But it also shows that those differences decreased significantly over the following 12 years, so that in the six months to December 2000 prices in Australia were 0.8 per cent and 9.2 per cent lower respectively. ACCC chairman Professor Alan Fels agreed yesterday that the gap in pricing was much smaller than it had been, but he put that down to movements in the exchange rate. The Australian Publishers Association says lifting import restrictions will not cut prices. Its own study of the current 30 Australian best-selling titles concludes that they are 7 per cent cheaper than in Britain and 30 per cent less than in America. There is no obvious pricing advantage.
Booksellers already import a large amount of books from overseas.
The issue of territorial copyright is critical to local publishers. They say that an open market would remove incentives to invest in and nurture local writers, would allow remaindered overseas editions to be dumped here, and would undermine the capacity of Australian writers to earn royalties. He said that if the market was divided between competing editions, the print runs of Australian editions would become too small for overseas publishers to justify having them. The memorandum to the current legislation, written for the government, makes no bones about the possible impact of the move. But the Australian Booksellers Association has decided that it now supports the changes, saying booksellers want the flexibility to import books if local suppliers cannot provide them.