Category Archives: rant or rave

Would we be better off without local book sellers?

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One of my resolutions for this year was to buy less books but to ensure that the ones I do buy are bought locally. I’m honestly not sure that anyone wins out of this (certainly not the authors whose books I won’t be buying at all) but it is a genuine attempt to support the local book selling industry which I hope will survive at least as long as I do. Though at times I wonder if it wouldn’t be kinder to shut it all down immediately and put everyone out of their misery. Because the industry surely cannot survive when it is engaged in such lunacy as charging 3-4 times the price of the exact same edition of a book bought from America.

I listen to a lot of audio books and I buy all the ones I listen to (my library has a lousy selection and their brand new digital loan system is completely unusable anyway). I have been a member at Audible – a US based site – since 2008, paying on average $12AUD for each of the 100+ titles now in my library. I’d love to use a local alternative, especially now that Audible is owned by the behemoth that is Amazon, but I can’t. My choice is not between using Audible and using a local provider of a similar service for a slightly inflated cost. My choice is between using Audible and not listening to audio books at all.

Because in Australia audio books are ridiculously, prohibitively expensive and the few that are available are being sold by (and presumably to) people who live in  2004.

Here’s a comparison of the price and other features of the book I most recently listened to: DEATH DELIGHTS written by Gabrielle Lord, narrated by Francis Greenslade and published by Bolinda Audio in 2011.

Audio Book Comparison

They’re charging nearly four times as much for a product which is significantly inferior? What possible basis could there be to justify such bullshit (pardon my language)?

Thanks to Jon Page**, independent Sydney bookseller and current President of the Australian Booksellers Association, I have learned about some of the reasons for the disparity in pricing between Australia and other English-speaking markets. Indeed my gradual move back towards buying books locally is largely due to Jon convincing me of the need for people like me to do so and that it’s not all price gouging on behalf of ‘the industry’ as I have previously argued (here, here, here and here). For example our higher salaries and better working conditions contribute to the higher prices and it doesn’t seem fair of me to blame the book industry for a national reality (and one we should be striving to maintain).

But even with the best will and intention in the world I cannot believe that there are enough legitimate reasons for it to cost $27.16 more to sell me a book from within Australia than to sell me the exact same edition of the book via the US. For heaven’s sake Bolinda Audio has provided the edition to Audible to sell in a better format than they are offering locally. I have to wonder if they are, Mel Brooks-style, trying to go out of business without appearing to do so.

I have no industry statistics to back up this claim but when I first joined Audible its advertising claim was that it played host to over 50,000 titles and that number has doubled in the last five years so I believe audio books are a growth part of the publishing industry. Given the paucity of Australian books available in the format and the prohibitive cost of purchasing those few titles locally this has the potential to be yet another opportunity for local publishing which will go begging. Either the local industry is too stupid to do a modicum of research to find out what is an equitable ‘going rate’ for its products or it is banking on us, its customers, being that dumb. Either way it’s a losing strategy and one I refuse to support. Frankly if this is the best that the local industry can do then I might have to seriously re-think my charitable notions of doing my bit to keep them afloat. They don’t deserve it.

*my monthly membership is $22.95US which entitles me to 2 credits which in effect equals 2 books as only a very few enormous books cost 2 credits, I have never bought or wanted a book which costs more than one credit. That means each book costs just under $11.50US which at today’s exchange rate is about $10.89 and at the worst exchange rate we’ve had in the last five years saw me paying around $13.25 per book.

**Jon’s written some great articles including What Price a Book in Australia?, The difference is 16% and Repeating the same mistakes only on a bigger scale. He also tweets intelligently on book industry related topics from @pnbookseller

I hate women’s fiction

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If I had noticed one of Caroline Overington’s books on a shelf somewhere before signing up for the Australian Women Writers challenge this year I probably would have passed it by. I’ve no clue if they are written specifically for a female audience but they are certainly marketed almost exclusively to women and that kind of thing turns me off. I am bored and disheartened by popular culture’s constant reinforcing of gender stereotypes and my tiny (undoubtedly pointless) rebellion is to actively avoid the things I am supposed to read, watch, wear and think purely because I have a vagina.

But one of my personal goals in taking on this reading challenge was to dabble outside my reading comfort zone and so, early on in the year, I embarked upon Overington’s MATILDA IS MISSING (selected it must be said purely because the library had a copy prominently displayed when I went browsing) with as open a mind as I could muster.

The book tells the tale of couple who should probably never have gotten together and when common sense forces them apart the ugly subject of their young daughter’s custody arises. Overington tackles this thorny issue non-judgementally from numerous perspectives, both parents, extended family and the judge tasked with deciding on Matilda’s ultimate placement, with an equal mixture of drama, sensitivity and intelligence. It is a fine book and the fact that it will hardly ever be read by a bloke is sad. Because one of the things that good fiction, such as MATILDA IS MISSING, can do is provide much needed insight into the complex issues that occupy our real lives, often with a better balance and objectivity than is achieved by factual reporting.

In this book we are shown how each participant in a family break up is affected by that event and I couldn’t help thinking that if we all could have a little more understanding of these complexities we might behave differently when such sad occasions arise in our own lives. Because child custody is not a ‘women’s issue’. Our families, communities and news broadcasts are full of children trying desperately to make a go of living in multiple households, bereft fathers and mothers denied access to their offspring and a growing mountain of murder and suicide victims whose tragic endings can be directly linked to custody battles. The exploration of these issues in any forum is to be applauded and should not, by dint of marketing and tradition’s casual dismissal of ‘family’ as a purely female domain, be marketed to only half of the population.

I had not planned to read multiple books by any author for this challenge but when I saw that the challenge’s creator, Elizabeth Lhuede, had a heartfelt, angry reaction to Overington’s latest novel, SISTERS OF MERCY, I couldn’t resist. In my experience books that make intelligent people angry are almost invariably worth reading.

Not surprisingly I suppose it’s another book that will, largely, be invisible to the male half of the population and, again, it’s their loss. Ostensibly it is about the disappearance of an English grandmother who travels to Australia to meet Snow Delaney, the sister she only became aware of upon the death of their father. But really the book is Snow’s disconcerting, uncomfortable story. Snow was not exactly abused as a child but her mother was cold and undemonstrative which, one supposes, influences the woman that Snow becomes. As a nurse Snow starts out with lofty ideals but the system in which she works and the condition of the people she must care for soon sour her. By the end of the novel she has a number of severely disabled children in her care but her methods for looking after them are…questionable (that’s all I’ll say so as to avoid spoilers). What the book does though is raise another incredibly complex issue that is almost completely ignored in wider society. Disability, especially severe disability requiring around-the-clock care is one of the thorniest ethical issues I know a little bit about. Whose job is it to take care of the severely disabled? Especially those (and there are many) who are abandoned by their parents? What constitutes an adequate level of care and who should pay for it? How much respite should the parent or guardian of such a person be entitled to? And who will pay for that? And how will all of this be monitored to ensure no one is rorting the system and no one suffering unduly? And who will pay for that? And that’s all without even touching on the even thornier ethical dilemmas that occur daily in real life though we may like to pretend otherwise around when medical intervention to prolong the lives of the severely disabled is warranted. And when it isn’t.

Of course in our society the vast bulk of caring for the severely disabled is done by women but that doesn’t, or shouldn’t, make it a “women’s issue”. Surely it is up to us all to take responsibility for society’s most vulnerable people. And that doesn’t mean manufacturing outrage whenever the media highlights some horror case or other, as happens in this book, but actually doing something practical before the horrors happen. I’d like to think that if enough people, of any gender, read this book we would rise up as one and demand better from our politicians, our charitable organisations and ourselves on behalf of the severely disabled and their long suffering carers who, if they are relying solely on the government for their income, officially live below the poverty line.

But such a dream won’t have even have a chance at becoming reality unless we stop labelling and marketing such fiction as women’s fiction, with all the derision and dismissal the term carries. It’s irrelevant whether such derision is warranted. It exists in places that matter: in the reviewing pages of newspapers and magazines, the corridors of academia and in the rooms in which decisions are made about how to sell books. And because it exists there many good books which explore issues that we collectively need to tackle with more intelligence and creativity than we are currently doing are ignored and the issues they tackle remain forever unresolved.

I hate the very idea of women’s fiction and I dream of the phrase disappearing from the lexicon.

Hit ‘em where it hurts

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The internet and mainstream media are both ablaze at present with discussion about authors – some unknown, some best selling – who have been discovered engaging in the morally bankrupt practice of using fake identities to both positively review their own books (bad enough) and negatively comment on the works of other authors (a thousand times worse). I’m not going into details here but you can read a Telegraph (UK) article or this blog post or this one to learn that among the admitted culprits are Stephen Leather, R.J. Ellory and others.

Among the many legitimately outraged responses have been loads of calls for an author’s code of conduct. To which I say, why bother?

There is after all already a sort of unwritten code of conduct for being a human being isn’t there? And doesn’t it contain sentiments along the lines of ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ and ‘don’t be a lying a-hole?’ People who would repeatedly stoop to criticising the works of fellow authors under assumed names have already jettisoned morality and common decency from their behavioural arsenal. Why would they be any more likely to follow an author’s code of conduct? The problem, as I see it, is not an absence of rules for proper behaviour but rather the absence of real consequences when those rules are ignored.

Because I’ll bet Ellory, Leather and all the rest gambled that even if they were discovered they could release a couple of platitudes disguised as genuine sentiment and all would be forgiven. And who can blame them for thinking that?  If my limited watching of Oprah and Dr Phil is any indication in this day and age you can get away with almost anything as long as you cry when you are found out. And if you cry in public all the better.

But what if it wasn’t worth the risk for authors to engage in such practices? What if the cost was more than a fake apology or a few public tears? What if there were real and material consequences?

Jon Page is the proprietor of a Sydney bookshop and President of the Australian Bookseller’s Association. During a twitter conversation today regarding this subject he said that his shop would not be stocking the books of two authors proven to have engaged in this puerile behaviour. How wonderful I thought. And then…what if he wasn’t alone? What if all booksellers agreed that they would not sell books by an author who was proven to have engaged in this behaviour? And what if they told customers why the books weren’t being stocked? Could we go further? Could readers and book bloggers agree not to discuss an author’s books in any forum if he or she was proven to have engaged in the truly despicable practice of anonymously criticising the work of other authors? Could such degenerates be blacklisted from being reviewed in mainstream media and consideration from all relevant awards categories? For ever?

I realise I may be taking things a little far here but I believe this kind of behaviour will continue unless it becomes too risky. Someone with no moral backbone might be prepared to risk a little bit of transient shame but would they be prepared to risk a complete dearth of sales?

Those of us who read, buy, sell, publish and love books must all play our part in letting it be known that there are real consequences far greater than having to release a weasel-worded apology (as Ellory did) for being a bottom-feeding douchebag.

Can three baby rants make one adult rant?

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Either the world is good or I’ve been too busy to rant here lately but during this past week a couple of things have gotten under my skin. None of them are really annoying enough for a fully-powered rant all on their own but together they’ve allowed me to build up sufficient steam :)

The first is what I think of as the Americanisation of literature. I liked Toronto-based legal thriller THE GUILTY PLEA a lot but the edition I read had some very un-Canadian features. Firstly, on multiple occasions clunky bits of exposition were included to explain the differences between the Canadian and American legal systems. Occasionally this was done via the Canadian detective character explaining things to the American journalist character in an almost realistic fashion (though surely any journalist worth her salt who regularly operated on both sides of the border would know this stuff already) but at other times it seemed like sentences were inserted in the narrative virtually without context. Secondly, and even more annoyingly, Canadian characters talked in imperial measurements (e.g. some chap was referred to as weighing a certain number of pounds versus the kilograms that a Canadian would actually use in real life).

I can’t decide which explanation for this sad state of affairs is worse. On the one hand there might only be one edition of the book and everyone – including Canadians – is just supposed to accept a Canadian story that has an oddly American feel to it. Presumably if this is true then publishers and/or authors are deliberately inserting the American-specific language and exposition in any book they want to do well in the American market. The alternative possibility is that there is a separate edition of this book (and probably many others) for American readers which means, presumably, that American publishers think American readers are too stupid or too insular to be able to read a book in which lawyers can’t engage in a side-bar conversation while in court and judges don’t have gavels.

Either way this homogenisation is something I think we should all (American readers included) rail against. Surely one of the joys of reading books set in different places is learning a little something about different cultures, language and social norms. And if we come across an unfamiliar fact or a word there is virtually ubiquitous access to Google or Wikipedia these days for a quick bit of ‘research’.

Is it really unreasonable to want a book set in Canada (or Sweden or France or Australia) to read like it is set in Canada (or Sweden or France or Australia) rather than the 51st state of the bloody union?

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The second gripe is the woeful state of eBook formatting. You’d think I’d have been chuffed that Aussie author Andrew Nette’s début novel GHOST MONEY was not only great reading but also well formatted. And of course I was. I liked the crispness of the font, the spacing of the lines, the margin width that meant none of the text was affected by the tiny shadows formed on my eReader’s slightly inset screen. And I particularly liked the fact that the book was free from the wordsallrunningtogether and inexplicably

split lines that virtually every other eBook I’ve read is plagued by.

But after the first glow of wonderment had abated I started to get hot under the collar about why all my eBook reading experiences aren’t similarly perfect.

I’ve paid good money for some eBooks that my fifth grade English teacher would have knocked back with something along the lines of “no one will care about what you say if you can’t say it properly” or an acerbic “are the jam fingerprints an integral part of the story young lady?” (both are actual quotes from Mrs Gibbon, a recent immigrant to Australia from India when she taught me and though 35 years have since passed I still feel the influence of her insistence on presenting the written word with due reverence) (it is, after all, with a nod to Mrs Gibbon that I even proofread my text messages). It could be argued that the book’s publisher, Snubnose Press, only publishes eBooks so they ought to be good at it but how long should traditional publishers get a pass for? A year? A decade? For the term of their natural lives (which won’t be much longer if they don’t smarten up)? Perhaps in the interim Snubnose can make some extra dosh by offering to format the eBook versions of traditionally published books for those publishers who, seemingly, can’t be bothered.

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My last gripe concerns FIFTY SHADES OF GREY. Or rather the people who will not stop promoting it. I received three emails and one piece of physical junk mail in the last week alone offering deals on the trilogy. All from local (Australian) stores.

Book stores in general and Australian ones in particular have been bemoaning their lot in life in recent years. The incursion of online shopping and easy access to US and UK stores with their significantly lower prices has, undoubtedly, impacted the local market (for example the store where my book club used to meet closed its doors 2 weeks ago). But whenever they talk about fighting back they bang on about how they have something unique to offer readers, especially in the areas of curation and recommendation. THERE IS NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT OFFERING ME A BOOK I CAN, LITERALLY, PICK UP OFF THE STREET.  For all its slightly worrying behemoth-ness Amazon’s recommendation algorithm has never offered FSoG up to me.

I am the kind of customer my local book stores need. I spend a ridiculous amount of money on books each year, unlike the occasional reader who will be tempted to enter the store just once for this Fifty Shades of Soft Porn that everyone is talking about. And I want a book store to make intelligent recommendations and offers. Instead of stuffing their newsletters and shelves with yet more copies of FSoG how about some Australian offerings? Each time I have bought a copy of Virginia Duigan’s THE PRECIPICE this year (one for me, two as gifts) I’ve had to order it in. It’s a new-release Australian novel that was long listed for this year’s Miles Franklin award and it’s f***ing brilliant. But there’s no room for even a handful of stock copies amongst the entire display of E.L.James’ tomes. If that’s all my local store is going to offer a reader like me then I will revert to buying online (something I’ve hardly done at all for the past 12 months).

The one where I give unsolicited advice

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Dear independent* author
 
I understand that in today’s topsy-turvy publishing world you have to take on many roles in addition to your writing. I am sympathetic to you because in my job I too have had to become an expert on many things that aren’t part of the work I trained to do including budgeting, managing people, procuring goods and services within the ever-changing rules and regulations of the jurisdiction in which I work and having a grasp on a massive array of hardware and software. Frankly it sucks having to be a Jill of all trades and master of none and I appreciate that you’re probably doing the best you can.
 
I know too that you probably have received a boatload of advice – solicited and not – about how best to market your book and make it stand out from the million or so other books published each and every day. So the last thing you probably want is yet another piece of such advice but I’m gonna give you some anyway. 
  1. No means no. Not ‘maybe’ or ‘well since you badgered me I will change the habits of a lifetime and read a werewolf novel just this one time’.
  2. An unsolicited plea by you for a total stranger to read/review/promote your book does not entitle you to a response or an explanation. If you push for one, be prepared for it to be curt. Or even unpleasant. 
  3. Do not assume every book blogger on the internet is American. When you do (and a lot of you will) don’t be surprised that it irks those of us who aren’t.
  4. Before you plea with a book blogger to host your blog tour / interview / giveaway / free tattooing of first-born child with your book’s logo take 60 seconds to look at the blog you’re asking a favour of to see if such things are regular features there and/or whether or not your particular book is the kind the blogger(s) reads. Or if you don’t do this (and a lot of you won’t) don’t be surprised when you get no response.
  5. Spell and grammar check your begging email. 
Kind Regards
 
Bernadette at Reactions to Reading
*After a comment I realise this might be unclear – in my head I was writing to authors who have ‘published’ their own manuscripts by whatever means available without those books having gone through the benefit of a process which has turned their manuscript into a novel (e.g. editing by someone other than a family member, proofreading, typesetting and the myriad of other things that the publishing process has traditionally taken care of). I wasn’t thinking of authors published by small publishing houses that are sometimes called independent (though rarely by me as I don’t really know what it means when it comes to publishers)

She gave up on me first

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I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I was struggling with Sara Paretsky’s BREAKDOWN due to the overtly political nature of the book’s content. After putting the book aside for a week or so I picked it up again last weekend and persevered for another week before giving up for good yesterday. For someone who normally reads 2-3 books a week only managing 73 pages of a single book in a week is an indicator that the two of us are never going to get along. One of the reasons I tried to struggle through to the end was so that I could feel able to review it properly but as the book glowered at me from the bedside table for the last week I realised I needed it gone from my life more than I needed to prove a point.

By the time I gave up on the book Paretsky had made me both sad and cross. About the only experience I can liken reading BREAKDOWN to is going to a meeting of Get Up (an Australian left-leaning multi-issue political group similar to Move On in the US or 38 Degrees in the UK). I admit I have only been to a couple of meetings but I found them full of people believing fervently in their own moral superiority on just about every issue you can think of yet so full of vitriol for anyone who dared to have an opposing opinion that I could not wait to leave. I saw little evidence of the tolerance and thoughtfulness the group demands from its opponents. I felt the same way as I picked up BREAKDOWN every night this week and read a few more pages of Paretsky’s didactic, lengthy prose on a variety of subjects that had little to do with the story she was meant to be telling and her thinly disguised and mean-spirited caricatures of real figures from current public life in America As soon as I opened the book each time I couldn’t wait to put the book down again.

I’m sure it would have been harder, but someone as intelligent and well-educated as Paretsky has the potential to write a book which makes all sorts of people stop and think about their view of the world. Instead it feels to me like she’s taken the easy route in which she’s given words of encouragement and succour to the people who already think like she does and treated everyone else like a child. Or evil personified. It’s like she’s given up trying to change the world through her writing and is happy to reinforce the stereotypes and divisions she sees. She’s certainly forgotten how to tell a ripping yarn.

 

This book is Political with a capital P

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I am currently reading Sara Paretsky’s latest V.I. Warshawski novel, BREAKDOWN. It’s set in the present day and sees the series’ long-suffering heroine chance upon some teenage girls who are in a cemetery performing a ceremony they’ve learned from a series of popular books which will call upon vampires. Or something. Unfortunately they’re also in the presence of a murdered man and in trying to shield the girls from the unsympathetic eyes of the police Vic opens up a world of trouble for herself.

I’m about a third of the way through the book and am increasingly frustrated by the political agenda it makes no attempt to hide. I don’t imagine anyone who’s ever read one of Paretsky’s books or seen her interviewed would be surprised that the book takes a left-of-centre view of things but here it is not much more than a diatribe against Fox News (sorry Global Entertainment Network or GEN as it appears in the book) and various thinly disguised commentators and politicians. The plot device used to clunkily wedge all the “we on the left are very hard done by” messages is that several of the teenage girls are related to important Chicago political figures whose opponents use the escapade to trot out hate-filled campaigns against them.

The frustrating thing about this dominant feature of the book is that I have no idea what earthly purpose it serves. It is surely only preaching to the converted as no one who is even vaguely right-leaning in their politics would read much beyond about page 50 unless they had a strong masochistic streak. And do those who share Paretsky’s views really need 430 pages of reminding that their world has gone to hell in a handbasket? The more worrying prospect is that such a book doesn’t just do no good, it might actually do some harm. Can it really help to have yet another extremist view of the world thrown thrown into the cesspool that is modern politics? Do we really need to separate out into “us” and “them” at every turn? Can’t someone take a more nuanced position? Please?

My ultimate concern as a reader is that the story isn’t great and the reason it isn’t great is that there’s too much preaching and kvetching and polarising going on. When Vic isn’t being bitter she’s being so bloody righteous that she makes me want to vote conservatively (and for the record I voted for The Greens in our last election because the mainstream left wing party wasn’t socially or financially liberal enough for me).

I like fiction that explores social issues but this book isn’t exploring in any kind of thoughtful way: it’s daring readers to disagree with its agenda and ridiculing them if they do. On top of being annoyingly superior that’s bad writing in my view, and exactly the kind of thing that “liberals” often get upset about when “the other side” does it. Tsk Tsk.

Have you read BREAKDOWN? What did you think about its political overtone? Do you like books that have this kind of political overtone? Should I finish the book (I am on page 116 of 430)?

More book spin nonsense

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I wrote last year of my annoyance at book blurb writers but have largely managed to keep my blurb rage under control since then. However I feel the urge to ask “what the…?” with respect to the marketing of the latest book in Elly Griffiths Ruth Galloway series, A Room Full of Bones

Combine a splash of Alan Bradley with a pinch of Kathy Reichs and you have a gripping new Ruth Galloway Mystery — a good-hearted mystery series with a dark edge.

I don’t know that I actually want to spend time imagining the awfulness that would result from a combination of Alan Bradley and Kathy Reichs but I am a hundred percent sure I wouldn’t want to read it. I suppose I should be grateful they didn’t throw in a reference to Griffiths being the next Stieg Larsson :)

What’s the silliest or most off-putting book blurb or marketing material you’ve spied lately?

You’ve missed the point. Again.

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First, some facts…

Sue Grafton’s V is for Vengeance was released in the US last Monday.

I want to read it.

I can buy the hard cover from Amazon US.

I can buy the audio CD from Amazon US (though I cannot buy the audio download from Audible US)

I can buy the hard cover, the trade paperback or an audio CD from Book Depository in the UK or Amazon UK. Both of these sites offer free shipping to Australia.

…and an assumption…

Based on past, extensive (most of my books in the last 3 years have been bought from one or other of these stores) experience it would take a maximum of 10 days to arrive on my doorstep, usually around 6-7.

…one final, stupid fact…

I cannot buy the book in any format from any store in Australia at the time of writing (and it doesn’t appear as a pre-order on any book website I access regularly)

….and a guess

The book will cost $10-$15 more if I wait to buy it in an Australian store than the cheapest offering currently open to me ($19.19 from Book Depository with free shipping, Australian RRP for trade paperbacks is usually around the $33 mark).

What the BISG says about it all

In summary the Book Industry Strategy Group thinks this is all fine and dandy. Read on if you want a more detailed ‘analysis’ (i.e. mini rant).

The BISG had as its overall aim

to work with industry and government to develop a comprehensive strategy for securing Australia’s place in the emerging digital book market, while making the Australian book industry more efficient and globally competitive.

and it delivered its final report to the Australian Government last week.

Recommendation 4 of the report deals with Parallel Import Restrictions (PIRs) which were established as part of our copyright law in 1991 and which prevent the importation or selling of a book if there is a local holder of rights for the same book (in turn, the local rights holder must make the book available within 30 days of the book’s publication elsewhere). The aim of these restrictions was to level the playing field for local sellers (who face problems not of their making in the form of the ever-present tyranny of distance and a small population relative to other English-speaking markets) and to offer the best chance for works by local artists to thrive (I swear I have tried but I never did understand this part of the argument).

The BISG had quite a bit to say about the PIRs including a repetition of the Government’s 2009 finding on the issue, namely

The Productivity Commission found that the PIRs placed upward pressure on book prices, restricted commercial decisions for booksellers and were an ineffective mechanism for offsetting cultural externalities for Australian works;

and goes on to provide an update on the situation as it is now

…through its research and consultations the Book Industry Strategy Group notes that over the last two years, the Australian market has become more integrated with international markets. In 2010, Australian consumers purchased around 18 per cent of print books online, of which 53 per cent (or $150 million) was from an overseas online bookseller, thereby placing considerable pressure on Australian booksellers.

and admitted that the PIRs probably have the exact opposite of their intended effect

the 30/90 supply conditions of the PIRs no longer provide the same level of protection for the Australian industry as they did previously. As consumer expectations about price and availability increase, the PIR conditions may in fact advantage overseas suppliers and steer consumers away from books authored and produced in Australia. The emergence of online sales has created a buyers’ market and expecting consumers to wait 30 days to purchase a book that they can access immediately through overseas suppliers is no longer feasible.

And went so far as to state quite explicitly that

Consumers in Australia need access to print books and ebooks as soon as they are available in their market of origin and as soon as publishers can realistically get them to our markets. This is a change that recognises the impact that e-retailing and technological change is having on booksellers and publishing (highlighting my own)

But despite all of this the BISG does not recommend the immediate repeal of the PIRs and instead suggests

That the Australian book industry (authors, printers, publishers and booksellers) formalise an agreed, industry-wide code of practice that will reduce the timeframe for retention of territorial copyright from 30/90 days to 14/14 days without the need to amend existing legislation.

It’s enough to make a reader weep.

They’re saying they acknowledge PIRs don’t work, they acknowledge they’re hurting the industry, they acknowledge that over half of the books bought online by Australians are bought overseas (and we can guess this figure is growing) but they’re still not ready to give up the PIRs entirely.

In a strange way I think I’d have had a modicum of respect for them if they’d dug their heels in but this half-arsed recommendation proves they’re not a strategy group; they’re a bunch of insipid, fence-sitting, do-nothings unprepared to admit that the industry has been wrong about this issue since 1991.

There is, honestly, enough source material for an entire year’s worth of rants in the rest of the 108 page report but I’m not sure I have the energy.

For now I’ve got to go order a book from the UK.

Putting the spin on books

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I have thought for some time that it must be fairly easy to get a job as a book blurb writer* because you don’t have to be very good at it. Most of the blurbs I read either give away so much of the plot it’d be pointless to read the book after having read the blurb, or they completely and utterly fail to describe the book at all. Anyone could do that right?

Of course I was wrong.

Blurb writers are f***ing brilliant at their jobs. The reason I thought differently was because I didn’t understand what their job was until recently. Their job is not to accurately summarise a book or tease you with early snippets similar to what you might expect if you read the book. Their job is to sell you the book. They don’t care a damn whether or not you read the book once you’ve bought it, or like the book once you’ve read it. All they care about is that you buy it and they’ll pile on as much spin as they have to get you to do it.

My epiphany on this issue came to me when I was reading the other reviews for Box 21 (a.ka.a. The Vault) at Good Reads. I had finished reading the book and written my own review and, as is my habit, I started to browse the other reviews of the book. Quite a lot of them concurred roughly with my own views (the book was ugly and sad but brilliant) but quite a few of them were scathing. On closer inspection most of the ones in this category were upset because their reading experience did not match the expectations set by the book’s blurb writers and sticker-putter-onners.

As is the case with virtually anything coming out of northern Europe these days Box 21 was sold in America being similar to Stieg Larsson’s millennium trilogy. Of course anyone who has actually read that trilogy and Box 21 will know that likening the two makes about as much sense as comparing a sofa to kitchen sink but the blurb writers know that lots of people liked the Larsson books and the odds are that those people would buy something similar. The blurb writers don’t care that their claim for similarity is not true as long as the claim gets  people to buy the book. And it worked. Plenty of people bought the book expecting something similar to the Larsson books they enjoyed and were disappointed (in the same way that you would be if you bought a sofa but the store delivered a kitchen sink).

Now that I have woken up (however belatedly) to the reality that blurb writers don’t give a damn about readers I understand why the back of my edition of Camilla Lackberg’s The Preacher says “chilly…just like the icy environment it describes” despite the fact the entire book takes place in a sweltering Swedish summer and the heat is mentioned approximately 817 times throughout the story (people sweating, buying electric fans, fainting with heat exhaustion, being on summer holidays….). But in blurb-writing land Scandinavia = cold so a major plot element is ignored and not allowed to get in the way of a good, book-selling blurb.

It can be dangerous, or at least expensive, to make threats on the internet these days so I won’t share my fantasy in which all the world’s blurb writers are collected together and set atop a giant bonfire. I’ll just suggest you stop reading their blurbs. They’re bullshit.

*for the purposes of this post I am lumping all people who put things on book covers/jackets (blurbs, stickers, pull-quotes) under the umbrella heading of blurb writers (it’s more polite than the collective noun I use in my head).

hat tip to Karen of Euro Crime for the pics