Cheaper books but what about our culture?

There are pressing reasons to look at support for the creative industries in Australia, and to strengthen cultural policy. These industries are growing fast and we have an advantage through a knowledgeable and skilled workforce with a capacity to innovate, but they are also high risk ventures.

What the creative industries should offer is a rich mix of competing suppliers with a constant preoccupation with what readers/viewers/students/subscribers want and at what price. Subsidy solely through a government system of grants will reduce this dynamism in the inevitable move to public sector style accountability systems and consequent slower decision making. As Michael Heyward of Text Publishing said in On Line Opinion recently publishing is lively, diverse and inventive. The government is committed to tax credits for small business research and development, and aims to support creativity as an economic as well as cultural good and the mix of small and medium sized business in publishing is a helpful success story.

The Productivity Commission mentions some tantalising possibilities which might help after a long and painstaking gestation period of government review and industry consultation but none are easy. A Canadian $30 million scheme to support publishing on a per book basis for Canadian publishers only (in a country which also retains territorial copyright), and models based on the current public lending right and educational lending right which gave extra income to authors and publishers for books in libraries and photocopied for class use. Interestingly these last two were brought in partially to respond to changes in technology and distribution - they involved creation of a new monetised service (e.g. access to photocopied materials) based on creation of new knowledge and craft. Basically the commission is not interested in allowing authors and publishers to increase their returns on new work by selling it into a variety of markets around the world (higher prices in a local market with intense interest in a story, lower where there is only a niche interest in the material), instead of only once to a single distributor in a global copyright market - although differential pricing is part and parcel of a developing market and innovative product cycles. Its consideration of options was limited because of our trade agreements which would not allow differential treatment for Australian owned publishers and Australian authors.

The Australian government will also have to make separate policies to support the most innovative art making, including creative writing, which needs subsidy to thrive because the audiences are small. Our peers in major English speaking literature markets do the same. Australia Council publishing grants for instance have a bent for small independent groups which pick up new authors and untried genres.

There is also concern about the impact of removing territorial copyright for educational publishing of Australian material, where technological change is already causing major uncertainty and price is of paramount importance for students. Australia Council support for authors and publishing does not extend to education material and the Canadian subsidy model also does not support educational publishing. This must be considered in any discussion about pricing and open access to material since overseas editions can help in some courses, but not in those dealing with Australian material and cases.

The Productivity Commission’s report has stirred a major debate within the humanities, arts and social sciences about the worth of territorial copyright. The President of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, Professor Stuart McIntyre, said its removal would harm Australian research. The Australian Library and Information Association told the Commission the protection should go. We have heard from Australian authors and booksellers.

On balance, territorial copyright is not the pivotal policy issue for creative industries compared to the massive impact of technological based changes underway, and the major shifts in how younger generations access and use both creative, educational and non-fiction writing and other information/art. To cut the income of Australia’s major creative writers by a conscious government decision is a serious disincentive to the many thousands of young Australians who see creativity as a career whether in design, writing, music, research and teaching. It is of concern if this issue receives priority; however, it will have to be dealt with as more people access books, research outputs and writing on-line.

The Productivity Commission report recommends the theoretically correct position of direct subsidy over industry protection - but acknowledges that the rule doesn’t help much with culturally driven schemes. If the government takes on the task of updating Australia’s investment in publishing and other creative industries for a new era of global markets and the web, it will have to pick its way through the issues raised by the Productivity commission, but which are not settled. Would a three-year deadline help?