It also means that if you sell a book to an Australian publisher, to protect themselves from cheap imports later on, they will insist on worldwide rights, depriving authors of the opportunity to sell their work overseas. You might still sell overseas if the publisher manages to broker a deal, but you'll earn significantly less in the way or advances and/or royalties, because more people will be getting a cut of the pie.

If you go the other way, and sell to a US or UK publisher, they may not even consider the Austraian market worth the trouble, which means even if you get published overseas, you may never see the book for sale here. Or worse, they'll dump the remainders here, and you'll get nothing (once a book is remaindered, the author is out of the loop and even if it sells millions, you won't see a dime of it).

The only people who will do well out of this deal are the large bookstore chains. The change is being pushed by the Productivity Commission, BTW, of which by Bob Carr, the former NSW Premier is a member. Funny, don't you think, that he's also on the board of Dymocks?

Here is the letter sent to the Prime Minister by Jenny Darling, President of the Australian Literary Agents Association. You can find further infor here on the Australian Society of Authors page. ASA website.

Don't let this law be amended, people. We have a good system here than protects our writers.

Email the Prime Minister, Peter Garrett, your local member... anybody you can think of, to get this amendment stopped in its tracks!