So far, from the four letters I mailed, I’ve received one response – a standard from Peter Garrett. But at least someone in his office is opening the letters and reading them enough at least to send the right standard response to the right person. As far as the emails to all the NSW senators, there are 11 and I’ve had responses from three – just “thanks” things. So I’m going to be sending more letters, and more emails this week, particularly to members of the Labor Party, who have set up a working party to look at it and to give a recommendation to the government.
The more I think about this, the more I read, the angrier I get. Okay, maybe we will get cheaper books (and that’s far from guaranteed), but they’ll be cheap American books that will (so I am told) fall apart after just a few reads, and that’s before we get started on the fact they’ll be Americanised. I want to buy quality, and right now that’s what I get. I want to buy Australian books, and right now I can. But under these recommendations, that will get harder.
And upon reading Kim Wilkins’ blog, another fear was set before me. The Productivity Commission has recommended that Government grants for Australian writers increase, because they KNOW this will impact on author’s income. And as Kim pointed out, that means Government will get to decide what is worthy of being supported, and as a genre writer, I know this means my work will be low on the list of “worthy” projects, even if readers would love it. So it’s going to be harder for me, and others writing “commercial” fiction, to get the supplement of income that will be lost from this.
Apart from reading, I’ve been spending time with the girls behind the Saving Aussie Books blog, and there you can get hold of a petition that you can print out, get signed and then send to the girls, and they will have the petition presented to parliament.
As for me, I’ve made the decision to boycott the members of the Coalition for Cheaper Books. Looking at their website, I love the phrase that one of their aims is to “lead to improved literacy in Australia” – how they think that will happen with all the overseas books with American spelling intrigues me. I’m sad in the case of Dymocks, because a) I know they are mostly franchisees and may not necessarily agree with the company and b) they are a good bookstore and some are very supportive of spec fic, but I can’t in all consciousness support the company or give them profits when they don’t want to support my choice of career. In the case of the others, well I’d already stopped shopping at Woolworths, and didn’t go to Coles much anyway, so no real biggie there and I’ve always preferred Target to Kmart, so when I go bra shopping later today, I’ll have to travel to do it but happy to do so.
So yes, the impact of this decision won’t have a huge effect on their bottom line. But I’ll be taking a stand, and I hope that other people will think of doing so as well.