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I always wonder about this. I've never liked the gouging Australian readers have received at the hands of Australian publishers such that I do most of my physical book shopping online at BookDepository.com.
However, I do wonder at the potentially negative impact on the nurturing of Australian writing talent if the squeeze was put on Australian publishers (as it would be if parallel imports were in place).
The ease of purchasing online does seem to indicate that a change is coming regardless, but as it stands, a significant enough amount of books are probably being purchased in B&M stores to lessen the potential impact.
Assuming the death of local publishing (which may be a bit extreme - but I'll leave it there for argument sake), would Australian authors have the same opportunity to be developed if an overseas publisher was their only (trad publishing) option? If it's difficult to get a publishing deal in your own country, how hard would it be to be discovered by an international publishing house?
I don't give a crap about authors outside of Australia and if parallel imports destroyed local publishing houses, I can't really see too much impact to readers - except lower prices and perhaps the death of Australian English if the imports are invariably from the U.S. However, I do care about the fate of Australian authors.
Should this concern prevent the walls coming down? Possibly not (and my purchasing habits to reveal a personal hypocrisy in the matter anyway) - but I still think there is an argument there.
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