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."

Comments

Not Fair

[mrspoonsi]

This does not fit into Amazons plans to take over the world by selling items at cost (or below cost as is the case with some Music, and I am sure some books).

Re:Not Fair

[Joce640k]

...at which point they jack up the prices enough to make up for all those lost years.

Re:Not Fair

[rsilvergun]

Right, because nothing bad has ever happened when regional players are put out of business. Ever.

Re:Not Fair

[AmiMoJo]

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:Not Fair

[pspahn]

I would certainly hope they are both selling the same species. I don't think consumer protection laws would allow a store to tell someone they are buying a tomato when, in fact, they are buying a beet.

Re:Not Fair

[AlphaWolf_HK]

In what way is Amazon's "service" better? Mostly, they have a huge inventory and cheap prices. That's about it.

Well there's that, the fact that items get delivered fast (often the stuff they promise to me in two days comes overnight, and I don't even live near a distribution center) and the fact that returning items is dead simple and they even pay for the return shipping. Also a book I bought from them had a mangled cover, I called to complain about it and they just refunded me $35 (the book cost $80,) and they didn't even want the book back.

That's not a good analogy. Whole Foods is a giant corporate structure whose goals are only marginally better than Walmart. Whole Foods isn't terrible, but its version of "organic" and "wholesome" foods is more about making customers feel better about what they're eating, rather than necessarily providing a consistently better product.

You've got that way off. Organic itself is more about making customers feel better about what they're eating, it has even been scientifically proven to be so. Unscientifically as well: Look at how the girl comments on how good the organic banana is compared to the non-organic one in this video (it's short)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zqe4ZV9LDs

Only it's the same fucking banana. A few of the shoppers admit they just want organic just because of how it makes them feel, nothing to do with the actual food itself. It's like paying extra for holy water just because it is blessed, even though nothing about the water has changed. Organic is just the new age holy water.

If GMO were being used to breed better, tastier, more diverse types of tomatoes, I might actually be interested in eating them.

That's not what people actually want. You yourself might claim as such, but chances are you won't actually follow that line of thinking when it comes to your palate. Most people like a specific flavor and tend to want to stick to its distinct taste, only changing when in their head they specifically seek change, or are otherwise forced to. Most people don't consciously realize this. Coca-Cola found this out the hard way back in the 80's. Look at high fructose corn syrup. Most Americans say they want real sugar, but when they taste foods they're already used to only with real sugar instead of HFCS, they tend to prefer the HFCS taste because it's what they're used to. Pepsi actually sells their soda brands with real sugar in the US under the throwback moniker, but most people don't buy them - instead mostly foreigners and immigrants buy them because that is the taste that they are used to, which makes it profitable enough to keep on the shelves.

The banana industry went through hell when they had to switch from the gross michel to the cavendish banana. There are all kinds of different varieties of banana out there, but people just wanted the gross michel because it was the flavor they were used to. When the gross michel was killed by a fungal plague, the industry had to switch to the cavendish. Well good because as you say, people want variety right? Wrong. It sold like shit for a while until people finally got used to the new flavor.

Typical

[puddingebola]

Just like the French to try and protect literature.

Re:Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

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: Typical

[Orne]

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: Typical

[ultranova]

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.

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.

If I have Ã100 in my pocket how many books am I going to walk out the store with?

Start with these. If it's sheer quantity you want, that should set you up for life.

France, the last survivor of the new economy

[bussdriver]

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.

Re:France, the last survivor of the new economy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Will the French government be providing Amazon.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I see plenty of people reading

[Joining Yet Again]

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.

Re:I see plenty of people reading

[CRCulver]

I see plenty of people reading in cafes and parks here in the US. What is disappearing are paper books. people are reading on tablets, ebook readers, computers, even phones.

Sure, people still read, but they read less serious literature than they used to. The entire West is becoming a post-literary culture. France, with its intelligentsia's concern with protecting high culture, is trying to resist that. Paris bookshops tend to stock genres like poetry and drama which are not making the transition to e-books like mass-market novels.

. I'd be concerned if there were some unique paper books that would never be put into electronic form, but even those books are being converted to electronic readable formats.

No, they aren't. If a book is out of print but under copyright (perhaps it is unclear who the rights belong to), it is not being digitized and made widely available to those with e-readers. A huge amount of publications, which would have its audience if it were brought back out of print, is being lost to the digital generation. I participate in the ebook filesharing scene, and for a lot of 20th-century literature, we the community have to undertake the digitization process by ourselves because no publisher wants to deal with the rights situation.

This is backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:This is backwards

[hjf]

How can you argue that you make literature more accessible by imposing a minimal price?!

Because, like the FUCKING SUMMARY said, Amazon has very, VERY deep pockets. They are so big, they will do anything they can, legally, to capture the market (which is a nice way of saying "destroying competition").
Amazon can put a kiosk in the sidewalk in front of a physical store and give away the same books in the store. And keep doing that until the store goes out of business. This is basically what they do when they sell books at 90% discount with free shipping. No other bookstore can do that. This is what's called "unfairness".

But let's suppose you don't care for that. There's also the issue of amazon wanting to go all digital. Amazon is all for efficiency and they would just love to sell just kindle books, not physical ones. What will happen to all those paper books, which are too old, or are in a grey area of copyright? They will never scan and sell those. They will be lost forever, ending up with just a handful of copies scattered in a few libraries around the world. Very accesible, right?

And of course, let's not forget about all those "banned" books. Are there any banned books in France? I don't know. Will there be? With the growing muslim population there, YES.

Re:I see plenty of people reading

[turbidostato]

"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?

Re:I see plenty of people reading

[Bobakitoo]

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:I love to read

[Zironic]

Have you heard about this newfangled institution called a library?

Re:I see plenty of people reading

[EdZ]

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.

That's the simple answer

[rsilvergun]

but the problem is it's not the right answer. It's not about brick and motar, it's about there being only 1 company you buy everything from. That's Amazon's long term goal, and they're not shy about pointing it out. It's why they have so many investors even though their profit margin is so bad. The investors are expecting Amazon to drive the competition out, jack up the prices (and their profits) and then there'll be nothing anyone can do about it.

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.