Fairfax Media recently reported the online retail giant was “in the market for a local warehouse in Australia as part of its massive global distribution network”.
Australian Publishers Association chief executive Maree McCaskill told ProPrint she had been hearing whispers for more than a year about Amazon’s pending arrival, but couldn’t say if they were true.
“We have no idea – nobody does. The question comes up at all our meetings. We only know what we see in the papers. There have been all sorts of rumours but nobody has been able to put anything concrete down,” she said.
An Amazon spokesperson refused to confirm or deny the rumours: “We have a long-standing practice of not commenting on rumours or speculation.”
McCaskill said an Amazon move into Australia wouldn’t guarantee more work for local printers as the company might stock its warehouse with books published overseas.
Paul Glasgow, the operations manager for Amazon print-on-demand partner Lightning Source, said he knew nothing of Amazon’s plans, but was hopeful it would benefit the company’s Melbourne arm.
“I would hope it would mean more work for us, being print-on-demand,” he said.
“I didn’t think it would happen this year – I thought it might happen next year – but it was always to going to happen.”
Griffin Press general manager Ben Jolly told ProPrint he had been hearing the Amazon whispers for 18 months, but was unsure how much local printers could expect to benefit.
“It would depend somewhat on copyright laws and where and under what terms Amazon acquire inventory or rights and then the price they may sell for in the local Australian market,” he said.
“There are a lot of factors in play. I understand they do already ship a reasonable volume of books into Australian consumers – so if they supply from Australia, they may source from Australian publishers, but that said, there is still no direct link to local printing as a reasonable portion of books that Australian publishers do sell are imported by the publishers anyway.”
Jolly speculated that Sydney might be Amazon’s preferred local destination, as it was “central” and “close to the population”.
Comment below to have your say on this story.
If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.
Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter
