France Moves To Protect Independent Booksellers From Amazon 264
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Tourists often marvel at the number of rich and varied bookstores along Paris streets. Right across from Notre Dame Cathedral is one of the city's most famous independent bookstores, Shakespeare and Company. Inside, every inch of space is crammed with books and readers. The city buys buildings in high-rent districts and tries to keep a core of 300 independent bookstore by offering booksellers leases at an affordable price. 'We have to keep our identity,' says Lynn Cohen-Solal, 'because if we don't, all the shops are exactly the same in Paris, in London, in New York, in New Delhi, everywhere.' Now Eleanor Beardsley reports at NPR that the French government has accused Amazon of trying to push the price of physical books too low and is limiting discounts on books to ensure the survival of its independent booksellers. France's lower house of parliament has unanimously voted to add an amendment to a law from 1981, known in France as the Lang Law which sets the value of new books at fixed prices and only allows retailers to lower books' set price by 5%, in an effort to regulate competition between booksellers and to promote reading. Guillaume Husson, spokesman for the SLF book retailers' union, says Amazon's practice of bundling a 5 percent discount with free delivery amounted to selling books at a loss, which was impossible for traditional book sellers of any size. 'Today, the competition is unfair,' says Husson. 'No other book retailer, whether a small or large book or even a chain, can allow itself to lose that much money,' referring to Amazon's alleged losses on free delivery. Amazon spent $2.8 billion on free shipping worldwide last year to gain a competitive advantage. The bill limiting Amazon's price reductions in France still has to pass the Senate to become law. In a statement, Amazon said any effort to raise the price of books diminishes the cultural choices of French consumers and penalizes both Internet users and small publishers who rely on Internet sales."
Not Fair (Score:4, Insightful)
France, the last survivor of the new economy (Score:5, Insightful)
The French seem to not be brainwashed by the propaganda machine enough to harm themselves as pro-WTO trade undermines careers in the global race to the bottom.
When the robots and software start to do significant damage worldwide to jobs (it's only just beginning and some are taking notice) the French will likely be the last holdout.
"Protectionism" is not viewed as bad everywhere; at least the marketing hasn't succeeded everywhere just yet.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I see plenty of people reading (Score:5, Insightful)
"in cafes and parks here in the US. What is disappearing are paper books."
On one hand, losing the ability to read without a hugh tad of supporting technology may be a problem on itself.
On the other, the problem exposed here is not paper versus electronic books but the risk of Amazon trying to become a de facto monopoly as the dumping practice, if it's true, would suggest.
Do you remember that one of the short list of things a government should do, even on the most liberalist wet dreams, is to put an eye on monopolies, right?
I love to read (Score:1, Insightful)
When I was young teen I used to ride my bike to a used bookstore and buy cheap used paperbacks for 50 cents. Loved it. As I got older I moved to an area that had only regular bookstores, and the books were 10-50 times more costly. So I couldn't read as much.
Now though with eBay and Amazon I can get cheap books again. So I can afford to read again.
I guess if I want to be able to keep reading I'll have to stay out of France.
Re:I see plenty of people reading (Score:5, Insightful)
Electronic books are extremely resource intensive and require a massive amount of well-maintained centralised infrastructure. It's a huge price to pay for the convenience of "being slightly lighter".
It is not just slightly lighter, you can hold thousand kilograms worth of books in your pocket. The resource intensive and massive centralized infrastructure is only due to digital restriction management. DRM free book do not have this problem. Essentially, what you are saying is that electronic book are defective by design, but we can fix this and save paper in the process. Don't dismiss new technologies because of a few political glitch.
Re:Not Fair (Score:5, Insightful)
...at which point they jack up the prices enough to make up for all those lost years.
A large enough company (Score:2, Insightful)
Can operate on several markets, and chose one to work at a loss for years.
In the end, all operators on that "at loss market" will go bankrupt apart from that large company (because it can keep subsidizing that market with the profits of all the other markets it is on).
That will make the company become a de-fact monopolist by the way it uses it's size to steamroll all competitors to oblivium.
And that has nothing to do with "free market".
Re:I see plenty of people reading (Score:3, Insightful)
Can I expect to be able to access my collection of e-books in 40 years? I highly doubt that; it's more likely that I'd have to pay multiple times to shift the books from one format to another in order to access them with the e-readers available at that time. The popupar format is epub/mobi today, it's likely to be something else as technology progresses.
Will we witness a planned obsolescence as has happened multiple times with console games? PS1 games can nowadays only be played using an emulator (if you can't find a real PS1 console, that is). The PS1 games people had are naught but frisbees.
Re:I see plenty of people reading (Score:5, Insightful)
Can I expect to be able to access my collection of e-books in 40 years?
Unless you're foolish enough to lock yourself into DRM, I don't see why not. Nearly 30 years on (well, 28) and Amiga software can be run in emulators from discs that have been format-shifted. And Amiga-specific files can and have easily been converted to new formats. Except for regular old text, because that still works fine. Or HTML, because that still works fine. Or BMP, because that still worms fine.
If a format works and does it's job, it'll stick around after many hardware and software changes. Calibre already makes it trivial to move between epub and mobipocket (and go to and from RTF, PDF, etc) so I don't see you suddenly being unable to read your library even in 40 years.
Re:Not Fair (Score:2, Insightful)
Amazon crushes the local competition by offering a lower price, period.
TFA describes the situation as Amazon selling at a loss - Nothing more than cultural protectionist bullshit. Looking at the reality of the situation, Amazon has the buying power to make the publishers sell to them at a price where Amazon can sell below list and offer free shipping and still make a profit on the sale. Simple as that.
The sooner we get rid of all this regional protectionism, the better. If I can make the same product you can for less, you should go out of business. If some buyers irrationally choose to pay more solely for your name, hey, good for you, perhaps you can survive in the shadow of those doing your own job better than you. If not... Oh well, see ya.
Re:Typical (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like the French to try and protect literature.
By forcing people to pay more for books? Since there are many other ways to enjoy your spare time, consumer demand for books is very elastic, so they will certainly consume fewer books.
And since literature depends on people reading books and sharing their experiences, France is actually sabotaging literature.
Re:Not Fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Typical (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly ... as the price of books go down, the demand for books increase. This is basic Econ 101. By setting a price floor, you are limiting the ability to reach customers who would otherwise want to buy more books. If I have â100 in my pocket how many books am I going to walk out the store with?
Re:Not Fair (Score:5, Insightful)
If I can make the same product you can for less, you should go out of business.
Amazon doesn't make anything, they just force the publishers to sell wholesale for less than they do to other vendors. Supermarkets do this to food producers as well, which similarly has put most independent grocers out of business and made out food really low quality.
The system has failed us. We make the laws and we want diversity so that we have a choice of vendors, so it makes sense for us to fix the market. The French are merely acting to prevent Amazon becoming a monopoly.
Re: Typical (Score:4, Insightful)
No matter how cheap books are, you are still only able to read one or two per day. Therefore the demand is capped. On the other hand, two books are not inerchangeable unless they're copies of the same book; even if Amazon was giving books away for free, it might still be worse deal than keeping lots of small bookstores in business and thus ensuring that a single seller doesn't have a total power to determine what books and authors get on the market.
Maybe you should take a few more Econ classes.
Start with these [gutenberg.org]. If it's sheer quantity you want, that should set you up for life.
That's the simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
So when you say they should go out of business, that's only true if you completely ignore what the people of France (and people in general) desire and what's in their best interests. That's fine if you're the sort who believes in dog eat dog, winner take all capitalism. For the rest of us we support the regional players anyway.
To put it in terms that fit your world view: it's kinda like what Chairman Mao did with crops: He told everyone to double plant. A bad idea that sounds good on paper, has good gut feeling and 'truthiness'. Instead of double the food you had famine. It's the same thing with Amazon. It sounds good on paper to let the weaker players die out. And on a gut level it seems like the right thing to do. But it blows up in our faces. Instead of a cornucopia of cheap goods you'll be struggling to come up with the money for basic necessities.