A lot of comments don’t seem to get the context of this.<p>Book prices are regulated in France [0] and you can’t just discount willy-nilly, in particular new book publications have selling prices set by the publisher.<p>This proposition is coming on top of that: it will block sellers from artificially discounting books by subsidizing shipping cost. It is basically closing a loophole that still allowed Amazon to have lower prices than others.<p>It doesn’t matter if you’re independent, purely online or not. The effect will be to force the same sticker price everywhere, as intended for years now.<p>It may push people to buy local, but it’s only a side effect, and not the directly intended goal (there are other french online retailers that will benefit a lot more from this law).<p>[0] <a href="https://www.sne.fr/app/uploads/2017/11/Intervention-Catherine-Blache_prix-unique-du-livre_mars-2015.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.sne.fr/app/uploads/2017/11/Intervention-Catherin...</a>
I don't even think Amazon wins on cost. It also wins on convenience and completeness. If I need to find a book or research on a subject, I'm not going to peruse a local book store, I'm going to use a Library Catalog, Amazon Search, or Google Search, from the convenience of my phone or desktop.<p>Local book stores being the same price, or even cheaper, isn't likely to influence my initial tendency to preview on the Web first, and if I search for my book and preview on the Web, I'm much more likely to buy it there too.<p>IMHO, France is only forestalling the inevitable, and eventually local book shops value won't be in selling books, but in providing a hangout place to discuss things, to have book tour speakers in person, to serve hipster coffee and snacks, etc. But as a pure book retail warehouse? I think think this is dead in the long term.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is actually protecting the small book stores, right?<p>Big stores like the Fnac could offer the same shipping prices as Amazon (and maybe they're already doing it).<p>Publishers don't care much who is selling the book as long as it's selling.<p>Obviously this only applies to physical books. Ebooks only account for about 15% of books sold in France unlike the US where it's close to 50% [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://imgur.com/edK0YWP" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/edK0YWP</a>
France has a long history of attempting to protect its cultural industries, including film and publishing.<p>It's not wrong. There are other things that are important aside from customer purchasing power.<p>Amazon is using its economies of scale to drive out smaller businesses. It is not unique in that. But the industries that Amazon affects may be unique to the nations that wish to preserve them.<p>Most centralization incrementally kills local industry, including the local culture industry. TV, railroads, chain stores, Wal-mart, you name it -- they are all killing something local.
Not a big fan of Amazon but I also find it ridiculous and self-sacking to fixate on obsolete ideas. If you have to force a business to exist, maybe it doesn’t need to exist.
My experience tells me that the practical outcome of this new regulation is that shipping will become more expensive for books.<p>It will not prevent customers to stop shopping online, so no effect for legacy bookstore.s<p>Like most goverment proposed solutions: This will actually create a new problem not fix the origintal intented cause.
So, basically Amazon is in a win-win situation. If the status quo prevails, they're happy. If they have to start charging for shipping, maybe some customers go to a local bookstore but Amazon also has a legal mandate to make more profit in their book sales by not subsidizing shipping out of the wholesale margin. And while some people will buy local a bit more, Amazon sells so many things and the local store may still have to order your book and get it to you slower than Amazon, keeping Amazon as the most convenient option... I don't see a long-term downside for Amazon here.
I'm curious whether French independent bookstores have been harmed much by Amazon. In the US, Amazon has probably actually been a boon — the number of independent bookstores has grown dramatically over the last decade, in part because Amazon squashed the previous era's giant book retailers like Borders and Barnes and Noble, who had been crushing independent bookstores.
To all posters who harp on the "this is stupid" theme: I do agree, but saying this is imo short-sighted.<p>Much more likely, we're witnessing a good old-fashioned lobbying effort bearing fruits at the expense of the consumer and in favor of a small but politically connected group of businesses.
All for a way to protect small businesses which actually pay local taxes vs. Amazon which doesn't pay taxes in the US at all - but not sure a minimum ship price is the best approach.<p>Isn't there a better way, perhaps based on physical presence?
It's funny that we still pin Amazon against bookstores - I was under the impression that Amazon is shipping _everything_ those days, and that books are not what most people go to Amazon for any more.
I think resisting change only takes you so far. Let systems become efficient. Centralized systems like Amazon will find an antidote in decentralized ones like Shopify. We don't miss horse carriages but I am sure they were part of daily life a 100+ years ago. Disruption and change is part of life.
This seems to be incentivising the customer to shop in-person instead of online and seems spectacularly uninspired, they could have simply waived taxes on books for companies headquartered in France? Or really anything that isn't simply forcing the customer to pay shipping?
This is stupid. It will prevent local business from using "free" shipping. Better way will be to just ban Amazon until they start paying right taxes.
“French law prohibits free book deliveries but Amazon has circumvented this by charging a single centime (cent). Local book stores typically charge about 5-7 euros ($5.82-8.15) for shipping a book.”<p>Interesting how Amazon charge a “centime”, which hasn’t been legal tender in France since 2002…
Amazons book selling business has been getting worse. It’s hard to search hard to find books, or books with common names. Shipping times are nothing special.<p>It’s funny how “book selling” went from being Amazon’s core business to a distraction.<p>Edit: I recommend EBay if you want to buy a physical tome.
Is there a word for laws that disproportionately affect people in rural areas so that a government can play protectionist for urban companies? I hate Amazon as much as anyone, but in this case they're definitely not <i>wrong</i>, even if they're probably lying about their reasoning.
As an anecdote, where I live Amazon has switched from Colis Privé to Colissimo. With Colis Privé, I used to always get my packages in my mailbox, even if they had to force it in a bit. Nothing was ever damaged because of this. With Colissimo, they come at usually 15h on a week day, may or may not call you, and either give the package to a neighbor or put it at the local post office. In short, the delivery went from great to garbage.<p>As for the current state of the "book industry" where I live: you have 4 choices, either Amazon, an independant bookstore, Decitre (a local bookstore chain), or FNAC (basically Amazon but with physical buildings). Independant bookstores are usually great at recommandations (way better than anything Amazon can do for example), but some of them are just a small-size FNAC, which kind of removes the point of an independant bookstore. As someone that almost only buy books when I know which book I want to buy, so I don't benefit a lot from independant bookstores, but people around me like them a lot.
I apologize in advance for generalizing here and there. The point holds.<p>“Capitalism” is what people do when they’re not having sex (and sometimes even then). It is the most powerful economic engine we know about.<p>“Socialism” is the discipline of maximizing overall human welfare within the economic limits.<p>The engine and the steering wheel so to speak. I’m willing to bet those definitions are in no dictionary, but the basic point is roughly what no constitution has yet to get right.<p>The tricky bit is avoiding capture, and I’m optimistic we can do this without shooting all the lobbyists, but it would be a bargain even at that price.
Basically prices will rise for French due to poor competitiveness. This is a growing trend and will not be limited to books.<p>Speaking of “culture” or religion, some practices are bad and better to die. We don’t live in caves anymore after all. It might feel nice to talk about unique culture and identity of isolated tribes in Amazon (the rainforest, not the company); trust me, you don’t want to be in some of these places if you are a woman or disabled.<p>Local shops need to find creative ways to do business (coffee offers, meet ups etc), instead of lobbying that governments kills competition. Or do something else.