According to Johnson-Woods, the decision in 1959 to lift import restrictions on foreign print publications entering Australia had a significant impact on local pulp paperback publishing. ‘Overseas paperbacks flooded the local market; overnight, [pulp] publishing houses shut down and local authors found themselves out of work.’ While the move was in no way a death knell for Australian pulp publishing, it ended a period during which the industry was largely protected from external competition. There were also important flow-on impacts for Australian publishing more broadly. Foremost among these was what can be described as an increase in the commercial metabolism of the industry, mainly centred on the growing prominence of the paperback. It is important to examine the 1959 decision in a little more detail as it is an aspect of the country's publishing history about which little detailed scholarly work has been undertaken. The Canberra Times reported on 1 August 1959 that the Australian government had ‘decided upon a sweeping easing of import restrictions’, which would ‘almost bring to an end discrimination against imports from dollar countries’. The elimination of import restrictions from dollar countries was part of a wider trend throughout the Commonwealth in the late 1950s, as governments shrugged off economic measures put in place during the war years to save foreign currency. Certainly, in relation to print material, the 1959 decision appears to have been the culmination of a gradual winding back of import controls by Canberra in response to a continued improvement in overseas trading conditions and the country's balance of payments. In early 1958, for example, restrictions were loosened on most American magazines, and what the trade magazine Newspaper News referred to as ‘better’ quality magazines were permitted freedom of entry. Other American publications, including comics and fiction titles with censorable content, were excluded from the adjustment. The August 1959 decision removed the categories or qualifications that publications from dollar sources had to meet to qualify for entry altogether, except those related to censorship. According to one contemporary account, the change was sudden and made without consultation. Local publishers made hastily organised representations to the Department of Trade ‘pointing out the seriousness of the threat to Australian publishers, printers, authors and artists, but the reply was that the restrictions had not been meant as a tariff but only to save dollars and that the government is now committed to freedom of trade’.