" At the same time, price discounts on books are limited to 5 percent and can’t be offered in conjunction with free shipping."<p>They've recently just tried this law in Israel.
The result? The printing of New books has screeched to a halt.
When you can't offer discounts on new books, the publishers are only willing to take the chance on famous well established authors.
The law is especially absurd, because even if you're a self published author, you can't offer discounts on your own books.<p>When you pass laws against book discounts,
fewer books will be published, fewer books will be bought and fewer books will be read.
To give some more information about the French perspective here:<p>- No source is given for the claim that "The French government has declared books an 'essential good.'", I have been unable to find any French source about this, and I am entirely unaware of such a declaration. I would be interested if anyone could point me to more information about this.<p>- There is a fixed price law on books, which to my knowledge has nothing to do with them being considered "essential". The way it works is that the book publisher sets the final sale price of the book that will have to be applied everywhere (<a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loi_relative_au_prix_du_livre);" rel="nofollow">https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loi_relative_au_prix_du_livre)...</a> a maximal rebate of 5% is permitted, which in practice is applied everywhere (except for online sales, see below). This is not unique to France and exists in several countries (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price_agreement#Scope" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price_agreement#Sco...</a>). My understanding of the point of this measure is that it reduces competition between booksellers, allowing smaller booksellers to survive, and allowing them to offer rarer books than just blockbusters.<p>- There is a cultural attachment to smaller bookshops, and a dislike of large foreign players (Amazon) even compared to large French players (Fnac, Gibert-Joseph, etc.). The smaller bookshops claim that Amazon's free shipping poses a great threat to their existence. Free shipping was challenged by the French Booksellers Association, ultimately unsuccessfully (<a href="http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/post/2008/05/15/954-le-prix-du-livre-n-inclut-pas-le-prix-du-timbre-poste" rel="nofollow">http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/post/2008/05/15/954-le-prix-du-li...</a>). Recently, however, a law was passed to achieve the same results, with online booksellers being forbidden to offer free shipping (hence Amazon.fr charges 0.01 EUR shipping for books) and being forbidden to offer the 5% discount. (<a href="http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000029210814&categorieLien=id" rel="nofollow">http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTE...</a> article 1). Of course, one could also argue that online bookselling makes books more easily available to the end consumer (and faster, say, than asking a library to order your books for you); but the problem is that the role of booksellers, to select interesting books and guide you in your choice, is lost.
"Books have no privileged position in the American system of law and commerce. We, the workers of the book business — writers, agents, editors, designers, publicists, booksellers and others — often bemoan this fact. Books, it seems to us, are different. [...] Surely our industry deserves special treatment."<p>Talk to any businessman. He'll say he believes in the free market, but his business is special and deserves special protection.
Books record ideas, but the medium itself is usually bottom of the barrel commodity trash. Where does that paper come from? Who printed it and how is that business run?<p>Are those companies worth saving despite a changing medium? That's the real question.
You don't die without them, Books are not essential for Live.
They are not really essential for learning development either, but an essential factor in the development of culture since the invention of the book-press.<p>Consider the intrinsic value to be much higher than the production cost of books, so much that free information can be guarantied by law, where books should be equal to internet access, a telephone and if you will a TV; or the socially direct communication through people. Books as medium are inseparable from the speech and should therefore remain free speech and not seizable, whether essential or merely sufficient. This is partly guaranteed through public libraries, but the capacity is limited, compared to a distributed model.<p>tl;dr: didn't read the link :/