Australia is a small isolated market. Until the internet became widely used most Australians had no idea how much they were ripped off in retail pricing for a wide range of products which includes books - paper and ebooks. IT products, of any kind, for example, are demonstrably more expensive in Australia.
There were almost no ebook reader options for many people a couple of years ago. Few retailers stocked the readers and the prices kept them more expensive than some laptop computers (Sony, I'm looking at you). I've had a Kindle since they first became available here in 2009. I had already been buying paper books from the UK and USA for many years - not always on price - mostly on product range. The range of books available in Australia has always been restricted to what suits the distributors. The prices of readers have now fallen quite a bit but now the supply of ebooks is a problem. It's only recently that Google Books have opened here. iBooks and Google Books are usually overpriced compared to overseas prices which are easy to check.
I will do without a book rather than pay 100% more than it sells in the USA and UK. That's without mentioning the books that "are not available in your area".
Now people can find out just how much the rip offs are. Whether the community can get the message over to the wholesale/distribution end of product supply chain I don't know. That's where the problem is. Most of them are monopolies or part of cartels.
Crikey has been following the ebook/paperbook ripoff saga for some time. I've been a Crikey subscriber for some years.
Retailers here are generally complaining quite loudly about loss of sales to on line purchases and want "something" done about it. They have failed to make any effort to use their buying power to deal with the wholesale/distribution agent's price gouging and instead complaining about their customer base failing to show interest in overpriced offerings.
