tons of other examples – Switch by the Heath brothers for one .. but too many to list here .. That said I am sure my point’s made.
The BIG question is – how are we going to organise ourselves to change this unacceptable situation?
Aside from angry crowds with flaming torches, we have to support DRM-free books. And build sites (more on this soon) that sell and promote DRM-free.
I think there is more that can be done:
Awareness and building public support – media, word-of-mouth, marketing
Political lobbying – make sure this issue remains on the agenda and is visibly supported
Develop clear evidence based Publisher rip-off case and publicise these
Establish fact base argument – this means being clear about laws, cartels, competition etc. and publishing these in a Wiki format (encouraging experts to edit)
Separate the issue from local publishers emotional “we’ll be flooded with imported books and Australian culture will be Americanised, and local authors will all be wiped out.” – this is related to the point above and requires expertise and research to build a water-tight case
In other words, we have to go from a rant to a revolution and base all action on reality and fact. Else we are just another self-interested fringe group wanting “free stuff” in the eyes of the public. And remember, the publishing industry is some of the richest and most powerful in the world – their ability to lobby is very strong. They are a formidable adversary so we can’t go off anything less than completely prepared to win. Lucky Sun Tsu’s Art of War is a free eBook.
On Fictionwise, I bought the first volume of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld (The Colour of Magic). Once the geolims were imposed, I couldn’t get any more of the series. For several months, I couldn’t get that series in ebook anywhere. They’re all on Perth-based ebooks.com, but of course we’re not allowed to buy them, because we’re in Australia. (Does that make sense to anyone?)
Recently, these titles appeared on Borders in Australia. The prices are competitive: between $8 and $11 per ebook. Borders are definitely adding to their catalogue, so I’m encouraged.
Before buying some of these titles at Borders today, out of curiosity I looked at the paperback prices. The Discworld paperbacks generally range from $20 to $25, but The Last Hero, published in 2002, is $32. It’s certainly not unusual to see newly-released paperbacks over $40, and older ones over $30.
Clytie Siddall recently posted..Its not personal
Great post, and all too true, sadly.
Coming from the UK, I used to get so pissed off at how much cheaper things like books were in the U.S. And now I’m in Australia, it’s even worse!
Computer and IT books are a particular rort over here. Local prices are often triple those on Amazon.com, although Amazon claws some of the difference back with their postage costs (which are a rort in their own right).
And the whole eBook situation here is a total farce. I just got Kobo readers, and can I find anything to buy for it here. Nope.
I was after Justin Cronin’s The Passage. Couldn’t find it anywhere here. Fictionwise, ebooks.com and both the amazons (US and UK) gave me the “geographical restrictions” bollocks. Thank goodness for bookdepository.co.uk, which doesn’t seem to go in for such nonsense. (They sold me the Passage on an Oz-based credit card, anyway!)
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Well I’d disagree with some of that. I certainly have never paid 30$ locally for a paperback.
I do wonder about the impact of overseas deep discounters though. Certainly I’ve used UK outfits quite a bit when it comes to non-novels (I prefer the UK outlets as I don’t wan’t U.S. English books if I have a choice).
I certainly have no idea what kind of impact e-readers are having. I certainly never see them being used. Of course library users completely dominate the people I know and see.
I think I paid $29 for a new release Thomas Harris back in the day, and I’ve seen then for $34.95, which is scary. I think most ebooks are consumed on phones at the moment, certainly in AU. About half of people on the train during my morning commute are consuming media on phones – I think it’s 70% audio, 20% video, 10% ebooks, but if I try too hard to see my fellow travellers think I’m strange…