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France Moves To Protect Independent Booksellers From Amazon
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."
The French government already has agreements with Amazon to subsidize it each time it creates a new job (between 3400 and 5000 euros per job)...
http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2012/11/27/amazon-aide-publique-subvention-fisc-impots-france_n_2197220.html
Oh, and Amazon doesn't pay taxes in France, but in Luxemburg, contrary to the bookshops.
Actually, instead of adding yet another layer of regulation that will soon be circumvented, the governement should just:
1) stop subsidizing Amazon (they would open the logistics platform anyway, given their market share).
2) come up with a credible scheme for multinational Internet companies to pay their taxes.
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". I have no problem with people choosing to use an e-reader, but it'll be a dark day in civilisation when the written word is only recorded digitally.
What I'm most happy to see here is France understanding that the country is really a geographical area owned by a government on behalf of the people, with various rights and responsibilities assigned to inhabitants in a way which suits the people. I am required to respect private law merely as a result of being born, and there is even better reason to require me to respect public law.
Bullshit.
-Book prices are not higher in France than in the US. Of course, there are all sort of books, with very different prices.
-Prices are not "inflated". They are fixed by the editors, not by the government, not by Amazon. If an editor wants to sell its books, I guess that it must have competitive prices.
I'm French, and I can tell you this defense of the "paper books" is horrible. In France, e-books are typically MORE expansive than paper versions. How could that be possible? How can you argue that you make literature more accessible by imposing a minimal price?! I'm not a very "the free market will take care of you" kind of guy, but in that instance, it's just the wrong solution to the wrong problem.
Have you heard about this newfangled institution called a library?
But if the number of literature retailers is reduced to Amazon, selection is affected. If Amazon refuses to sell a book nobody can buy it. By protecting literature retailers France is protecting the selection of books and therefore literature itself.
Protectionism is protecting some uncompetitive businesses, not protecting the customers, clients, consumers. Not protecting customer's wallets, but protecting wallets of the uncompetitive, unsuccessful, those unwilling to adapt, restructure, change with the time. There is no virtue in that, do you know what happens with organisms that do not adapt to the changing environments?
Let's examine Wal-Mart in the US as another example. They move into a small town, price everything sold by the competition far lower than cost, and make up for the losses through their other stores. The other businesses close down, the employees have to beg Wal-Mart for jobs at reduced pay, local suppliers and support businesses close down. Then when the competition is eliminated, Wal-Mart jacks their prices up to offset the earlier losses. Now you have a single-supplier ecosystem, fewer jobs, and to add further insult Wally-World then offshores their bank accounts and uses accounting trickery to dodge local and state taxes.
Honestly I don't know what the answer is, protectionism kills innovation and free market results in monopoly.