Buying online books in Australia is a waste of time
Books have been around for thousands of years so you’d think no matter where you were in the world a well established, competitive and widespread market would exist.
With the widespread use of the internet logic would indicate that a product that has been traded for thousands of years would have a strong marketplace presence online.
Here in Australia we have a widespread online book market with a strong presence that’s certainly established…
…but it doesn’t take long to realise it’s anything but competitive.
Just a few weeks ago the Australian government decided not to remove restrictions currently in place on importing books into Australia.
The Productivity Commission earlier this year recommended that restrictions on imports should be lifted to allow for better competition and lower prices for consumers.
Competition Policy Minister Craig Emerson had supported making changes, but faced internal resistance to the plan following recommendations from a Labor working group that the laws stay the same.
“The Government took the view that this would be bad for Australian publishers, bad for Australian authors, bad for Australian culture,” he said.
If I was a local Australian author, and in some (online) ways I guess I am, wouldn’t it make more sense to have your books sell at a higher volume due to a more accessible price?
As for protecting publishers, well sorry if you can’t compete see ya later. I like many Australian’s got ripped a new one paying for Australian published academic books at university and I’d love to see these jokers go bankrupt.
Like the music industry I can’t help but feel it wasn’t so much about protecting the authors but rather the existing monopolised (via import restriction) distribution channels currently in place.
And don’t try and argue that we have e-books now. Sitting down with a stupid electronic device reading stupid words on stupid e-paper will never come close to the physical experience of reading words off a page and having a physical book.
Whilst electronic replacement works for some traditionally paper things (diaries, calendars, letters etc.), I’ve always felt that physical books, like wet shaving for example, are an experience unto themselves.
An experience electronic gadgets simply cannot imitate.
Recently I hit the internet in search of two books. The first was the highly recommended ‘The Rough Guide to Taiwan‘, published by ‘Rough Guides’.
Looking around nationwide if I ordered from an Australian store I was looking at roughly between $30-$35 Australian dollars. Some sites offered free delivery some didn’t.
A quick stop to the Book Depository based in the UK saw me looking at AUD $25.92, shipped to my door.
The second book I was interested in was the ‘Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook’. After visiting a few Australian stores this book seems to go for about $15-$18 AUD, again some sites offered free shipping some didn’t.
Interestingly on the back of my copy of the Mandarin phrasebook there’s a UK recommended price of 4.99 pounds and a US price of $8.99. With the dollar the way it is, is there any valid excuse to be charging nearly $20 for this book here?
The Book Depository halved the cost coming in at $8.09 AUD.
When combined I wound up paying about the cost of buying The Rough guide book locally on it’s own. Shipping time was exactly 10 days. Having placed my order on the 17th November they arrived today, the 27th.
Books are rarely a ‘waaah I want it now!’ item for me so given the savings in price the postage wait was non-issue.
Honestly if my personal experience is anything to go by, then this Australian culture of overcharging for books can’t die soon enough.
November 27th, 2009 at 10:56 pm J(Quote)
The books in Australia are outrageously expensive! It reminds me of those ever-renewing textbook editions back in school days….@#^%@
But then, what items are actually CHEAP in Australia?
I ended up stocking books when I go back to Taiwan. You’ll see the price difference when you go over there. Though mind you, I’m talking about Mandarin books. Beware of imported foreign language books as they can get very expensive.
Have you tried Amazon? I haven’t personally used the US one before, but have tried the Japanese counterpart and the price seems resonable (except maybe for the postage unless you live in the right place in the world).
By the way, do the Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook offers Traditional Chinese or Simplified Chinese or both? I’m taking a guess for Simplified because the description says “essential tool for the Beijing Olypics 2008″. Just a reminder that Taiwan uses Tradition Chinese.
November 28th, 2009 at 7:48 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Oh god don’t get me started.
‘Ok that’s last years edition, you need to go and buy this years edition. It’s $50 more.’
‘wtf? All they did was change the cover!’
‘look do you want to pass or not?’
We used to have an Australian Amazon back in the day. I haven’t really looked at them lately though.
I had a glance at the book, mine doesn’t have the Beijing text on it (6th edition) and I can’t see anywhere where it says simplified Chinese.
…out of curiosity what’s the difference and if I use simplified Chinese in Taiwan will I get a whole bunch of blank stares?
November 28th, 2009 at 1:07 pm Suzie(Quote)
Book companies in the UK can offer free postage at present as Royal Mail are subsidizing their postage costs by 80%. This is fantastic for the book buyer and not so good for the Australian book seller. If you look on eBay you’ll find that all the largest book sellers are in the UK and that’s solely due to Royal Mail.
I totally agree that the price of books in Australia is too high and if that was dealt with then Australian authors would sell far more books.
November 29th, 2009 at 1:45 am Nick(Quote)
The traditional publishing houses if I am correct are owned by the likes of Rupert Murdoch (Harper Collins) ect. No wonder the Google book scanning project and to a lesser extent Amazons Kindle and the flurry of other Ebook readers has this dinosaur of an industry worried and scrambling to innovate.
Rupert just hasn’t a clue when it comes to new technology, his Myspace number one position is now a mile behind Facebook and Twitter and we know his inspirational idea of charging for newspaper websites and blocking Google is his new master plan.
November 29th, 2009 at 7:52 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Ugh well that explains a lot doesn’t it.
The latest on News Corp is their in talks to give exclusive search rights for their news sites to Microsoft Bing. Turns out search engines are valuable to news publishers but only if they’re being directly paid by them.
Personally I’m over all the talk, just hurry up and do it already. I can’t wait for them to see the drop in reader numbers.
Google might have a tendency to rank commercial interests but the few times I’ve used Bing I’ve been consistently unimpressed with the utter lack of relevance in the query results.