No Parallel Importation of Books into Australia Petition

If you live in Australia you may have heard that the Government is considering lifting the restrictions on book stores importing Australian books, and books that are published in Australia, from overseas publishers. At present, Australia - like the USA, the UK and Canada (and I believe, most other countries) has a law that book stores should buy from Australian publishers if possible. Individuals can of course buy from amazon.com or any other bookstore anywhere in the world.

However, the suggestion is that if the big book chains like Dymocks can source books more cheaply overseas, they should bring them in. It sounds very appealing - because how could we doubt that they would pass on that saving to the consumer?

(In fact, once you count in tax and the exchange rate,books aren't always cheaper overseas; sometimes they're more, and sometimes they're cheaper because different sized and quality of books are being compared - but I'll ignore that for the moment.)

Of course the books they're sourcing won't be Australian books: even if they started out as Australian books, they will come in with changes not just to spelling and words (torch to flashlight, sidewalk to footpath, etc) but sometimes - especially in children's books - changes to content, so that humour or events that aren't easily accessible to the English or American child are deleted or altered. For example, in my book Amanda's Dinosaur, the line in the original Australian book is: 'goannas and snakes, turtles and lizards." The US edition deleted the goannas. That's fine: it's a book for very young children, and the goannas only appear in that line. It does break the rhythm, but an American five year old child has lost nothing by skipping the goannas. But I think it's a real shame if Australian five year olds lose the opportunity to have one of their native animals mentioned in books.

Of course one of the other things that can happen is that if an Australian book is published overseas, and doesn't sell as well as the publisher hoped, they may remainder the book: get rid of at a fraction of what it cost to produce, simply to get it out of the warehouse. (That's when you see books at those wonderful huge warehouse sales: "Books at 90% off!" etc.) Of course the author isn't paid for these book, and neither is the Australian publisher. Fair enough. And if a few thousand of these $1 books are dumped into Australia, obviously anyone in their right mind would buy those instead of the full price Australian edition. That means the Australian edition may quite likely also have to pulped or dumped too - but that's just more bonus for the consumer.

Unfortunately it also means that the Australian publisher may go broke, or have to cut back so much they decide to simply import books from overseas publishers and not gamble their money on anyone except the most established, best selling Australian authors.

However the government has a solution for the fact that Australian authors will lose their incomes: tax payer funded grants. So there will still be some Australian authors, and a bureaucracy will decide who they are. Much more efficient than letting consumers decide. So even though many printers and publishers will lose their jobs, there'll be a few more jobs for bureaucrats.

If you think Australia needs to maintain its own culture, and its own publishing industry, you can sign on online petition here.

No Parallel Importation of Books into Australia Petition

31st Mt Eliza Art Exhibition

The Mt Eliza Art Show, Oct 23-25, has introduced a new category this year: Bringing Words to Life". I'm honoured to have been asked to provide the words for artists to interpret, and after a lot of deliberation, I've chosen the final poem in Peeling the Onion.

To read the poem and conditions:

31st Mt Eliza Art Exhibition

A tangle of projects

Thought it might be worthwhile explaining why I've been so bad at blogging since we got home from our travels. (I mean, apart from the mouse invasion that meant cleaning everything in the house - and throwing quite a lot out)

Raven's Peak is the main novel I'm working on. I'd promised my agents I'd have it ready to send last week – and I did finish that draft two weeks ago; read it over as a a whole, and made notes. I've still got 32 pages to go over and correct the things I've noted, plus all the other little changes that have happened as I've worked my way through the manuscript. In fact, it's turned out to be an entirely new draft. So, with a bit of luck, it'll be ready to read right through again in a couple of days. As I think it's nearly ready to send, I'll be reading it aloud this time, which will take a few days, and many cups of tea. (It's 42,000 words).

My picture book editor has now sent through the roughs of The Princess and the Panther, and we need to discuss them on Tuesday. Lauren Stringer's pictures are absolutely glorious, evocative and sometimes scary; I think it's going to be a beautiful book. However the editor and I still have some sorting out to do with the text now that we can see them in place, so I've got a lot more reading aloud to do there in the next couple of weeks.

My very patient editor at Henry Holt reminds me occasionally that the second of the Rainbow Street Animal Shelter series is due in December. This year. The story is forming in mind, but I can't start on it till I finish Raven.

And for films:

I'm in the middle of signing a contract for an option on a film of Nim at Sea... more when that's all signed and sealed!


The screenwriter Jill Baer and I are still working on our pitch for The House at Evelyn's Pond. We're both passionate about it, but it's had to fight for its bit of time amongst all our other work.

And apparently an Australian director is very interested in Peeling the Onion! That's happened before, but maybe this will be the one to follow through.

So... that's what's keeping me busy. As things calm down, I'll share a bit more about each of the projects.