Australians love cheap books. Here's why that's a problem
Australians love cheap books. Here's why that's a problem
Australians' love of cheap books is driving independent bookstores and writers out of business. These prominent authors believe there is a simple solution.
Australians' love of cheap books is driving independent bookstores and writers out of business. These prominent authors believe there is a simple solution.
Maybe the invisible hand of the market belongs to an illiterate fool?
FBP seems like a bandaid in a car crash. Capitalism isn't a good framework for
anything except making like 100 awful people disgustingly wealthymaking and distrubuting cultural artefacts. Book are just hard to make and hard to enjoy relative to Netflix slop and video games etc.books are hard to make compared to tv/movies and video games?? how?
Because outside of some textbooks they are almost entirely solitary efforts until editing, which is a very difficult thing to pull off. They have smaller audiences, take longer to 'consume', can't be sold for as larger margins, and they are not easy to monetise in other ways aside from sale. Additionally physical copies are much more expensive to make than digital copies of media, and many book enjoyers want physical copies.
Just look around, nobody gets rich making books. Mass market tv/film and video games are staggering profitable by comparison, and hence easier and more attractive to make.
Yeahhhh not really that much of a loss is it.
Support your local library.
Well, if you allow the logical sequence presented (whereby small and local authors are disproportionately supported by the bookstores in question), I think it's enough of a loss to be worth collectively considering how to prevent it. This is kinda like the physical books equivalent of losing indie game devs publishing their stuff on Itch.
Seems like a fairly reasonable idea. A bit Listian, which is in line with the way the economic/political world is turning now. Mild industry protections, like this seems, could be very useful for Australia.