Fels backs lifting book import barriers

Competition guru Allan Fels says consumers are being overcharged $200 million a year for books, and backs a Productivity Commission report calling for an end to century-old import restrictions.

The umbrella group for authors has labelled the former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chief as "really cruel and vicious" for suggesting a minority of authors are ripping off consumers.

The Productivity Commission report, released on Tuesday, has called for the scrapping of copyright laws that stop rival publishers from importing books.

It says the "parallel import restrictions" favour multinational publishers and big-name writers at the expense of competition.

"The benefits to book producers from the protected higher prices of books under the parallel import restrictions comes at direct cost to booksellers, in the first instance, and through them to consumers," the report said, recommending the copyright laws be abolished in three years.

Professor Fels estimates the $2.5 billion publishing industry is overcharging consumers up to $200 million a year for books.

That translates into a 20 per cent premium for average books compared with equivalent retail prices in the US and the UK, he says.

In 1989, as the head of the former Prices Surveillance Authority, Prof Fels recommended abolishing a 1912 British law, applied in Australia, which gave publishers a monopoly over the importation of books.

An individual consumer can directly import a book at a cheaper price but a book shop can't do this.

"Australia suffers more than practically any other country," Prof Fels, now the dean of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, told AAP.

"The laws originated with colonial publishers and they were joined by American publishers to divide up the market without fear of being undermined by cheap imports."

The commission's deputy chairman Mike Woods added that Australian consumers were subsiding foreign book producers without helping local writers.

But Australian author Tim Winton used his Miles Franklin award acceptance last month to defend the existing copyright laws.

"They are the only hope we have of making a living here in our own country," said Winton's message, posted on the website of UK publishing giant Penguin Books.

"But thanks to an agency of our own Australian government, Aussie rights are now in great jeopardy."

The Australian Society of Authors, which represents 3,000 writers, took offence at Prof Fels' suggestion that a minority of authors are forcing up book prices.

"That's a really cruel and vicious thing to say - any author earns less income than Allan Fels ever has," society executive director Jeremy Fisher told AAP, adding the median authors' salary of $11,700 was far below Prof Fels' pay packet in academia.

Mr Fisher said other countries like the US, UK and Canada had territorial copyright laws regarding import prices, and disputed Prof Fels' assertion consumers were being overcharged for books.

"If they were paying too much they would turn around and not buy books," he said.

"Sales have increased, consumers are buying books."

Mr Fisher said the scrapping of import restrictions would cost 3,000 publishing and distribution jobs.

But Prof Fels argues that similar deregulation on the importation of CDs and computer software during the late 1990s helped rather than harmed the music industry, and created jobs.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland is considering the Productivity Commission recommendations.