Sorry, Tim, but I still can't buy that argument

Here's a link which will take you to the pre-recorded video in which author Tim Winton uses his Miles Franklin acceptance speech to argue that Australia should retain "territorial copyright" protection for our authors and publishers.

Sorry Tim, but as I said in my previous post, I can't buy the proposition that Australians should be required to pay more for Australian books than they otherwise would, all in the name of protecting our culture.

If there are inequities in a free international book trade, they should be addressed by competition policy and anti-dumping rules.

If our authors don't receive full royalties on their books when they're imported from international publishers, it's up to our authors and literary agents to seek better contract arrangements. If they need government support to do so, it would be a valid role for government to play -- especially in international negotiations.

Some may think Grumpy Old Journo's comments mark him as a right-wing fundamentalist. On the contrary, a left-of-centre, socially progressive commentator should have no problem in also being an economic rationalist.

Here's the ABC report about Tim Winton's winning the Miles Franklin for the fourth time with his novel Breath, and the report from the Trust which administers the awards.

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How much should we tax bookbuyers to support Australian culture?

Your blogger has had too many distractions lately, so he's only just read the full text of the closing address by novelist Richard Flanagan (pictured) to the Sydney Writers Festival on May 24. Click here if you'd like to read it before I tell you that it's a superb, elegant speech – and that it's full of claptrap.

I was a finance journalist for much of my career, and when it comes to arguments for tariffs and protection from international competition, I heard them all back in the 1970s.

Let's see. There's the infant industry argument – protect us from overseas competition until we grow enough to take on the big boys around the world. Worked well for BHP, didn't it?

Or the defence capability argument – we need strong industries so we can ramp up production of war materiel if we're under threat of invasion. Except that in the 21st Century, we'll all be blown to smithereens before we convert those railway workshops to producing Liberators and Lancasters.

Or to protect our pristine primary production, don't introduce disease with imported apples/pork/fish/poultry/etc. – sometimes a valid argument, but often too self-serving.

All have something in common. Corporations, unions and primary producers plead that the public should pay more for goods and services than they otherwise would, whether it's in the shops or paid by their taxes.

But culture is different, isn't it? Australians should pay more for their books to allow our stories to be told with Australian voices.

We must continue “territorial copyright” so that our authors, publishers and independent booksellers thrive under protection from those unscrupulous overseas publishers and our greedy retail giants like Woolworths and Coles and bookstore chains like Dymocks.

That's the proposition Richard Flanagan tries to sell us in that beautifully constructed speech (it really is worth reading, so here's the link again). His exposition is so good, even I almost succumbed.

But I can't go along with it. Stripped of all its high-falutin' good intentions, it's an argument that higher authority – the Australian government – should decide that a cultural issue is so worthwhile ordinary Australians should pay more for their books than they would otherwise.

And that's a decision the Australian people should make, not their governments. The only place Australians can register their vote is in a free marketplace. All the government should do is make sure the marketplace works properly, and is regulated by well-administered competition policy.

[Richard Flanagan alleges our market would be flooded by dumped books which would otherwise have been remaindered or pulped by US publishers. If he's quick, he's just got time to lodge a submission to the current Productivity Commission inquiry into Australia's anti-dumping legislation.]

Flanagan also troubles me with his suggestion that the Australian government should stuff our dollars into a bloody great milch cow with plenty of teats, so that an entire Australian cultural industry – authors, publishers and independent booksellers – can take sustenance and thrive.

He's envious of the government money which subsidises some film-makers. I don't blame him. But when did you last see a government-subsidised Australian film and say,"Wow!” ?

The last Australian film Grumpy Old Journo enjoyed was Shadows of the Past (GOJ post, May 28, “An excellent film stuck in the bush”, a movie for which film-maker Warren Ryan received no government assistance). Should we go that way in boosting the publishing industry?

I have another worry. Should – God forbid! – Australians ever elect another John Howard as Prime Minister, he will have a ready-made structure to implement a Quadrant-inspired purge of Australia's “culture industry”.

But the biggest flaw in Richard Flanagan's argument is its total failure to look to a future in which many readers will use the internet to obtain books by digital downloads to home computers, laptops or specialist e-book readers such as Amazon's Kindle.

The internet is international, and trying to rope off Australian writing into "territorial copyright" will become difficult to enforce and probably counter-productive.

The Australian government would serve our writers and our cultural interests better by developing policies which earn authors exposure and proper royalties in the emerging world of digital publishing, and it should make sure its voice is heard in forums which develop the protocols for internet publishing.

Perhaps we could allow "territorial copyright" to continue – but only while the Productivity Commission, or a specially set up inquiry, develops those policies.

If you type "territorial copyright" into Google or another search engine, and restrict it to Australian pages, you will come up with hundreds of results. All of which disagree with me. Still, they might be worth your time.
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Caution - this contains a free plug

E-books have been around for a while, but they have yet to overcome my scepticism about their usefulness to the general reader.

So I'd better step carefully here – Suzanne Fleming (pictured), who has given me valuable help from time to time and hopefully will do so again, has just taken on the task of Business Development Manager with the e-book publisher Globusz Publishing.

Suzanne is an irrepressible bundle of creative energy, and she's taking Globusz into new directions which probably will change my ideas. But let me explain some of my existing doubts.

First, it's going to be hard to shift established readers from books that pass from friend to friend, or can be borrowed free from the library. Books are comfortable and convenient, even if you do have to lug them around and remember to return them. Displayed on your bookshelves, they're a great way to boast of your erudition.

And look at my wife, Merry. She'll spend hours in an armchair, reading. But at a computer, back pain will cripple her before she manages a couple of emails.

Perhaps, one day, we'll solve the problem with a laptop or some other screen device which she can use in an armchair, but I think Merry will demand Foxtel satellite TV first.

I see plenty of niche markets for e-publishing – textbooks, manuals, travel guides, that sort of thing – but I wonder about general publishing, fiction and non-fiction. General book publishing is a fashion industry, with a market manipulated by platoons of PR ladies, celebrity interviews, reviewers, book prizes, writers' festivals and book signings, in-store promotions, and the rest of it. Big money stuff, all of it.

So how does an e-publisher compete as it signs up promising but unknown authors and develops their skills, at the same time building a trusted “brand” that keeps buyers returning and placing orders?

Here's where Suzanne's ideas look promising. Globusz will change focus from general e-publishing, moving to a writer's assessment model. It will invite the public to evaluate writers' works within a formal Star Rating system, and the highest rated authors will be put on a list to be sent to literary agents and publishing houses (which, to me, seems to acknowlege that writers hope to graduate from e-publishing to the "real thing").

I like the idea. Writers and readers should both feel involved in the business in a way which goes beyond commercial relationships. Indeed, I foresee a less formal online community developing, with more conversation between readers, writers and editors, to run alongside the Star Rating assessment model.

That would be in line with today's most exciting trends on the wider internet, where a combination of “Web 2.0” technologies and changing user expectations are breaking down many of the old ways of doing things. By old ways, I mean the ways we used the internet five years ago!

Also, I could see specialised communities, covering areas from avant-garde experimental writing to romantic fiction, forming within the wider Globusz community. All of this, it seems to me, should boost the demand for basic e-publishing of books.

If you'd like to see Suzanne's ideas taking shape, put www.globusz.com into your favorites list (yes, that's the free plug of which I warned). It might be a good address to pass on to any aspiring writers you know (another free plug!). Since I posted the material above, Suzanne has put up a blog where she invites readers to comment on her own work. This link will take you there.