A couple of days ago, Bernadette over at Reactions to Reading posted her reads of the month. Two of the books took my fancy: Black Wattle Creek by Geoffrey McGeachin and Paving the New Road by Sulari Gentill. Neither are available on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com, nor Book Depository. I've previously tried to buy McGeachin's other Charlie Berlin book, The Digger's Rest Hotel. It's available as an audio book but not a paper or e-book. I've twice had pre-orders for White Dog by Peter Temple cancelled because of delays in being published in the UK, despite the fact that it was published in 2004 in Australia (it is now available at hardback price). I've also tried to buy Kel Robertson's second novel, Smoke and Mirrors, a winner of Ned Kelly prize for crime fiction in 2009, but to no avail. I've read the first book in the series because a friend in Australia sent me a copy.
It's pretty difficult to be Fair Dinkum about Australian crime fiction when it is almost impossible to buy the crime novels published there. In an age of globalised cultural production, Internet buying and e-books, I find it very odd that English language books are still being limited to geographical regions. I can read reviews of books, but I can't buy them. It's a practise that seems limited to fiction. I think all of my academic books can be bought anywhere on the planet relatively easily. It is very frustrating to potential readers and I suspect also authors who's audience is being deliberately limited. I know that this is to do with the selling of rights and the launching/marketing of books in different locales, but it seems to me that there should be an opportunity for readers to purchase books online that might not yet be available in bookstores. If nothing else it might create a buzz about a book, including reviews, and actually aid the selling of rights in different regions. Especially as so many of the books I'm interested in will probably never be published in other regions.
Anyway, what I want to know is this: can somebody recommend an Australian online bookstore that will post the books to Ireland at a reasonable rate? Or perhaps an alternative way to buy Australian crime fiction that is presently not available in the Europe or North America? I know books in Australia are relatively expensive, but I can live with that. I just want to be able to read the books that I want to read.
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