Some of the thousands of illegally re-printed books found in a house in Ho Chi Minh City

The head of Vietnam Publishing Association strongly disagrees with the suggestion that lowering book prices will help deal with the widespread problem of copyright violations in the country.

But he maintained that this is “because we’re so used to buying low priced stuff and do not realize that it can kill publishers and writers who have worked so hard to put together an honest product.”

The Ministry of Information and Communications is expected to sign an inter-ministerial circular with the Ministry of Public Security tomorrow about preventive measures against book piracy.

Following last month’s seizure of 50,000 illegal Vietnamese copies of best-selling books by HCMC authorities, Thanh Nien has run several reports detailing how piracy thrives because of lax surveillance.

Kiem said the concern now was how to punish the people running the pirated books network, not how much lower book prices should be, since the move would definitely hurt the authors, the publishers and the book editors.

“Just imagine it takes between two or three years for an author to write about 400 to 500 pages and imagine how could they live with a payment of just VND6-7 million (US$338-394)?” he said.

Kiem suggested the government lower the value added tax on books, a step he said many countries have taken.

Nguyen Duc Binh, director of the Van Nghe (Literature) Publishing House in HCMC, said publishers, printing houses and distributors must cooperate in an effort to lower book prices.

“In printing, the cost of paper does contribute a great deal to the price of the book,” Binh said. “The government should have preferential tax policies for importing paper.”

Kiem said the ministry’s Publishing Bureau is not entitled to punish or press criminal charges against those turning out pirated books.

He said that in the past, the bureau had submitted three requests to a provincial administration to take action against people running pirated book networks, but there had been no response.

Reported by Y Nguyen