{"id":585,"date":"2011-11-11T09:03:42","date_gmt":"2011-11-10T23:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/knowledgetoday\/?p=585"},"modified":"2011-11-11T09:06:51","modified_gmt":"2011-11-10T23:06:51","slug":"bookstore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/blog\/2011\/11\/bookstore\/","title":{"rendered":"Book taskforce ignores elephant in the bookstore"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<table cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" align=\"left\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"left\" valign=\"top\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/knowledgetoday\/files\/2011\/07\/Michael-Peters.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"97\" height=\"116\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Michael Peters<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The book industry task force\u00a0has suggested a series of recommendations to promote book selling in Australia.<\/p>\n<p>However\u00a0they have ignored the single piece of legislation which is driving Australia readers to buy books overseas.<\/p>\n<p>I argue they have\u00a0completely ignored the fixed retail price of books. Every other country in the world axed this anti-competitive legislation decades ago, but here in Australia we still have it. This means that in Australia we have to pay what the publisher wants to charge for books \u2013 overseas, the bookstores decide the price, and that drives prices down, increasing readers.<\/p>\n<p>Now the recommendations made by\u00a0the industry-wide strategy group, which is chaired by the former Hawke government minister Barry Jones, are that the Australian book industry voluntarily agree to a reduction in its protection against overseas imports, and also to asking the government to scrap GST on books and review unfair postage costs to help it compete, as readers flock to e-books and cheaper books available over the internet.<\/p>\n<p>However this is a complete red herring. The federal government was on the verge of axing this anti-competitive legislation two years ago, but didn\u2019t in the end because of pressure from book shops. Many of whom have now gone bust. They have simply shot themselves in the foot.<\/p>\n<p>I have looked at the\u00a0implications of removing GST on books, and it would be totally ineffective. Bookstores try to blame GST, rent, and high wages for their troubles. The real reason is anti-competitive\u00a0behaviour. As I have told Canberra, we need to learn the lessons of the UK which axed the fixed retail price of books more than a decade ago, and saw a boom in publishing.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.asb.unsw.edu.au\/schools\/Pages\/MichaelPeters.aspx\">Michael Peters <\/a>is a\u00a0lecturer in Business Law and Taxation at the Australian School of Business.<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Michael Peters The book industry task force\u00a0has suggested a series of recommendations to promote book selling in Australia. However\u00a0they have ignored the single piece of legislation which is driving Australia readers to buy books overseas. I argue they have\u00a0completely ignored the fixed retail price of books. Every other country in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":588,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions\/588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}