INDUSTRY
Pricing structures and their effect on literary culture in contemporary Australian publishing
by Callum Mateer
An unresolved tension exists within the publishing industry—books function both as commodities and cultural goods. This requires publishers, booksellers and those in policymaking to navigate profits, accessibility, competition laws and cultural production. Debates around pricing mechanisms frequently centre on whether books should be treated as ordinary market products subject to unrestricted competition, or whether they possess a cultural status that justifies different forms of economic protection. Within Australia, these tensions have intensified in response to increasing discounting practices, online retailers, the cost-of-living crisis, and growing concerns regarding independent booksellers and local literary culture.
Over the summer, a group of friends and myself put together an anthology zine and were accepted to showcase it at the Festival of the Photocopier—a local zine fair. After many hours of editing, proofreading and physically compiling the material, we were due to attend the all-day event. After finishing everything that goes into the production and sale of such a product, I suggested selling the zine at $5.00. I was concerned with selling each and every copy, making our money back, and getting the anthology in front of as many eyes as possible. A friend of mine countered this idea, suggesting that we reconsider the pricing mechanism. They outlined a number of reasons why this would not only benefit us, but why, in fact, it was beneficial to the community in general. Their argument followed the logic that when you discount a product, in the manner I’d suggested, you not only undervalue the product you’re selling, you also run the risk of severely damaging and devaluing the products being sold and produced around you. From a cultural standpoint, this could figuratively cheapening the hard work and passion poured into these projects, fundamentally altering how that hard work and commitment is perceived.
This experience may broadly reflect renewed calls for fixed retail pricing (FRP) within the industry, highlighting a deep uncertainty about how books should be thought of and understood. While Australia continues to maintain external protections through parallel import restrictions (PIRs), retail pricing remains largely deregulated, allowing discount department stores (DDS) and online retailers to use books as ‘loss leaders.’ Advocates for deregulation consistently argue that discounting increases accessibility to books. Critics, however, maintain that sustaining discounting places pressure on booksellers and publishers, which reshapes how literary and cultural value is perceived. Debates extend to whether the industry’s existing structures are capable of supporting diverse cultural production.
Commodity or culture?
Debates surrounding pricing mechanisms within the Australia publishing industry have continued since the effective dismantling of FRP protections under the Trade Practices Act 1974, later modernised—to reflect changes and transitions in the industry—into the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. These legislative frameworks were designed to promote competition by preventing anti-competitive pricing practices. Importantly, Australia was not transitioning from a fixed-price system toward deregulation; the legislation intensified an existing commitment to competitive market principles. The contemporary Australian debate surrounding FRP therefore emerges not simply from concerns regarding retail competition, but from anxieties surrounding the long-term sustainability of local literary culture under increasingly deregulated market conditions.
Jackie Money, Sales and Marketing Director at Melbourne University Press, recalls that during her time with Thames & Hudson and Hachette, luxury brands Chanel, Vivienne Westwood and Dior sold ‘catwalk’ books to Discount Department Stores (DDS), like Kmart and Big W. These luxury brands were collectively horrified to learn that their linen-bound coffee table books were being sold at a reduced cost, as compared to their $120 commercial value. They requested that this practice cease as it ‘undermined and undervalued their product’. The perception of price, in this instance, was understood to be working against the outward image that these brands were projecting—high culture, luxury and exclusivity—both economically and culturally. While anecdotal, these experiences reflect broader structural debates that have shaped Australian publishing policy for decades, particularly surrounding competition, pricing and the cultural status of books.
Jeanette Winterson, in a 1991 introduction to her 1985 debut novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, identifies a similar issue with what she calls ‘supermarket bookselling’, saying: ‘Supermarket bookselling is interested in turnover not culture. Big chains want big profits and show themselves ignorant of and uninterested in names that are unfamiliar’. Winterson’s argument frames bookstores as not simply retail environments, but as cultural spaces that support literary diversity, discovery, and smaller or less commercially dominant authors. DDS operate differently to traditional booksellers because they treat books as consumer products or ‘loss leaders’. Echoing this sentiment, Jackie Money acknowledges a strong relationship between pricing and perceived cultural value, arguing that discounting alters how books are perceived: ‘If I saw a new literary debut selling for $10, I’d [assume it wasn’t] very good’. She reiterated this by emphasising that publishing is motivated by cultural commitments: ‘Most people that I meet in publishing are very much about it being a cultural good over a commercial good’. Publishing consultant Kate Cuthbert challenges the distinction between cultural and commercial, arguing that books already exist and act as ‘fully commodified objects’, that there is, in effect, no need to distinguish between culture and commerce—‘it’s a false dichotomy’. She argues that readers do not necessarily interpret discounted books as culturally diminished, instead ‘they see a bargain’. What emerges from these perspectives is that debates surrounding book pricing cannot be reduced simply to questions of economics. Rather, they reveal uncertainties regarding how books are understood in the contemporary Australian landscape.
Pricing and policy
Conducted as part of this report, a survey was completed by 21 participants, a majority of whom were aged between 18 and 29. Most participants held bachelor’s degrees, however a substantial minority also held postgraduate qualifications. The survey data may be considered limited in that a majority of respondents accessed the survey through university channels, resulting in a sample group that is comparatively highly educated and more likely to be engaged with literary culture.
Price sensitivity and discount behaviour
Throughout the accumulated data, a strong focus on price emerged in relation to accessibility, financial limitations (the cost of living), and how often and why purchases were being made. Participants identified affordability as important in making purchases, especially considering how often they were purchasing books, and where those purchases were being made. Accessibility was a central concern, with many respondents expressing the importance of ensuring books, literacy and general reading remain accessible to the widest possible audience. However, while price stood out as major theme, responses were divided regarding purchasing behaviour itself. Many participants indicated that they would not necessarily purchase from a cheaper retailer solely to save money. This suggests that factors beyond price also play a role in influencing consumer decision-making.
Perception of value (cheapness vs quality)
Most participants did not explicitly associate discounted books with reduced literary or cultural value. However, the majority of participants possess tertiary-level education and were recruited through university networks, suggesting a respondent group already engaged with books as cultural objects, rather than as purely commercial products. This reflects a degree of pre-existing investment in literary culture, where purchasing decisions are shaped not only by cost, but also by considerations of authorship, publishing and cultural production.
Support for independent bookstores
Support for independent bookstores manifested consistently throughout the survey. Participants cited atmosphere, browsing experience, curated selections, staff recommendations and a desire to support local businesses as reasons for their preference. Ethical considerations also appeared throughout, particularly in regard to making the decision to avoid online retailers or DDS. These responses align with arguments commonly associated with pro-FRP positions, particularly centring around the idea that bookstores contribute cultural and community value beyond the simple sale of books.
Buying habits
Participant buying habits were aligned to the purpose of the purchase itself, particularly whether books were being bought for personal use or as gifts. Most respondents indicated purchasing books (or a book) on a monthly basis, followed closely by fortnightly purchases. Smaller groups reported purchasing books either weekly or only once or twice a year. These responses suggest that book purchasing often occurs in occasion-based consumption patterns, rather than impulsive consumer behaviour.
Attitudes toward pricing regulation
Survey responses demonstrated a generally favourable attitude toward FRP. Many respondents associated book buying with experiences tied to physical bookstores, browsing, curation and community engagement, rather than price alone. At the same time, participants continued to express concerns regarding accessibility and affordability, particularly in relation to broader economic pressures. This suggests an underlying tension within consumer attitudes: while many respondents support forms of cultural protection for the industry, they also remain conscious of ways price effects access to books, and therefore their cultural value.
The survey’s result reveal that while participants frequently expressed support for independent bookstores, literary culture, and broader forms of cultural production, they still identify affordability and accessibility as concerns. This reveals an underlying tension within the survey data: although many respondents supported arguments associated with protecting the cultural value of books, they also recognise that discounting can increase access to books for consumers.
Conclusion
In a 2025 article for the Australian National University, Alice Grundy articulates many of the concerns raised throughout this report: ‘Australia has bid farewell to manufacturing and other industries, but we cannot produce our culture overseas’. Grundy points towards several possible futures for the industry—including price increases, mergers, new retail models and greater government support—while ultimately warning of the increasing precarity of Australian publishing. These competing solutions reveal a sector still divided over both its priorities and the mechanisms required to sustain it.
Taken together, the findings of this report indicate the need for further research into alternative pricing systems, policy reform, and broader industry practices capable of addressing the cultural and commercial tensions embedded within Australian publishing. Comparative analysis of FRP systems suggest that such models may support bibliodiversity and independent bookselling without necessarily producing significant long-term increases in book prices. However, Australia’s comparatively small and externally exposed English-language market requires further investigation before these models could be effectively adapted locally.
Accordingly, this report recommends a combination of academic and industry-based research conducted alongside publishers, booksellers and other stakeholders. Based on the evidence gathered, a hybrid approach may offer the most viable path forward: maintaining existing protections such as PIRs, exploring limited or modified FRP models, and expanding government support through measures such as tax incentives and cultural subsidies. Together, such measures may contribute to strengthening the long-term sustainability of Australian literary culture.
Fixed retail pricing (FRP)
There is a substantial body of literature positioning books as having both economic and cultural value. In their submission to the Office for National Cultural Policy, Crosby, Throsby, and Zwar argue that the Australian book industry generates not only a measurable economic value, but also significant ‘non-market’ cultural value through ‘literacy development, cultural participation, education, and national identity formation’. In particular David Throsby’s broader theories surrounding cultural goods insist that cultural products cannot be understood simply through market logic due to their social and symbolic significance. These are important distinctions to make in debates concerning book pricing—they complicate assumptions that lower prices are necessarily better for readers or for the industry.
Throughout Europe, these systems have been used to justify arguments of bibliodiversity, independent bookselling, and cultural sustainability. Germany and France, in particular, have strong FRP systems that prevent retailers from heavily discounting books. It is argued that these systems protect smaller booksellers from price competition and encourage ‘non-price competition’ that emphasises curation, service, events, and diverse stock. But these systems, however, remain highly contested as studies examining the fixed pricing system suggest that restrictions on discounting may reduce overall book consumption by increasing prices for consumers. These, however, have more often been attributed to outward factors such as social and economic changes, like the development of the internet. Still, these concerns continue to position accessibility and affordability as primary counterarguments.
Market regulation
Australian literature concerning pricing structures has focused less on FRP specifically and more broadly on market deregulation, competition policy, and PIRs. The Productivity Commission’s 2009 report on restrictions surrounding the parallel import of books adopts a strong market-oriented perspective, that argues that PIRs contribute to inflated book prices and reduced consumer welfare. While the report acknowledges cultural arguments made by publishers and booksellers, it largely values efficiency, competition and consumer affordability. The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) similarly identifies globalisation, online retail, and DDS as factors threatening traditional pricing structures in the industry (a concern echoed in calls for the UK to reintroduce their Net Book Agreement (NBA) model in 2017). More recent industry discussions illustrate the presence of a growing dissatisfaction with these deregulated pricing schemes, with calls from independent booksellers for the government to begin reconsidering FRP mechanisms. These frequently argue for books being classified as culturally distinct products requiring protection. Within these discussions, discounting is not merely understood as an economic mechanism, but as something capable of reshaping how literary value itself is perceived and understood by consumers. Interviews with publishers and booksellers conducted for this report similarly reflect these concerns.
While existing research provides substantial discussions surrounding competition policy, cultural value and international fixed pricing systems, there has been less attention paid to how the Australian publishing industry experiences these pricing structures in practice. This is mirrored in a seeming lack of research addressing how reforms such as FRP and PIRs might collectively reshape the broader production of literary culture in Australia.
Analysing FRP in France, Germany and South Korea
France and Germany
Germany has one of the world’s strongest FRP with their Buchpreisbindung, in which retailers sell books at prices set by the publisher for a fixed period following initial publication. The policy, made law in 2002, acts as a means of protecting literary culture, independent booksellers, and safeguarding ‘cultural diversity and access to literature’. Supporters argue that FRP reduces price competition and encourages retailers to compete through service, curation and cultural engagement. In his article on retail price maintenance and FRP in Europe, PhD candidate at University of Cambridge Rhys Williams notes that Germany’s Buchpreisbindung shifts bookselling toward service provision and cultural value that ‘promote the value of books in general’, including knowledgeable staff, a wider variety of titles, and stronger instore literary cultures.
Studies suggest that FRP does not necessarily produce higher prices. While book prices in the UK rose 80% after the collapse of its NBA in 1997, France and Germany experienced only moderate increases (24–29%). Williams similarly argues that FRP may exert slight downward pressure on prices through stabilised sales volumes and long-tail title support.
However, Germany’s system is not without criticism. In 2018, the German Monopolies Commission argued for the abolishing of fixed pricing, describing it as a ‘serious market intervention’ with ‘ambivalent or unclear’ economic effects. The Commission argued that while FRP might protect traditional bookselling, it also restricts alternative retail models, price competition, and prevents consumers from benefitting from the ‘efficiencies’ of larger retailers.
This is of particular relevance to Australia. Germany’s FRP system functions within one of the world’s largest and most self-contained markets. Being a part of a small English-language market that is heavily exposed to imports, Australian readers (as several Australian publishers and booksellers interviewed for this report noted) are already accustomed to sourcing cheaper overseas editions online. While FRP can protect bookselling diversity, its success may be dependent on the scale and relative insulation of their market.
South Korea
South Korea presents a useful counterpoint to European FRP systems. Korea operates with what is known as a ‘discount limit law’ in which retailers are permitted to discount books only within a prescribed time frame. This creates a hybrid system that attempts to preserve price stability while still allowing for competition between retailers. These reforms emerged in response to concerns that discounting by major online retailers was destabilising the Korean book market and undermining independent booksellers.
South Korea first introduced FRP in 2003, with amendments following in 2014. Under this framework, ‘retailers can offer discounts of up to 15%, with only 10% permitted as a direct price reduction, and the remaining 5% allowed through loyalty points or promotional benefits’.
Critics of the system argue that these regulations have directly contributed to declining sales and reduced consumer purchasing. However, this decline has also been widely attributed to social and technological transformations, for example the internet. In 2023, the Constitutional Court of Korea again upheld the ‘constitutionality’ of the system. The Korea Herald noted that the Court argued that conditions within the publishing industry ‘would have worsened faster’ without fixed pricing protections being in place.
Korea’s model might offer a more appropriate alternative to European systems. A discount-limit framework could potentially restrict discounting practices while still allowing for retailer flexibility. Such an approach may be more compatible with Australia’s market.
Interviews and analysis
While several themes emerged during these interviews—particularly concerning discounting—participants did not come to a unified thinking around either the extent of the problem or its solution. These differences reveal the competing economic, cultural and ethical frameworks in which the contemporary Australian publishing landscape understands itself.
Revealing anxieties concerning independent bookselling within increasingly competitive retail environments, Kat Matthews, manager at Mary Martin Bookshop, described discount retailers as a threat to independent bookstores. High-profile titles and celebrity memoirs are frequently sold at substantial discounts, and can exhaust warehouse stock, diminishing and dominating publisher allocation. This, however, is seen more as economic survival and access rather than a necessary corruption of literary culture.
While she supported temporary restrictions on discounting ‘during the critical first few months of a book’s release’, Cuthbert dismissed fixed pricing in Australia as ‘naive,’ arguing that readers would simply go around local systems to overseas retailers and imports ‘as they’ve been taught to do’ and that our ‘porous borders’ allow for and even encourage such a practice. Money similarly warned that restricting discounting too much could discourage casual readers, saying that people simply ‘might stop reading’.
Alongside these concerns, Jaye Chin-Dusting, owner of Mary Martin Bookshop, owner and vice-president of the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA), looks beyond FRP as the central point of intervention into the industry. Rather than focusing solely on adjustments to industry trading models, she directs her attention toward policy, particularly tax offsets and government incentives for independent bookstores.
Taken together, these interviews suggest that contemporary debates surrounding pricing within the Australian publishing industry cannot be reduced to a singular dispute over affordability or competition alone. Rather, they reveal a broader uncertainty regarding how books, bookstores and literary culture should be valued and sustained within these market conditions. While opinions differed on the viability of FRP, there was recognition that the industry needs to change. Importantly, the interviews indicate that pricing alternatives alone are unlikely to resolve these tensions. Instead, the findings point toward the need for a broader combination of structural, economic, and policy-based interventions.