Canada, Australia and New Zealand agree to form a ‘coalition’

Frankfurt news - thanks to former publisher Bob Ross who sent the following piece to me.

Pic left - Senior Canadian, Australian and New Zealand diplomats join with the heads of the countrys' three trade associations.

By a unanimous show of hands, publishers from Canada, Australia and New Zealand voted to pursue closer cooperation between the three English-language markets at a special pre-book fair Summit held in Frankfurt today.

‘It makes a hell of lot of sense for these three countries to come together as a coalition,’ said His Excellency Mr Ian Kemish, Australia’s Ambassador to Germany, who attended the Summit alongside Canadian Ambassador His Excellency Dr Peter Boehm and Ms Joscelyn Woodley, New Zealand’s Deputy Head of Mission.
It was standing-room only at the Summit, which was organised by the Association for the Export of Canadian Books (AECB), the Australian Publishers Association (APA) and the Book Publishers Association of New Zealand (BPANZ), and was attended by about 120 publishers. Its purpose was to share information about the three markets, and to identify and discuss the challenges they have in common.

Chief among these challenges is the dominance of the two largest English-language markets, the United Kingdom and United States.
‘We are all struggling to free ourselves from the proprietorial attitudes of the US and UK that continue to dominate the publishing world,’ noted Juliet Rogers, Immediate Past President of the APA. ‘The US views Canadian rights as an automatic extension of their territory, even though they frequently have no intention of responsibly exercising those rights. The UK fails to grasp that the Empire is dead and that Commonwealth markets are no longer theirs by right.’

The Summit received detailed briefings on the three book markets, and some analysis on recent trends. In Canada, for instance, the supply chain is increasingly being integrated into the US supply chain, while in Australia bookshop returns rates have dropped significantly over the past few years as a result of publishers moving to firm-sale on backlist titles.

In New Zealand, on the other hand, the country’s adoption of an open market was described Kevin Chapman, Past President of the BPANZ as ‘like a cancer, an insidious thing’ that had failed to protect the country’s culture.

Taking on Chapman’s exhortation that ‘we have to start taking each seriously and stop ignoring each other,’ a panel then discussed areas where there could be greater cooperation between Canadian, Australia and New Zealand publishers. Ideas discussed included forming consortia to bid for North American or British & Commonwealth rights for books in order to compete with British and American publishers; and working together to address the challenges presented by digital future.
It is expected that a follow-up recent will be held at the London Book Fair to build on the momentum generated by today’s Summit.

‘The digital future presents an opportunity for us to get together,’ said AECB Chair Philip Cercone, looking forward to an era of greater collaboration between the three markets. ‘There are more opportunities than we can imagine.’