Limor Livnat
Photo: Mark Israel Salem
Bill protecting authors' profits pushed forward
Ministerial Committee on Legislative Affairs approves legislation that bars book store chains from putting books on sale within 18 months of their release
A bill aiming to protect the profits incurred by Israeli authors was pushed forward this week by winning the approval of the Ministerial Committee on Legislative Affairs.
If passed, the legislation – the collaborative work of the Culture and Sports Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the writers and publishers' unions and the National Economic Council – would prohibit stores from selling books at a reduced price within 18 months of their release. It also ups the royalties that authors receive.
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The bill will now face a round of discussions at the Knesset's Education Ministry, before being put up for a plenum vote.
"The right to enjoy quality Israeli literature will only be fulfilled once authors and poets in Israel are properly compensated for their creation in a manner that enables them to continue writing," Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat said upon the bill's approval.
The legislation is an attempt to battle the book store chains' practice of aggressively cutting the prices of books, thus barring authors from making reasonable profits. Livnat asserted that "industry failures drive book prices lower than what it costs to print them."
"The must be a distinction between books and other consumer products," she said. "Books are not cottage cheese."
Big discounts, small profits (Photo: Omer Schwartz)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Shalom Simhon said last week that they intend to support the measure.
'Promotions don't bolster sales'
A study conducted by the Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry found that the radical promotions have not been successful in bringing more books to the masses.
"The data shows that the well-established populations have bought and read more books in recent years, while the weaker populations bought less, and evidently read less books," said Minister Simhon, who presented that data before the Ministerial Committee on Legislative affairs. "The tactics used in the market have not caused people to buy more books."
Officials in the book industry approached the ministers' approval of the bill with cautious optimism.
"These are good news, although there is still a long way before the law is passed," said Amnon Ben-Shmuel, the CEO of the Book Publishers Association of Israel. "This isn't the end of the process, but the beginning."
He expressed hope that the legislation will mark a new era in the book industry, where publishers won't only strive to release bestsellers but also books of cultural merit.
Iris Barel, the CEO of the Steimatzky book store chain, praised the development but noted that the company is looking into ways to adjust to the new situation should the law be passed.
