23 Karen Hendriks, To Whom It May Concern, Individual I am writing as a person both involved in the creation of books in Australia, as a reader of books, and as an educator with a passion for Australian creativity and literacy. I am an emerging children’s book author. I am working hard in order to develop my craft and to make an income from what I do. I need this income to be able to continue in this career as I, like everyone else, has to pay a mortgage or rent, run a vehicle, feed a family and pay my bills. I cannot yet claim to make a living out of it. The idea that, as an author, I would earn hardly anything from all the hard work that I put into my stories, it would affect my career right at the beginning, is just appalling. I believe that it would also discourage new talent from even bothering to try and start in this industry. What a disgrace! Why is it, that our contribution to society is not even valued anymore? If parallel imports were approved and the copyright laws changed for Australian authors this would most certainly be the case. It would not only affect my career but the careers of all other creators. The current proposal to reduce our term of copyright and to allow the introduction of parallel import is not only immoral, but would make my and other authors careers as creators unsustainable. Our books would be involved in an unfair competition with copies of foreign editions coming into the Australian market at greater volume than our Australian publishing houses could sustain and the market would kill the chances of local publications having any success in the flooded market. Please STOP parallel importation of Australian
23 Karen Hendriks, Individual To Whom It May Concern, I am writing as a person both involved in the creation of books in Australia, as a reader of books, and as an educator with a passion for Australian creativity and literacy. I am an emerging children’s book author. I am working hard in order to develop my craft and to make an income from what I do. I need this income to be able to continue in this career as I, like everyone else, has to pay a mortgage or rent, run a vehicle, feed a family and pay my bills. I cannot yet claim to make a living out of it. The idea that, as an author, I would earn hardly anything from all the hard work that I put into my stories, it would affect my career right at the beginning, is just appalling. I believe that it would also discourage new talent from even bothering to try and start in this industry. What a disgrace! Why is it, that our contribution to society is not even valued anymore? If parallel imports were approved and the copyright laws changed for Australian authors this would most certainly be the case. It would not only affect my career but the careers of all other creators. The current proposal to reduce our term of copyright and to allow the introduction of parallel import is not only immoral, but would make my and other authors careers as creators unsustainable. Our books would be involved in an unfair competition with copies of foreign editions coming into the Australian market at greater volume than our Australian publishing houses could sustain and the market would kill the chances of local publications having any success in the flooded market. Please STOP parallel importation of Australian
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