Teenagers reading

Wow, I didn’t think they did, but the Australian Society of Authors told me yesterday that Federal Minister for Competition Policy Craig Emerson announced,

The Government has decided not to change the Australian regulatory regime for books introduced by the previous Labor government…read the rest

This means parallel importation restrictions on books detailed in Australia’s Copyright Act will remain unchanged. The ASA, Australian publishers, authors, illustrators and others campaigned all year to bring about this decision and they’ve succeeded.

ASA Executive Director Dr Jeremy Fisher acknowledged the Australian publishing industry was facing significant pressures.

Minister Emerson correctly highlights the fact that e-books and digital technology are having an impact on the Australian publishing industry. The ASA welcomes change. We constantly seek new means to increase authors’ incomes. We are currently in discussions relating to fair contracts for authors with regard to e-books and products such as Kindle. We have also taken an active role in the US-based Google Book Settlement, which will see authors being able to pursue income streams for out-of-print works. The ASA will always seek improved income streams for its members in both print and digital forms.

Of course the whole world, and one little rabbit, knew this before me, but I only have a few more paragraphs and then I might be able to join the living again.

In other (way more important) news, when I give my (whole, entire) thesis (all of it) to my supervisor, no not at the end of August, not at Halloween, not last week, maybe by this weekend, definitely by next wednesday, I have something very important to blog about – graphic novels! Rachel from Margaret River Library reminded me that this blog is meant to be about graphic novels, not me, so look out for my next post Rachel.

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