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Booksellers continue lobbying for lower book prices

Are Canadian book prices too high? This question was posed yet again in a CBC News report published earlier this week. The occasion for the story was the appearance on Tuesday of bookseller representatives before the Senate national finance committee, which is looking at price discrepancies between Canadian and U.S. consumer goods.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue, the report contains a number of unfortunate inaccuracies. For one thing, it assumes without supporting evidence that shoppers remain “angry about the higher cost of books in Canada,” despite the fact that, from ebooks to steep online discounting, consumers have more options than ever when it comes to accessing inexpensive books.

A related readers’ poll erroneously attributes the price disparity between U.S. and Canadian books to “import duties,” when in fact no such tariffs exist. The policy on imported books is governed by the Copyright Act, which obliges Canadian booksellers to source from Canadian suppliers so long as a book is readily available and not priced to gouge consumers.

For instance, the allowed markup for books originating in the U.S. is 10 per cent, which many Canadian suppliers claim is necessary to cushion currency volatility. As Q&Q has pointed out before, this policy has actually had a deflationary effect on Canadian book prices in recent years.

That didn’t prevent booksellers present at the Senate hearing from taking a firm stance. Campus Stores Canada representative Chris Tabor, who runs the Queen’s University bookstore, characterized the policy as “a private tax established by public policy.”

CBA president Mark Lefebvre, who works for the ebook retailer Kobo, asserted that “books are often thrown in the face of booksellers,” presumably in protest over high prices. Lefebvre added: “Our members, who run, own, and manage local businesses in communities across our great nation, are tired of being  apologists for a policy that none of them have any control over.”

If some of this sounds familiar, that’s because the CBA took a similarly aggressive stance two years ago when it called on the federal government to end restrictions on “parallel importation.” However, the move was not universally supported by CBA members, and it prompted a rebuttal from Toronto bookseller Ben McNally.

Whether the more recent hearings will lead to concrete changes remains to be seen. At the moment, the Senate finance committee has not scheduled to meet with other representatives from the publishing or bookselling community.

By

February 16th, 2012

5:35 pm

Category: Book news, Bookselling