I’m researching to understand how removing PIRs will effect educational publishing in Australia. Keane’s argument that import regulation reflects a lack of trust in Australian consumers buying local content has made me think that if PIRs are removed as the PC recommends, educational products from Australia may not suffer intensely. After all, won’t Australian educators, who choose which textbooks they want to teach with, want Australian examples and case studies to compliment core theories that are international? A US or UK textbook wouldn’t meet that need, despite having the fundamentals of the discipline outlined and explained. In this respect, does the removal of PIRs matter for educational publishing?

Please let me know if this view is simplistic or if I’m missing something.

One is the contractual relationship between the Australian publisher (the buyer or seller of territorial rights) and the US or UK publisher. If the Australian publisher buys exclusive rights to publish in Australia, the US publisher is in breach of contract if it sells into the territory– period. Sure, the Australian bookseller can buy from a US wholesaler (who is not tied to publishers’ rights restrictions), but margins would be far less than buying direct from the local publisher, and freight costs far lower.

The other business relationship– erroneously tied to the first in Nix’s letter– is that between the consumer and ANY bookseller in the world (internet-based, or bricks & mortar). Current parallel importation laws do not restrict the Australian consumer’s free right to purchase any book from a US seller, nor the seller’s right to sell it too him. Likewise, anyone in the US can purchase Australian editions from any Australian bookseller.

Nix is completely wrong, when he asserts that “The USA and the UK have actually been strengthening their respective book copyright regimes, . . .” The rule of law is alive and well in these countries, and contractual obligations between publishers continue to be duly enforced. Australian-published books absolutely can– and are– freely sold in the US & UK, but only to the extent that the publisher has contractual rights to do so.

What is often lost in this debate, are the baseline reasons for a publisher to sell foreign rights to begin with– versus retaining world rights and selling everywhere. A US or UK publisher looks at the enormous costs associated with building up expertise in marketing, sales, and distribution in foreign markets– not to mention the editorial knowledge to localize editions for foreign readers (if necessary). It often makes much more economic sense to simply collect a royalty on foreign sales than to build up a full-scale foreign operation.

The value that the Australian publisher brings to the table, is the local expertise related to sales, marketing, and publicity, as well as lower relative costs of distribution. Importation restrictions or no– this is it’s competitive advantage.

Thanks for giving this issue some thought, and looking beyond the headlines. The competition industry seems to think that competition is the only thing we ever have to think about but, as you’re aware, there’s a lot more to it when we look at the detail.

I won’t rehash my letter to the PM – it’s on the ASA’s website for anyone who’s interested in seeing the five pages, rather than the two-line quote that’s appeared in the media – but I’d just like to say more about one point.

You mention that American editions of our books, for one thing, feature American spelling, and that’s true. What people may not be aware of is how much else can change when a book goes through the contractually obligatory process of americanization. The US Perfect Skin is different in about 200 ways from the Australian edition, and there’s not one of those changes I would have accepted as part of the Australian editing process. It may be the right version of the book for the US, but it’s honestly too different to be right here. Anyone who knows Australian idiom, and particularly anyone who knows the Brisbane suburbs in question, would continually find changes that were off-putting and their reading of the book would be spoiled. Yet it would be marketed here as, simply, a cheaper version of the same book (cheaper only because they’d be dumping excess stock) . No one is going to put a sticker on the front saying ‘warning – contains 200 differences from Australian edition’.