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The dominance of Amazon and the importance of copyright were two key themes of Independents Day, an exploration of independent businesses in the creative sector, held by the Independent Alliance and Institute of Contemporary Arts yesterday (6th June).
Indie publisher Profile contributed more in tax last year than retail giant Amazon, m.d. Andrew Franklin (pictured) said. Speaking about how smaller businesses can compete in an increasingly digital marketplace, he said: “We had a turnover of £9m and paid all our taxes on it, whereas Amazon had a tax bill of £2.4m on sales of £4.2bn, but got back government grants of £2.5m for building a warehouse in Scotland....We pay our own way and don’t have subsidies to help us. The publisher Stanley Unwin wrote in his guide to publishing a line which I have tattooed on my left buttock: ‘The first duty of a publisher to their author is to remain solvent’, and that is what we try to do.'”
Franklin added that a variety of voices was essential. "It cannot be a good thing if there are fewer and fewer publishers owned by fewer proprietors," he said.
The value of copyright and IP was discussed, with Faber author John Lanchester defending the need for copyright protection. “Copyright is fundamental, we cannot have a creative economy of any sort without it," he said. "We have to be concerned about how we protect it... There are websites where anyone can search to see if a book has been pirated and how to get hold of it – it is not legal, but they are not being cracked down on.”
Faber c.e.o. Stephen Page agreed: “IP is at the centre of our business. It is what we as publishers invest in, and it is what we try and add value to.”
Atlantic Books c.e.o. Toby Mundy spoke out about the dangers of letting large internet companies such as Google and Facebook dictate how copyright works. He said: “The heads of these large dotcoms have a libertarian mindset, and to use a current phrase, these swivel-eyed libertarians are selling the Kool-Aid to our governments to convince them that this is the right direction to go in.”
Franklin also spoke about the dangers of digital pricing: “The music industry saw its revenue halve, and we could see the same in publishing as we move further into digital, and the pricing of digital books moves continues to move closer to zero. A book now costs less than two pints of beer. A digital download can cost less than not just a pack of cigarettes, but a single cigarette. When you are getting a wealth of knowledge from the greatest minds of the past 4,000 years for free, it seems bizarre.”