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France regulates books prices very heavily (a.k.a it's a single price for every single distribution point), meaning there's little to no interest buying books o
by C4stor 8y ago
France regulates books prices very heavily (a.k.a it's a single price for every single distribution point), meaning there's little to no interest buying books online / at a mall (except convenience sometimes). In contrast, it allows a dense network of specialized libraries to maybe not thrive, but at least survive.
In turn, those libraries create events, participate to the cultural life of their neighbourhoods, create social links.
In the end, it makes it very easy to find a book store, get good advice, create links with sellers (I spend hours talking with the shopkeeper at my comics place), and take an interest in the medium.
So it's not really a random singularity happening there, but also in part the result of a very specific books policy. And of course, the cultural legacy is also super strong !
- elcapitan 8y agoGermany has regulated book prices too ("Buchpreisbindung"), but Amazon thrives and the small book shops do not really. If anything, that must be more the culture.
- threatofrain 8y agoI fear long form reading is dying anyway. I wonder how many Amazon kindles are actually used, or how many purchased books are actually consumed.
- justtopost 8y agoI have 2 kindles and have yet to read a book on them. (One is a digital remote, the other in a drawer somewhere) I strongly prefer paper, and settle for my phone or pc otherwise. Toting a kindle is as big a pain as a book, and much more fragile. Unless I needed a refrence of hundreds, whats the point? I seldom if ever read 2 books at once. Books don't need charging, or a 3rd party. Its a solution in search of a problem to me.
- simias 8y agoI seldom use my Kindle anymore but I bought Infinite Jest a few weeks ago and immediately regretted not having dusted my old Kindle and bought the digital version instead. These large books are cumbersome to handle and carry around. For shorter books I agree that paper is superior, I don't have to worry about damage, battery level or theft, I can easily borrow and lend them (I think you can do that with Kindle nowadays but it can't be as convenient as lending a physical object).
- dx7tnt 8y agoPart of the joke of Infinite Jest is the physical size of the thing. You'll realise if you ever manage to get more than halfway through. It's so much more than just a story...
- hombre_fatal 8y ago> Toting a kindle is as big a pain as a book A kindle is 0.36" (9.1mm) thick. It has the dimensions of a tiny 100-page book I have right here on my bookshelf. Fair enough if you only read books of that size, but even Harry Potter gets massive. It's also much less fragile than a book. It seems indestructible. Meanwhile my backpack alone turns out to be a book-cover destroyer before we even get into lending books out. I think most people here would agree that books are bulky and fragile, so it's weird to hear someone suggest that books have these advantages over an e-reader. One killer feature for me is that e-readers have a backlight so I can read anywhere. E-ink lets me read in the sun. The backlight lets me read without an external source of light. It's a massive convenience. And the battery charge lasts weeks. It's fair enough if you don't think e-readers are worthwhile to you, but it's in your best interest to figure out why it's not "a solution in search of a problem" for the people who buy them. A better angle is just to ask people why they like something and they'll happily illuminate the mystery.
- C4stor 8y agoDuring holidays, I typically read a book every 3/4 days, so a 2 week break means 4-5 books read, and having a kindle-like device is really helpful for me ^^
- magic_beans 8y agoI am constantly glued to my kindle. I LOVE the idea of being to have almost any title I want instantly. The kindle basically changed my life since I moved to an area without a local bookstore. I read all. the. time. And I'm not an outlier. Not everyone has amazing bookstores near them.
- bpyne 8y agoAnd this is the strong argument for purchasing online. When I lived in Boston it was fun to spend a few hours on the weekend perusing book stores. When I moved to a less urban place I had only large bookstores in suburban strip mall hell to choose from. My dislike for driving kept me from going to them. Now, with a Nook, I love the ability to finish a book at night, realize I want to read longer, and purchase another one immediately. I don't have to plan ahead. There are a lot of upsides to purchasing them online. But, I do miss the culture and community of small bookstores.
- wwweston 8y agoIt's a fair fear, but I'd guess my consumption rate for books slightly exceeds my former consumption rate for paper books. I don't always have my Kindle on me, but I almost always have my phone on me, which makes dipping into a book via the Kindle app easy as my digital distraction of choice. (Though of course there are competing distractions, like HN and social media.)
- C4stor 8y agoI think you're right that the law preserved the original culture indeed, not that it created one. I must confess that even as a moderate hobbyist, I don't know more than a couple of german authors.
- billfruit 8y agoThe appeal of buying books online is not just the price, but the available of a larger catalogue. There is only so many titles a single physical bookshop can stock and display.
- C4stor 8y agoI understand that, but honestly, picking a comic among 10000 or 100000 titles isn't really a different experience for me, in both cases the number is "enough". Having a knowledgeable shopkeeper to talk with on the other hand is really a fantastic experience for me !
- billfruit 8y agoMost commonly in physical stores, one often finds that, in a multi book series of books, volumes are missing or not available, good shop managers may be trying hard to avoid that situation, but I think it is a pretty common thing. This problem can only be worse with comics, graphic novels, most of which come in serial volumes. Another is the available of cheaper international paperback editions online. For translated books, I do not find bookshops striving to carry as many different translations of the same work as possible, most carry only one, when some works like Homer and the Russians Greats are published in very many translations.
- C4stor 8y agoThere's no denying that the "online" catalogue will always be larger than what a physical bookstore can have in stock. My point is rather than in France the advantages offered by the physical bookstores (namely, its friendly employers) outweighs that, in part because the online marketplace doesn't have a price advantage. Of course, in the end it's a matter of sensitivity to various criterias, stock definitely being a relevant one !
- wenc 8y ago> Having a knowledgeable shopkeeper to talk with on the other hand is really a fantastic experience for me ! This is a fairly rare experience for bookstores in some of the U.S. geographies I've lived in. The shopkeepers I encounter aren't widely-read or intellectuals. They're either college students working at slightly above minimum wage to pay for school, or ex-hippies with lots of used books in their garage who figured they could make some money selling them. They have no sense of the intellectual pulse of today (they don't know what ideas are popular), don't have a good mental semantic tree of authors and their works, and worst of all, aren't readers themselves. I don't expect bookstore owners to have the omnivorous interests and breadth of Tyler Cowen, but they should at least have intellectual curiosity and a love of books. The only exceptions are bookstores near great universities, where the owners tend to be stragglers who loved their university town so much that they stayed. They're usually former English lit, philosophy or other humanities majors who continue to read widely. You can tell a bookstore is good by the quality of their curation -- really good bookstores understand space is a premium and don't stock junk. That said, you also need someone with a mind for business. Unfortunately this confluence of skills doesn't occur regularly so we live with what we have.
- webmobdev 8y agoThat's interesting! So how does this regulating work exactly?
- Neracked 8y agoThe editor of a book decides at what price it is going to be sold. Then, whether you go to your local bookshop, a huge mall or Amazon, the price is going to be the same.
- C4stor 8y agoThe book price is fixed by the editor/publisher (I'm sorry, I'm not sure of the correct english word for "éditeur" in french), and all resellers have to sell it at this price. To allow bookshops to do a margin, they have a specific different agreement with editors. I _think that in general they pay a yearly flat fee to editors (in the tens of thousands of euros) and then get the books at a lower price. If they sell enough copies, they end up a profit.
- webmobdev 8y agoOk. So does that make books expensive in France (assuming all editors / publishers are corporate capitalists looking to squeeze the maximum profit?. And what about second-hand books - do old and used books also have to be sold at a price dictated by these editors / publishers?
- nraynaud 8y agoThere is still competition in the sense that another author can write a book on a related genre. Second hand books are as common as in the US I’d say. The first Harry Potter is 8.70€ as a pocket book on Amazon.fr and I see $7.20 for paperback in the US. The big difference is in school books, I just looked into solid mechanics, we are une the 30-70€ range in France and $80-130 range in the US (in a bad comparison, I see stuff completely irrelevant in my query result). The trick is that the French gouvernement is not passive, it often tell industries that if they don’t change this or that, they’ll just use the law. In the end I feel it works better than in the US. In particular on book, France is under constant watch by free market entities, so they’d better reach some measure of success for the consumer or the EU will just intervene. The goal is to preserve the French culture, it only works if French people read and write French books. If it's too expensive, people don't buy books, if it's too low, authors don't survive.
- ekianjo 8y ago> meaning there's little to no interest buying books online meaning there is no competition and prices are artificially inflated for no particular reason except some ideological one. I'm not sure it's a good case for regulating the price of books. My observation: Japan has WAY more bookshops than France without any regulation of book prices. And they produce a LOT more books locally than France ever does.
- adamsea 8y ago> no particular reason except some ideological one ... You make ideology sound like a bad thing. Depends on the particular beliefs of the ideology, no? After all the “free market” (for lack of a better term) beliefs in your post are an ideology too ...
- namdnay 8y agoThat's a bit like arguing that atheism is a religious belief.
- stcredzero 8y agoI'm an atheist, but I've seen "atheists" intone their beliefs, even though there was no one around to convince, like it was a profession of dogma from a Mass. There are definitely some "atheists" around who approach it from more of a tribal affiliation perspective, not an intellectual one. Even the most intellectually sound movement can become toxic. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporative-cooling-of-group-beliefs https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ...
- posterboy 8y agoAtheism is a believe, just not a religious believe. ... ... Whereas, Christianity doesn't hold a believe, just a religious believe.
- boudin 8y agoJapan has fixed book prices too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price
- KoenDG 8y agoI'd very much prefer buying online. I don't have room to store those books, but I do want to read em.
- bpyne 8y agoI miss conversations with people at specialized book stores. I miss spending hours looking through the aisles. It was a great way to spend an afternoon on the weekend. I like the convenience of purchasing books online. Admittedly, though, I've lost the whole community and culture of books that small bookstores provided.
- jamiek88 8y agoThat’s me but with cd’s. As a kid growing up in uk interested in US hip hop the specialist shops and their clientele turned me onto a whole different world.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoThe UK had something similar called the Net Book Agreement. It wasn't written into law, rather it was between publishers and book sellers. Eventually some of the big book retailers abandoned it then it was found to be illegal in the courts. After that the supermarkets moved in and discounted the best sellers. The decline set in for bookshops before Amazon came along.