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What’s it worth to you? Books and the cost of reading.

JA January 24

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Over the past month or so, the question of price has dominated much of the media spotlight. In literary circles, this has emerged as a lively, and often emotionally fraught, debate over the cost of books – namely who we should buy from and how much we should be willing to pay.

A quick search via price comparison website booko.com.au explains the parameters of choice rather well. Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip retails for $24.95 at many local booksellers, including Borders, Readings, Dymocks, Glee Books and Angus & Robertson. Meanwhile, it is also available for $14.27 at sites like the Book Depository (which smartly does not charge postage) and $12.00 from Amazon (which does).

The presence of online retailers is hardly breaking news, but an economic climate compounded by a high Australian dollar, and the recent furore of the GST debate, is. Mark Rubbo summed it up over at the Readings blog last week:

As the law stands now, if a good or service is consumed in Australia, the tax has to be paid. For administrative reasons, the Howard and Rudd/Gillard governments have decided it is too hard to collect the tax from individuals who import goods directly; because of this loophole, the GST is effectively operating as a tax on Australian retailers, putting those retailers at an unfair disadvantage.

The retailers’ GST campaign highlighted how the strength of the Australian dollar has made some overseas-produced goods much cheaper. I can’t speak for other industries, but this is certainly true of the book industry. Under the Copyright Act, we are compelled to purchase many of our books from the Australian distributor only.

Over at Fly the Falcon, Chris Flynn picked up the issue in December last year, and found for the side of online sellers:

This may be uncomfortable data for those in book retail but how can anyone reasonably expect consumers to not plump for the cheaper online option? Only a fool would believe the public will rush to spend 2-3 times as much for their product in order to sustain book stores just because they’re nice. I used to love going into music stores every weekend to browse the CDs and pick a few out but you know what? That business is dead. It’s over. Things change. No amount of vinyl or music lovers urging people not to download could save them. In terms of book store lovers, I suspect they will be vastly outnumbered by consumers who will, quite simply and without any ceremony or nostalgia, make a stark economic decision to save their money. Sad as it may be to acknowledge, maybe book stores, just like record stores, have had their run and the writing is on the wall. Unless they find some way to genuinely compete on price, which may mean having to accept less profit, then this is surely their end of days.

Martin Shaw responded in turn over at Killings, stating that while he agreed that ‘the Oz publishing industry needs to respond with greater vigour to the unparalleled environment it now finds itself in’, and that the net was a great resource for booklovers, local stores still had something above the cut:

Now, I thought that one of the commonplaces of the role of the bookshop in our cultural fabric is that it is, at its best, a place of discovery. Sometimes you enter with a particular purchase in mind, sometimes you just want to be stimulated by what you see on display or what your bookseller personally recommends … [O]ften you do not know what you want, and online sites, as much as they invest enormous sums into software that will suggest products you might like, cannot match the experience.

There’s a lot to go into here, and probably too much for this short post, but I am curious to hear from others, particularly on the questions of current habits and ethics. Do you feel a moral imperative to buy only from local booksellers? Or is it more of a positive desire, born out of the aesthetics of a beautifully merchandised shop, the leisure of browsing, the relationship between the store, seller and customer? Are we, on the other hand, bound to go the way of the music and TV industries, where, let’s face it, it has become the norm to download songs at the touch of a button and entire episodes can be viewed on the internet entirely for free? Is there room for more than one of the above?

My own personal habits appear to be going every which way. For leisure, I still buy regularly, and intentionally, from independents like Readings and second-hand bookstores. The reason being that yes, as Shaw says, there is something calming about browsing aimlessly through the shelves and picking your way through spines and titles. Often, I just need something to read then and there, and can’t be bothered waiting for that parcel to arrive via airmail. However, for uni, or sometimes work-related things, or research, I’ve started tentatively buying from places like the Book Depository. Titles are as cheap as $2 or $3 (the price of a coffee) and at my last outing I picked up 5 or so. I suppose this all boils down to a combination of rationalism versus the level of emotional investment I have in a title – much more for fiction, whereas less for things I’m compelled in one way or another to read. But enough from me, what say you?

 

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