Australia’s Amazon Book Battle “If they choose to sell the new Richard Flanagan book at $9.99,” he added, referring to Australia’s last winner of the Man Booker Prize, who has a new novel out, “we’ll sell none.” The second nightmare scenario, according to booksellers and authors, is that Amazon will find a way to tilt Australia’s labor, tax and import laws in its favor. “People who work in the book industry are agents of culture rather than just instruments of commerce,” said Tim Winton, the author of Australian classics like “Cloudstreet,” and one of Australia’s best-known writers. Booksellers are not allowed to import books from another country if the book has been published by an Australian copyright holder within 30 days of overseas release and if the Australian publisher can supply the book within 90 days. Books are bellwethers of great symbolic weight, not just because they were Amazon’s first product and because the company often uses them to wedge itself into new markets, but also because books and bookstores are tightly linked to Australia’s sense of itself, and to the country’s beloved ecosystem of local commerce. Now, many authors say, any effort to soften the rules or let Amazon skirt them would weaken local publishers, reduce royalty rates and return Australia to a reliance on outsiders who may not care to publish the array of Australian authors now in circulation.
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