Hi everyone,
Below is a message from my friend Katherine about parallel importation. Seems it’s on and we need to put up a fight. The ASA site even has templates for you to use so all you have to do is state your case as an emerging writer then cut and paste it into their templates and spend a couple of bucks on postage. It’s very important. Reckon we’re finding it hard to get published now, if this happens we’ll be up shit creek.

well, they’ve done it. They’ve recommended that the government lift all
restrictions on book imports. This is really serious stuff now. If the
government actually does it, we will all be affected – those of us
already published will likely see our sales drop, our income fall, and
it might be harder to get another contract here, and we may be forced to
go direct to an overseas publisher who will offer us whatever they like.
For those of us who will publish in the future, it will be harder to do
so, we will get less money, and the chances of being a fulltime writer
will be drastically reduced. There is no guarantee that the prices in
bookshops will drop, but you can bet that your favourite aussie authors
will be less productive because the drop in book income means some at
least will have to get dayjobs.

But all is not lost! We can get in the government’s ear and write
letters. Snail mail is best of all, and here
http://www.asauthors.org/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=ASP0016/ccms.r
is the asa’s page of addresses to write to.

Please, please, if you have the time, please do this.

Love to all,