Yesterday, a petition of 4,000 signatures was presented to three Labor politicians by Saving Aussie Books member Sheryl Gwyther. Initially, it was going to be me doing the presentation later in the week, but then we found out that the Australian Publishers Association, the Australian Printers Union and the Australian Society of Authors were meeting with Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard on Tuesday, so we brought it forward. This required a lot of re-organising, cause I was working Tuesday.
As a result, the dynamic Sheryl Gwyther sacrificed some frequent flyer points to come down from Brisbane to do the presentation. I picked her up from the airport and took her to Parliament House where I had to abandon her, due to poor health. We members of Saving Aussie Books waited for news of the presentation with baited breath, hoping it went well.
It did, and with more fan-fare than we expected. At the last moment, Aussie author Kate Grenville was able to come along as well, and a press conference was set up (the pictures made it all look very official) and Sheryl was quite fabulous, and has been getting a lot of well-deserved congratulations for her efforts.
However, not everyone has been happy with it. In a press release, the Coalition for Cheaper Books (Dymocks, Woolworths, Coles and Kmart) have attacked Sheryl for advertising on her website her book for sale with an online company that will sell it for thirteen percent below the RRP. Now, apart from the fact that this was one of those pop-up ads that Sheryl has no control over, why does it matter? The company involved, Fishpond, are a NZ based company that are able to sell Australian books cheaply because they don’t have to charge GST. And as an online bookseller, have less overheads than a store, so can afford cheaper prices in order to make profit.
In other words, this attempted attack on Sheryl takes us to the heart of the Coalition’s concerns – online businesses are taking away from their business, and they want to stop it.
And one can’t help thinking that the fact they would stoop to this level to attack one author from a group of authors smacks of desperation. Especially when it comes on the back of them saying the 4,000 signatures pale into insignificance next to the 18,000 signatures they put forward. Well, yes, if we had a company with branches all over Australia and a pool of tens of thousands of members of our rewards program, we’d probably have managed more than 4,000 signatures too. The fact that we sourced what we did, most of us being authors and mothers and several living in the country without the resources of being a national company, makes our 4,000 pretty bloody spectacular to my mind.
What I’d like Dymocks to tell us, apart from the 18,000 signatures, is how many people, like myself, dropped out of that rewards program and stopped shopping at Dymocks stores because of the position they’ve taken on PIR.
Needless to say, a few weeks ago Saving Aussie Books were wondering if we – including the APA, the APU and the ASA - would be able to fight the might of the Coalition. Now, we’re starting to feel confident that the Government will vote to not support the Productivity Commission’s recommendation, and things will remain as they are. And desperate moves like the attack on Sheryl only reinforce that belief.
I’ve been really proud to watch the women of Saving Aussie Books fight. They are a passionate and energetic lot, and I think the Coalition will rue the day they tried to take them on.