Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
I don't think this has much to do with multinationals. I think it has everything to do with Australian retailers not wanting cheap competition from multinationals. I'm pretty sure Amazon, at least, would be happy to sell e-books to Australians at US prices.
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In the physical book market I would agree but mainly because local retailers were not allowed to compete on an equal footing with offshore competition (such as Amazon). They were hamstrung by parallel import laws meaning that they could only sell inflated price items from local publishers while consumers were quite able to purchase from Amazon, Book Depository etc.. at half the price.
The regulations that were meant to protect local publishers left local retailers exposed. There are more factors involved in the collapse of major book chains such as Angus & Robertson, but this couldn't have helped.
Of course local publishers here are quite often just Australian divisions of multinationals. So in a way, multinationals and their lobbying has been partly responsible at least in this area. Of course, this is not digital products which is the main thrust of this discussion.
I have to admit to being a bit confused by how electronic books really work into the equation. Do Australian divisions of international publishers actually have any real input whatsoever into the purchase of ebooks in this country? Are the ebooks we purchase in Australia actually the output of Australian publishers (when not from Australian authors)? Are we just paying a premium on items not actually published here just so Australian publishers can continue to exist at their current size?
If local publishers downsized to accommodate a core focus of publishing Australian authors and relaxed parallel import laws for books from the UK and removed any surcharges for digital books, could this be a viable alternative for them? Geo-restrictions could be relaxed to encompass UK to increase choice but also to preserve UK English as the main language for media in the country if this is still a worthy goal.
Obviously I have no answers and I'm not really sure I'm grasping the essentials properly. The digital economy seems to be rolling forward, essentially demanding people/organisations to innovate and change. I can understanding trying to delay the change temporarily if it's to better prepare for it, but I'm not sure if that is what's happening here.