David Throsby, Macquarie University
The Australian book industry is in a state of considerable agitation as it waits to see if the federal government will scrap the parallel import restrictions of the Copyright Act.
Lifting the restrictions has been recommended by the Harper Committee and the Productivity Commission, and a decision could come next week, next month, or never.
These regulations restrict the importation of commercial quantities of books without the permission of the copyright holder. There is a strong sense of déjà vu in the current situation. Every few years since the 1980s a recommendation for repeal of these import restrictions has been put to the government of the day and every time the government, whether Coalition or Labor, has rejected it.
The arguments for doing away with them are based on simple economics. The restrictions provide some protection for authors and publishers in the face of international competition. The overall effect is to raise, at least temporarily, the price of books to Australian consumers, though the directly attributable cost increase is uncertain.
Keep reading: Parallel importation and Australian book publishing: here we go again
Nevertheless, any form of protection is anathema to economists as it distorts markets, creates inefficiencies in the allocation of our national resources, and restricts the access of consumers to cheaper supplies of products from abroad.
So should books be treated differently from anything else? Books are a cultural product, and can be defined as such for the purposes of international trade. Ever since the structure of the world trading system was set up in the 1940s with the establishment of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the forerunner of the present-day World Trade Organisation, a special case for cultural goods and services has been recognised: the so-called “cultural exception”.
The principle behind this concept is the proposition that cultural products are not just commercial merchandise, but embody cultural values that are separate from and additional to their economic value. These cultural values, it is argued, can be shown to be important to society, especially when they represent something about the national culture from which they are derived.
Keep reading: Friday essay: thriving societies produce great books – can Australia keep up?
So the argument concerning Australian books, written by Australian authors about Australian subjects and published by Australian publishers is that they convey such values. Hence, in the context of international trade they should be granted a cultural exception and should not be subject to the same free-trade ideology as other commodities in the global marketplace.
Some hardline economists – including in the Productivity Commission – acknowledge the significance of Australian books to our culture. They’re willing to accept a role for the public sector in ensuring that the cultural contribution of the book industry is maintained, provided that the community agrees that such a role is worth paying for.
The argument here is that if Australian books generate a sufficient level of public-good benefit through their contribution to our collective cultural life – a contribution that cannot be purchased overseas, by the way – this may constitute a case of market failure. Government intervention to correct for it may be justified if the benefits from intervention outweigh the costs.
So far so good, you might think. But it is one thing to agree that some level of support for an industry is justified – and quite another to determine how such support might be provided.
Economists are likely to argue that instead of the blunt instrument of parallel import restrictions, whose beneficiaries may well include many of the “wrong” people, direct fiscal support would be more appropriate because it can be targeted at those who generate the public benefit, such as Australian authors.
If we accept this line of argument, and if the existence of public-good benefits from the Australian book industry is assumed, it can be argued that the best policy action in the present circumstances would be to remove the import restrictions, and replace them with an equivalent level of protection provided through fiscal channels, for example by increasing the levels of financial support provided to writers and publishers of Australian books.
Such a recommendation may have merit in principle, but in the realpolitik of the Australian government today it simply doesn’t stand up. Federal funding for the arts and culture sector has been under considerable pressure in recent years. Even more pointedly, the government last year signalled its attitude to supporting the book industry by abolishing the newly-established Book Council before it had even held its first meeting.
Keep reading: Short shelf life: the Book Council of Australia is stuffed back on the rack
The possibility that the Government would approve a new budget allocation of any significance to compensate authors or publishers following removal of the import restrictions must be regarded as very remote indeed.
Some commentators have argued that import restrictions are a relatively minor issue, particularly when set against other more far-reaching copyright proposals such as the possible introduction of US-style fair dealing – a prospect that would have much more serious implications for the book industry. Nevertheless the recommendation is there, and needs a response.
What to do? To avoid a confrontation with an entire industry and to demonstrate a concern for the health of Australian cultural life, the government could either abolish parallel import restrictions and provide compensatory support for the production, distribution and consumption of Australian books, or it could leave things as they are.
As we have noted, successive Australian governments have in previous years accepted the latter as the appropriate practical and principled strategy. In its own interests, the present government would be well advised to do the same.
David Throsby, Distinguished Professor of Economics, Macquarie University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Simone Natale, Loughborough University and Andrea Ballatore, Birkbeck, University of London
After years of sales growth, major publishers reported a fall in their e-book sales for the first time this year, introducing new doubts about the potential of e-books in the publishing industry. A Penguin executive even admitted recently that the e-books hype may have driven unwise investment, with the company losing too much confidence in “the power of the word on the page.”
Yet despite the increasing realization that digital and print can easily coexist in the market, the question of whether the e-book will “kill” the print book continues to surface. It doesn’t matter if the intention is to predict or dismiss this possibility; the potential disappearance of the book does not cease to stimulate our imagination.
Why is this idea so powerful? Why do we continue to question the encounter between e-books and print books in terms of a struggle, even if all evidence points to their peaceful coexistence?
The answers to these questions go beyond e-books and tell us much more about the mixture of excitement and fear we feel about innovation and change.
In our research, we discuss how the idea of one medium “killing” another has often followed the unveiling of new technologies.
Even before the advent of digital technologies, critics have predicted the demise of existing media. After television was invented, many claimed radio would die. But radio ended up surviving by finding new uses; people started listening in cars, during train rides and on factory floors.
The myth of the disappearing book isn’t new, either. As early as 1894, there was speculation that the introduction of the phonograph would spell the demise of the books: They’d be replaced by what we today call audiobooks.
This happened again and again. Movies, radio, television, hyperlinks and smartphones – all conspired to destroy print books as a source of culture and entertainment. Some claimed the end of books would result in cultural regression and decline. Others envisioned utopian digital futures, overstating the advantages of e-books.
It is not by chance that the idea of the death of the book surfaces in moments of technological change. This narrative, in fact, perfectly conveys the mixture of hopes and fears that characterize our deepest reactions to technological change.
To understand why these reactions are so common, one has to consider that we create emotional bonds with media as they become an integral part of our life. Numerous studies have shown how people develop a close relationship with objects such as books, televisions and computers. Sometimes, we even humanize them, giving a name to our car or shouting at our laptop for not working properly. As a result, the emergence of a new technology – like e-readers – doesn’t just indicate economic and social change. It also causes us to adjust our relationship with something that has become an integral part of our day-to-day life.
As a result, we find ourselves longing for what we used to know, but no longer have. And it’s why entire industries develop around retro products and older technologies. The spread of the printing press in 15th-century Europe, for example, made people seek out original manuscripts. The shift from silent to sound movie in the 1920s stimulated nostalgia for the older form. The same happened in the shift from analog to digital photography, from vinyls to CDs, or from black-and-white to color television. Not surprisingly, e-readers stimulated a new appreciation for the material quality of “old” books – and even for their often unpleasant smell.
The ones who still worry for the disappearance of print books may rest assured: Books have endured many technical revolutions, and are in the best position to survive this one.
Yet the myth of the disappearing medium will continue to provide an appealing narrative about both the transformative power of technology and our aversion to change. In fact, one of the strategies we employ in order to make sense of change is the use of narrative patterns that are available and familiar, such as narratives of death and ending. Easy to remember and to spread, the story of the death of media reflects our excitement for the future, as well as our fear of losing parts of our intimate world – and finally, of ourselves.
Simone Natale, Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies, Loughborough University and Andrea Ballatore, Lecturer, Birkbeck, University of London
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
The link below is to an article and infographic that looks at what damages books.
For more visit:
http://ebookfriendly.com/what-damages-paper-books-infographic/
The link below is to an article that looks at the question, ‘what is a book?’
For more visit:
http://blog.bookbaby.com/2016/09/what-is-a-book/
What a wonderful time we live in. Sure, there are always things to lament and probably in this day and age there may be more than in any time in the past. Yet there is still much to be excited about and to be thankful for. It may seem incongruous to both lament the current times, while still being excited and thankful for them. That this is a paradox is a given, but I can live inside it without feeling any contradiction. Now this may all seem a little heavy for late on a Saturday night (in Australia it is approaching 11.00 pm at this moment and is sure to be later when I actually upload this post), however I am not really looking for a philosophical debate – far from it. In fact, my purpose is to talk books.
OK, so that seems a rather strange jumping off point, but I trust it will appear relevant as I move along with my thoughts and develop my argument. You see I have a large library. Indeed, some would call my library massive by today’s ‘average Joe’ standard. I have several thousand traditional hard copy books in my personal library. I probably have close to double that in my digital ebook library. So together I am probably approaching 10 000 books/ebooks and that continues to expand rapidly (in the digital realm anyway, having largely stopped acquiring traditional books). Sure, it is unlikely I’ll come close to reading anywhere near that many books. I view a large percentage of these books as ‘tools,’ into which I mine on a regular basis, not necessarily reading each one cover to cover. A great many books I do read cover to cover and I would expect that somewhere between 10 to 20 percent of my books/ebooks will be read in such a manner should I live to a ripe old age.
So what makes me particularly excited and thankful about this current age in the realm of books/ebooks? Well, it is probably becoming a little clear to the bibliophiles out there and maybe not so much to those who read very little. I have limited physical space in which to store books. Indeed my space for storing books has really been exhausted. I have reached peak book storage in my home. I literally will struggle to find room for any future books here, not to mention any further bookcases/bookshelves. I have no further physical room for them. The exciting thing is that I no longer require the physical space in order to further expand my library. In fact, the fields in which I am able to collect books now has also increased and indeed there are no longer any limits in that respect. I can gather ebooks from any field whatsoever and in whatever numbers I could wish, should I choose to do so. Ebooks can be stored on gadgets of all descriptions, on external hard drives, on computers and even in the cloud. I have an incredible amount of digital storage space at my disposal and I am using it.
However it is more than that. I have a large collection of books from the past. Sure, most of these are reprints of older editions (though I do own old books themselves), yet they are still works from an era long past. I would argue they still have relevance for today and I know many people who would also passionately argue the same thing. So though I have a lot of ‘newer’ books/ebooks in my personal library, it is the older ones that I am most interested in here. I can now easily grab a digital copy of most of the older books I have via places like the Internet Archive and/or even Google Books. Most are available in a number of formats, including PDF and Kindle. So I have this great resource available that I wouldn’t have had before this time in which I live. This is an amazing time to live and I am so thankful that I am able to easily get a digital copy of most of the books I currently own. This is great for backup purposes, for you never know if one day I’ll lose the entire physical library in a fire or some other type of disaster. But more than that, I am able to downsize the physical component of my library, claw back some physical space in the home and yet still have these great books fully available to me and able to be used and utilized in a far greater way, not just in the home but wherever I happen to be via my tablet, phone or lap top. I can be on the top of a mountain in the middle of the wilderness and still have access to thousands of ebooks in my library.
Now for many bibliophiles this is an exciting thing, though many still can’t escape the past and live in the modern world where the smell of an old book or the feel of a physical page isn’t the best thing about the written word. For me, it is all about the value of the content. Sure, I appreciate the appearance, etc, of the ebook/book that I have. But it is the content that reigns supreme for me and now with the added functionality of that content, with its much enhanced usefulness – well, that is far more important to me than these lesser things.
That is still not all of it though. With the Internet Archive and similar sites, I am now able to expand my personal library beyond what I could ever have imagined 20 or so years ago. Now I can get digital copies of books that I never thought I could never get a hold of before. This is probably the most exciting thing of all for me. All of those works written by authors that mean a lot to me, I can now gain access to their entire extant works. I can pretty much gain access to all of the works I want and have them in my own home via the various gadgets the modern world allows me to have. Now that is just incredible! And it just gets easier with each passing day – and better. At some point in the future my own personal library may be greater than that of the entire ancient Library of Alexandria and will take up nowhere near the amount of room that that ancient building in Egypt once occupied. Yeah, this is a wonderful time we live in.
A library in Alabama in the United States, is threatening people with jail time for overdue library books. The link below is to an article reporting on the story.
For more visit:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/03/borrowed-time-us-library-to-enforce-jail-sentences-for-overdue-books
The link below is to an article that is against book borrowing.
For more vsiit:
http://www.readitforward.com/article/against-borrowing-books/
The link below is to an article that looks at 7 ways to organise your books.
For more visit:
http://bookriot.com/2016/08/29/7-ways-to-organize-your-books-other-than-alphabetically/
The link below is to an article that takes a look at proper book borrowing etiquette.
For more visit:
http://www.epicreads.com/blog/proper-book-borrowing-etiquette/
At the BookShelf 
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