Thursday, July 14, 2011

Carbon tax to push up book prices 9% in Australia

Nine News - Wed July 13 2011

The average best-selling book will go up by around 9% from next year under the government's carbon pricing plan, Treasury modelling shows.

The modelling, released to AAP on Wednesday, showed the price of books, newspapers and magazines would rise by 0.3 per cent in 2012/13 because of the flow-on effect of a $23 a tonne carbon price on big polluters.
Based on a $30 price for a new bestseller, this would lead to a 9% rise.
The price rise comes as booksellers are already facing cost pressures, major chains are closing stores and internet giants such as Amazon are gaining market share.
Online bookseller Clayton Wehner said he always expected there would be a cost impact on books from carbon pricing.

The unfortunate effect, he said, was that it would further disadvantage Australian booksellers who competed with businesses based overseas.
"It's clear there is going to be a cost to the environment for producing books and passing them on to consumers," the operator of online store Boomerang Books told AAP.
Full piece at Nine News

1 comment:

Mark Hubbard said...

Crazy. All for nothing. Looks like ebooks are the winner.