There 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

There 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.