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France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon
- konschubert 5y agoThis will make all online book sales more expensive, not just Amazon's.
- r00fus 5y agoAll for a way to protect small businesses which actually pay local taxes vs. Amazon which doesn't pay taxes in the US at all - but not sure a minimum ship price is the best approach. Isn't there a better way, perhaps based on physical presence?
- ec109685 5y agoAmazon pays tons of sales tax.
- caslon 5y agoIs there a word for laws that disproportionately affect people in rural areas so that a government can play protectionist for urban companies? I hate Amazon as much as anyone, but in this case they're definitely not wrong, even if they're probably lying about their reasoning.
- WalterBright 5y ago> I hate Amazon as much as anyone The fashionable thing to say, indeed! Yet the anyones are all covertly buying from Amazon, working for Amazon, and investing in Amazon.
- bduerst 5y agoNah, we've successfully reduced spending on Amazon by >90% in our household. There are still some obscure items that, due to the sheer spread of Amazon, are incredibly difficult to get anywhere else, online or off - but that was Amazon's original market benefit to begin with. You could always get that weird book on Amazon that you couldn't get in the book store.
- coolso 5y ago@Saddlerustle, that’s a very legit 5-star Amazon review if I’ve ever read one!
- saddlerustle 5y agoGood for you. For me, after the local grocery store went to shit, with Prime Now and Amazon Fresh I've shifted almost all our spending to Amazon.
- bduerst 5y agoYeah, we were lucky in that we had a couple good options locally for produce other than Whole Foods too. The Safeway has gotten really bad, and the mail services I tried were all over the place.
- ineedasername 5y agoYep-- high risk during covid and lack of local delivery capacity, not to mention empty store shelves, meant Amazon Fresh was the alternative. I was fortunate that literally just a few weeks before the shutdown I had been sick and couldn't go foodshopping so I used Fresh for the first time. That made me an existing customer, and when the shutdown hit they weren't taking new ones. Even then, I was up to 1:00am in the morning a lot of times waiting for delivery slots to open. And then Amazon began releasing delivery slots incrementally throughout the day, which probably made it more equitable but also meant I had to constantly refresh the checkout page a dozen times an hour to get one instead of being quick on the draw after midnight.
- WalterBright 5y agoResistance is futile.
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- denimnerd42 5y agoyeah I mean I love amazon personally. sometimes things go wrong but same as any business.
- throwaway6734 5y agoYep Amazon is mostly great
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- coolso 5y agoI’ve cut back on my Amazon purchases 90%. It’s been nice visiting actual stores and getting something same-hour. Sometimes I pay a dollar or two more. But buying local(er) feels good for my soul. It’s nice not having to wonder if every single positive review is real or fake, or if real, if it’s accurate. It’s also nice not having to sift through direct-from-China products with extremely strange names and poorly written box descriptions. Anyway, I’m not sure what your point is. You can hate something and still use it. Especially if that something actively made it much harder to not use it. It’s the same with made in USA goods. Most people crave them. But thanks to our government and corporations, it’s difficult to do it - or at least, do it affordably. Does that mean people prefer made in China? Or that they’re just posturing when they say they don’t like made in China? No.
- ineedasername 5y agoIt’s nice not having to wonder if every single positive review is real or fake Unless you're getting your reviews from friends and family, you should still probably wonder if they're fake.
- saurik 5y agoIs this somehow supposed to be inconsistent? One normally doesn't hate Amazon because they are successful, but because they are too successful. This is like claiming making fun of someone who says they hate cigarettes or alcohol because they are "covertly" still using both all the time, or someone who says they hate the food at their school cafeteria despite "covertly" eating it... this "you don't get to say you hate something if you use it" take is ridiculous.
- coolso 5y agoDidn’t you hear? Losing your US-manufacturing job so everyone can buy cheap throwaway Chinese goods with loads of fake reviews is actually good for the economy, or something. You should be made fun of for thinking otherwise.
- caslon 5y agoActually, yeah. I'm the one who made the first anti-Amazon comment in this thread; Amazon encourages anti-global market practices with their political donations. This is a pretty good reason to hate them. They aren't pro-market, they're pro-Amazon. They support protectionism stateside. A bigger market is a good thing, and something to encourage. By supporting broken/longer IP laws, software patents, and local-favoring of distributors, Amazon encourages a smaller, more centralized, more broken market.
- WalterBright 5y agoMy meaning is a bit subtler than your interpretation. I was commenting on the practice of virtue signalling. For example, Seattle rebuilt and renamed the old Key Arena into Climate Pledge Arena. While I am a more ardent environmentalist than most (my virtue signalling duly noted) this name is a local pinnacle of vacuous virtue signalling nonsense.
- bduerst 5y agoJust FYI, Virtue Signalling is a pejorative that implicitly marginalizes and accuses someone of abnormal behavior. The GP here is calling that out even if you didn't specifically use the term "virtue signalling" in your original comment - the behavior here is entirely normal. The phrase's roots come from the alt-right looking for a replacement for SJW accusations not being taken seriously: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior#.22Virtue_signalling.22 https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior#.22Virt...
- caslon 5y agoI hate Amazon because of their refusal to free their stack despite using and distributing plenty of AGPL software. I hate Amazon because they push software patents. I hate Amazon because they're anti-union. I hate Amazon for lots of reasons. At the same time, I also realize that there are plenty of good things about their existence, as someone who grew up in an area without a good library. Being good for a specific thing that is partially their fault (Amazon supports terrible intellectual property laws as much as any big company with their political donations, which prevents the market from being able to function efficiently; there's no reason Chinese sellers shouldn't be able to print out-of-print technical books, for example) doesn't make them good, or make me hate them any less. I don't buy from Amazon, and I don't invest in Amazon, and I don't work for Amazon. I'm relatively consistent, but even people who aren't consistent aren't hypocrites for participating in society when they disagree with how it functions. I think that voting isn't ideal, but I still vote, because it's available. This is pretty natural; it isn't some shocking abandonment of moral principles. Nor is using a company's services despite it being an awful actor in society because you can't afford anything else (partially because of their position and participation in society, which is worth pointing out). I'm as capitalistic as anybody, but Amazon's a bad actor that's contributing to the destruction of capitalism by encouraging intellectual property laws and making political donations encouraging ending things that actually help the market like ePacket.
- TrainedMonkey 5y agoSpecific quote is: > Imposing a minimum shipping cost for books would weigh on the purchasing power of consumers. The other side is a bit more complex, but Amazon is definitely subsidizing shipping costs from their yearly subscription and seller fees. The argument is that this is unfair to smaller companies which don't have capital to burn... and that is kind of true? I think there are valid points on both sides.
- yellow_lead 5y agoPredatory pricing
- ineedasername 5y agoThey may not be subsidizing shipping at all beyond the amount they would normally discount new books, but law prohibits such discounting as well. Books could be a loss leader here, but I'm not sure of it.
- woodruffw 5y agoI can't read the full article thanks to the paywall so maybe I'm missing it, but: where is the urban protectionism here? More generally, my limited understanding of French politics is that they have a very strong agricultural interest that's disproportionate to the populace, similar to the US. The limited news I read about French domestic politics indicates that their government generally accommodates and subsidizes non-urban citizens, much like ours does. Edit: Here's the (Amazon) quote about rural concerns: > Amazon said the legislation, adopted by parliament but not yet enacted, would punish those in rural areas who cannot easily visit a bookstore and rely on delivery.
- bduerst 5y agoReuters doesn't use paywalls. Is it blocked in other countries?
- woodruffw 5y agoOh, this was my mistake. It's not a paywall, it's just asking me to register to continue to read for free. Says something about my advertising blindness. (I'm in the US, visiting from a US IP address.)
- TeMPOraL 5y agoPerhaps we need a new term for this, encompassing both paywalls and "registration walls". "Dating wall" perhaps? Whether it's asking you to pay up, or just to register an account, it's still asking you to enter into a relationship with the content provider, and you bounce off because you'd rather not have that relationship. Relationships are a burden, there's only so many one can keep track of.
- _jal 5y agoI just call them, "Nope." I'd really like a plugin that will override styles on links to sites on a list I get to keep.
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- bryanrasmussen 5y ago>Is there a word for laws that disproportionately affect people in rural areas so that a government can play protectionist for urban companies? how much of a difference does urban / rural divide make in France regarding such effects?
- tshaddox 5y agoI don't know if there's a word for that, but it certainly seems like it would be exceedingly rare. Don't people in rural areas have vastly disproportionately large representation in government, public spending per capita, etc.? Of course, I'm just basing this on my intuition in the United States. My intuition could be way off, or France could be quite different.
- caslon 5y agoPeople in rural areas have disproportionately large representation in government, but this doesn't mean their representation actually represents them. By and large rural politicians go against the will of their voter bases and over the past fifty years have contributed to the decline of important things like rural schooling, sort of cementing the "bad representation" problem. Rural voters are actually far more progressive than many people might think (over half of them are in favor of M4A, if we take polls of rural states at face value), but they vote based on the party line rather than who actually represents their interests. This is partially because of the destruction of education in rural states. The same is true for citizens all over the country. Dianne Feinstein repeatedly kept flying a confederate flag over SF's city hall during the 80s, for example, but she's never lost a race; tell me that represents the will of the people: https://www.newspapers.com/image/460776332/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/460776332/
- tshaddox 5y agoI agree that representatives don't actually represent the wishes of pretty much anyone who isn't extremely wealthy, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that this problem is worse for rural populations than urban populations.
- belval 5y agoThis seems to be incentivising the customer to shop in-person instead of online and seems spectacularly uninspired, they could have simply waived taxes on books for companies headquartered in France? Or really anything that isn't simply forcing the customer to pay shipping?
- fallingknife 5y agoThat would probably violate trade agreements.
- amelius 5y agoAnd laissez-faire was a French invention.
- ekianjo 5y agoBastiat is unknown in France.
- coldtea 5y agoIt was one of those inventions you gift to inferior cultures...
- tpush 5y agoCan you please not start a dick measuring contest between cultures in these comments. Thanks.
- mdp2021 5y agoI have restrained myself from much better jokes today. But if it was not a joke, why do not you argue about it? Edit: thank you! Of course one «want[s] more details», do you think this is the place to type 'Oh, by the way, do not wait for your wife to come home tonight' and just stop there as the rest may be unimportant?!
- coldtea 5y ago>But if it was not a joke, why do not you argue about it? Well, it was neither a joke, nor an argument, that's why. It was a proposition/value judgement expressed in jest. But if you want more details, it's based on the belief that the idea being that "laissez-faire" was not a good concept to begin with. And despite being invented in France back in the day, was never really popular in France or Europe in general (Austrian economists excepted), where the "government is the enemy" idea didn't really took hold in the populace either. We like our social democracy and government regulating some things, thank you very much. So, unless you chance on the statistically atypical (aside from echo bubbly HN/VC style circles) european who hates "government" not for/when doing bad shit, but for being government, and wants no restrictions imposed on corporations, it is more thought of as something neoliberal / Thacherite / Ayn-Rand-loving types would have as their motto - and unironically have their militarry enforce to countries who didn't like it.
- intricatedetail 5y agoThis is stupid. It will prevent local business from using "free" shipping. Better way will be to just ban Amazon until they start paying right taxes.
- sokoloff 5y agoIf they’re not paying the right taxes, why not just prosecute them for violating tax laws?
- intricatedetail 5y agoIn my country such thing is discretionary for IRS. They would have to request accounting books and go through probably billions of transactions. Plus political pressure.
- phtrivier 5y agoIt's funny that we still pin Amazon against bookstores - I was under the impression that Amazon is shipping _everything_ those days, and that books are not what most people go to Amazon for any more.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoOn the other hand, typical French chains like FNAC have also expanded into electronics and even the kind of 'marketplace' with third party sellers. If anything the online market in France has more competition than most countries.
- Nasrudith 5y agoYeah plus the fact /bookstores sell through Amazon/ and have for a while. It shows what sorts of dinosaurs are running things.
- rafaelturk 5y agoMy experience tells me that the practical outcome of this new regulation is that shipping will become more expensive for books. It will not prevent customers to stop shopping online, so no effect for legacy bookstore.s Like most goverment proposed solutions: This will actually create a new problem not fix the origintal intented cause.
- thr0wawayf00 5y agoMost government proposed solutions create new problems instead of fixing the original? Do you have any data to back that claim up?
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago>Most government proposed solutions create new problems instead of fixing the original? Do you have any data to back that claim up?
- rafaelturk 5y agoGDPR - General Data Protection Regulation; Europe's complex privacy regulations was meant to curb Google and Facebook abuse of cookies, data and power. It only made it harder for smaller startups or other companies to compete. Meanwhile Bigh Tech, suported by expensive legal, Design and marketing teams evated all new the regulatory burden. Overall GDPR only made Google and Facebok more powerful, and introduced a new legal barrier to challenger startups. Hence helps to consolidate even more their power. And Finally to make it even worse now everyone has to deal with that stupid consent cookie banner in every single website..
- Shadonototra 5y agoMaybe that is not a problem, and will force people to actually get to meet with people Dematerialized everything has its problems too But why bother with the social aspect of things, we are all enslaved consumerist robots anyways..
- pverghese 5y ago
- oh_sigh 5y agoWhat is the origin of the law that bans free book deliveries?
- ritonlajoie 5y agoAmazon free shipping
- Waterluvian 5y agoNot a big fan of Amazon but I also find it ridiculous and self-sacking to fixate on obsolete ideas. If you have to force a business to exist, maybe it doesn’t need to exist.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoYeah. So many problems caused by businesses who simply refuse to die. Their time has passed but they simply refuse to go away and let humanity move on. The entire copyright industry for example.
- reissbaker 5y agoThe entire copyright industry for example. You mean like... books?
- matheusmoreira 5y agoPhysical books? No.
- reissbaker 5y agoHow do physical books not depend on copyright? The author still needs to get paid, and printing is fairly cheap.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoPhysical books are valuable. Some people just prefer them over ebooks. As physical items, making and distributing copies is non-trivial and costs money. Due to their scarce nature, it actually makes sense to sell them.
- reissbaker 5y agoRight, but without copyright, anyone can copy and reprint any book that gets written, and the original author doesn't get paid.
- arthurcolle 5y agoOh wow, Amazon is such a threat! Whatever will Larousse and Hachette do... maybe remain competitive? </3
- coldtea 5y agoI'd rather not have them race to the bottom to "remain competitive". I also rather not have the book industry of a country dependent on the whims (and VC/bottomless pit of money to stay "competitive" while they crush a market) of an American company. Even more so one with no culture and no respect for the book as a work of the spirit whatsoever. So there's that.
- smabie 5y agoI guess I would rather have cheaper books/things, don't really care whether a book seller has respect for a book as a "work of spirit" whatever that means.
- coldtea 5y agoWell, I, on the other hand, am European, so I care about more than getting my books/things cheap.
- mdp2021 5y agoThe poster with «work of spirit» probably meant "outcome of higher mental work and more, including intellectual". And expressed that it should be respected as a highly dignified product (as opposed to a piece of product conceived for consumerism). Nonetheless, i cannot really interpret that mention of Europe "as opposed to some rest". Edit: having seen further comments, I can. There are areas in Europe in which extremely light judgement and behaviour is socially unpunished and considered normal, or "normal as an exception". (In other areas, nobody with that trait could have reached, say, 18 years of age without getting "straightened".) It must be noted that those areas have a mixed population: some will behave """antisocially""" while many will remain absolutely lovely - it is just tolerance of juvenile thought and behaviour misunderstood by some """beneficiaries""" as acceptance or approval, instead of patience.
- fallingknife 5y ago> More than 20% of the 435 million books sold in France in 2019 were bought online I am very surprised at how low this number is.
- themodelplumber 5y agoI wonder how many of the hard copies were bought as gifts or purchased by wandering tourists looking for a paper companion.
- jjgreen 5y agoI'm not: French bookshops are really rather good.
- Bayart 5y agoDiscovery on Amazon is pretty bad. I've never picked a book there after having serendipitously finding my way to it. But I've done exactly that in bookstores countless times. The only websites that give me an experience remotely similar are those of old, specialized publishers. Case in point (in French) : - https://www.lesbelleslettres.com/collections https://www.lesbelleslettres.com/collections - https://www.droz.org/france/section/Collections https://www.droz.org/france/section/Collections - https://www.honorechampion.com/fr/29-champion https://www.honorechampion.com/fr/29-champion
- ur-whale 5y agoTo all posters who harp on the "this is stupid" theme: I do agree, but saying this is imo short-sighted. Much more likely, we're witnessing a good old-fashioned lobbying effort bearing fruits at the expense of the consumer and in favor of a small but politically connected group of businesses.
- AniseAbyss 5y agoJust switch the epubs or learn English and import books. French wankers information wants to be free.
- president 5y agoWhy not? Didn't China move to shield pretty much every industry from overseas ones?
- throwaway789257 5y agoFrance has a long history of attempting to protect its cultural industries, including film and publishing. It's not wrong. There are other things that are important aside from customer purchasing power. Amazon is using its economies of scale to drive out smaller businesses. It is not unique in that. But the industries that Amazon affects may be unique to the nations that wish to preserve them. Most centralization incrementally kills local industry, including the local culture industry. TV, railroads, chain stores, Wal-mart, you name it -- they are all killing something local.
- xattt 5y ago> railroads Would you be able to elaborate on this or was it hyperbole? Personal experience is where there is passenger rail service are inherently more interesting.
- notriddle 5y agoI think the point is about the era before railroads, which is also the era before personal automobiles. Cars are post-railroad. It can be true that car-centric places are less interesting, while it is also true that the railroad killed local culture.
- supertrope 5y agoThe most useful railroad would be a single national rail network. Large network operators can refuse to interconnect or exchange traffic with small networks. When you’re small you want interoperability and FRAND tariffs to access the big networks. When you’re big you want to charge high rates, tie your other services with the dominant one, and sometimes refuse service to pressure small competitors into merging with you.
- throwaway789257 5y agoI would recommend reading Daniel Boorstin's book, The Americans: The Democratic Experience. https://www.amazon.com/Americans-Democratic-Experience-Daniel-Boorstin/dp/0394710118 https://www.amazon.com/Americans-Democratic-Experience-Danie... There are fascinating chapters about how the combination of railroads, mail-order catalogs, rural-free delivery of USPS, and chain stores like A&P successively wiped out local merchants in small town America in favor of distant economic centers. The debates they had about those technologies and economic models are almost identical to the debates that have raged about Wal-Mart and later Amazon in my lifetime.
- reissbaker 5y agoI'm curious whether French independent bookstores have been harmed much by Amazon. In the US, Amazon has probably actually been a boon — the number of independent bookstores has grown dramatically over the last decade, in part because Amazon squashed the previous era's giant book retailers like Borders and Barnes and Noble, who had been crushing independent bookstores.
- pier25 5y agoPlease correct me if I'm wrong, but this is actually protecting the small book stores, right? Big stores like the Fnac could offer the same shipping prices as Amazon (and maybe they're already doing it). Publishers don't care much who is selling the book as long as it's selling. Obviously this only applies to physical books. Ebooks only account for about 15% of books sold in France unlike the US where it's close to 50% [1]. [1] https://imgur.com/edK0YWP https://imgur.com/edK0YWP
- amluto 5y agoI’m suspicious that Amazon sells fewer books than a good physical bookstore. In a bookstore, people find books they didn’t know they want, and I’ve never found anything interesting on Amazon. Similarly, Amazon does not produce the “whole I’m already here, I might as well buy something else” effect. I’ve long thought that the publishers have has their whole business model wrong in quite a few ways.
- mitigating 5y agoAmazon does offer recommendations based on an algorithm while a book store either has similar books all in one section ordered in a more traditional fashion (maybe alphabetical).
- panzagl 5y agoUgh, this is going to sound pretentious, but here goes: When you follow a subject beyond a surface/casual level of understanding there is very little you just 'discover' at a bookstore, unless it's one of a few specialty shops. You follow journals, publishers' catalogs, and forums which not only keep you current with new releases, but also expose you to back-catalog and out of print material. And nobody beats Amazon for carrying all of that material.
- animal_spirits 5y agoWriting tip, if you think something is going to sound pretentious, then replace all instances of 'you' with 'I'. Usually that will help with the tone. I find I sometimes tend to assume my own personal experiences will match everyone else's experience, which usually is not the case in the end. So, instead of trying to convince people what the "right way" to bookshop is, just give your perspective as another point to the conversation.
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- Zababa 5y agoAs an anecdote, where I live Amazon has switched from Colis Privé to Colissimo. With Colis Privé, I used to always get my packages in my mailbox, even if they had to force it in a bit. Nothing was ever damaged because of this. With Colissimo, they come at usually 15h on a week day, may or may not call you, and either give the package to a neighbor or put it at the local post office. In short, the delivery went from great to garbage. As for the current state of the "book industry" where I live: you have 4 choices, either Amazon, an independant bookstore, Decitre (a local bookstore chain), or FNAC (basically Amazon but with physical buildings). Independant bookstores are usually great at recommandations (way better than anything Amazon can do for example), but some of them are just a small-size FNAC, which kind of removes the point of an independant bookstore. As someone that almost only buy books when I know which book I want to buy, so I don't benefit a lot from independant bookstores, but people around me like them a lot.
- 908B64B197 5y agoJust get an Amazon Locker. https://www.amazon.com/ulp/view/ https://www.amazon.com/ulp/view/
- Zababa 5y agoSo instead of going to the ground floor of my appartment building, opening my mail box, taking my package and going back home, I have to take a 7 minute walk to the train station, hope that it's open, take my package, and go back home. That's a worse service than what I got before.
- 908B64B197 5y agoI meant, in your apartment's building lobby.
- Zababa 5y agoWe already have mailboxes for that. Here's an example of what it looks like if you're not familiar: https://cdn-s-www.leprogres.fr/images/A3755E4B-30EC-4378-99A3-FCA7BCE2A867/NW_raw/photo-illustration-progres-frederic-chambert-1581934166.jpg https://cdn-s-www.leprogres.fr/images/A3755E4B-30EC-4378-99A.... They're around 25 cm wide and tall, and 35 cm deep.
- ineedasername 5y agoSo, basically Amazon is in a win-win situation. If the status quo prevails, they're happy. If they have to start charging for shipping, maybe some customers go to a local bookstore but Amazon also has a legal mandate to make more profit in their book sales by not subsidizing shipping out of the wholesale margin. And while some people will buy local a bit more, Amazon sells so many things and the local store may still have to order your book and get it to you slower than Amazon, keeping Amazon as the most convenient option... I don't see a long-term downside for Amazon here.
- waynesonfire 5y agoOh good one. I guess at the end thats what these comapnies want. If they cant get market share through prices they'll do it in other ways as long as there is a level playing field. Similar to what fb is dealing with. They would welcome any legislation to hamper social media competition since they could then stop buying up potential threats.
- xcambar 5y agoThat struck me as well. Another option would have been to support local bookstores by subsidizing transportation, which would have allowed them to lower the price to the point of being competitive with Amazon. But I guess that using public money to help local businesses is not as good as getting the customers to pay and help Amazon at the same time, in the eyes of Macron.
- tdeck 5y ago> Another option would have been to support local bookstores by subsidizing transportation Doesn't media mail already do this (in the US)? If you're just sending books, the USPS will deliver them well below cost. I'm not sure what effect it has on local shops.
- ineedasername 5y agoI'm not sure media mail is really below cost: it gets shipped on a space-available basis on the trucks, which is why it can take longer to arrive. So it's really only processed when there's excess capacity that would have gone unused. $3 for postage is probably going to cover marginal costs here.
- waynesonfire 5y agoWont this just turn to whack a mole? What if amazon.com waives the membership fee if you buy three books?
- silentsea90 5y agoI think resisting change only takes you so far. Let systems become efficient. Centralized systems like Amazon will find an antidote in decentralized ones like Shopify. We don't miss horse carriages but I am sure they were part of daily life a 100+ years ago. Disruption and change is part of life.
- makeitdouble 5y agoA lot of comments don’t seem to get the context of this. Book prices are regulated in France [0] and you can’t just discount willy-nilly, in particular new book publications have selling prices set by the publisher. This proposition is coming on top of that: it will block sellers from artificially discounting books by subsidizing shipping cost. It is basically closing a loophole that still allowed Amazon to have lower prices than others. It doesn’t matter if you’re independent, purely online or not. The effect will be to force the same sticker price everywhere, as intended for years now. It may push people to buy local, but it’s only a side effect, and not the directly intended goal (there are other french online retailers that will benefit a lot more from this law). [0] https://www.sne.fr/app/uploads/2017/11/Intervention-Catherine-Blache_prix-unique-du-livre_mars-2015.pdf https://www.sne.fr/app/uploads/2017/11/Intervention-Catherin...
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- pier25 5y ago> The effect will be to force the same sticker price everywhere, as intended for years now. So in the end the seller with the best service will win.
- themitigating 5y agoOr with more stores, longer hours, free shipping....
- cromwellian 5y agoI don't even think Amazon wins on cost. It also wins on convenience and completeness. If I need to find a book or research on a subject, I'm not going to peruse a local book store, I'm going to use a Library Catalog, Amazon Search, or Google Search, from the convenience of my phone or desktop. Local book stores being the same price, or even cheaper, isn't likely to influence my initial tendency to preview on the Web first, and if I search for my book and preview on the Web, I'm much more likely to buy it there too. IMHO, France is only forestalling the inevitable, and eventually local book shops value won't be in selling books, but in providing a hangout place to discuss things, to have book tour speakers in person, to serve hipster coffee and snacks, etc. But as a pure book retail warehouse? I think think this is dead in the long term.
- pessimizer 5y agoYou'll get better prices if you look off amazon at one of the used book metasearch engines, like used.addall.com. You're also far more likely to end up ordering from a small, local store. To save on postage, you might order from one near you (or even pick up the book.) Well that last one will only happen in France, after this. In the US you go to Amazon for the free postage. And since so many people go to Amazon for the free postage, they can somehow charge a higher price without postage than indie booksellers including postage. It's a brand premium, not a convenience or cost premium. Too many people have the habit of checking Amazon first.
- makeitdouble 5y agoFor what it's worth, obscure books will come from small sellers that won't rely on Amazon's warehouses. In these cases, Amazon acts as a real marketplace where a seller just gets a storefront to access their customers: shipping will often be done manually, the customer paying the real cost etc. As an Amazon user, I really like that arrangement, where Amazon does what it is best at (cart handling), and small independent players get to reach a wide audience. BTW this law has almost nothing to do with that, it will mainly affect best sellers from big publishers that set regulated prices (legal max discount is 5%, under conditions). Up until now online shop were flying under the radar as it seems, but regulator are catching up.
- 5y ago
- benreesman 5y agoI apologize in advance for generalizing here and there. The point holds. “Capitalism” is what people do when they’re not having sex (and sometimes even then). It is the most powerful economic engine we know about. “Socialism” is the discipline of maximizing overall human welfare within the economic limits. The engine and the steering wheel so to speak. I’m willing to bet those definitions are in no dictionary, but the basic point is roughly what no constitution has yet to get right. The tricky bit is avoiding capture, and I’m optimistic we can do this without shooting all the lobbyists, but it would be a bargain even at that price.
- _vbnz 5y ago> “Capitalism” is what people do when they’re not having sex (and sometimes even then). It is the most powerful economic engine we know about. Capitalism is when people does stuff. Capitalism is a system where the Earth's resources and means of production (factories, machines, etc.) are privately owned. You can have voluntary exchange without that - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism
- benreesman 5y agoI’m fairly well versed in the barter -> coinage -> credit -> prosperity orthodoxy. Probably the best balance between accessibility and rigor on why that’s provably utter nonsense is “Debt: The First 5000 Years” by David Graeber. Now I know I’m going to piss off the Ayn Rand crowd, but I’m not concerned about that for two reasons: 1. Anyone who enjoys lectures about feeding the poor to one another written by an embittered old author living on fucking welfare is beyond my help. Bonus points: was tight with Greenspan who fucked up on, pretty much everything. 2. I don’t have an HN account older than some hackers with 1k karma on it because I play to the crowd. Quite the contrary. But as a cute sidebar: I make things people want. Never needed a Loopt-style backroom back rub.
- EastOfTruth 5y agoThey should move into the banned book publishing business instead.
- aborsy 5y agoBasically prices will rise for French due to poor competitiveness. This is a growing trend and will not be limited to books. Speaking of “culture” or religion, some practices are bad and better to die. We don’t live in caves anymore after all. It might feel nice to talk about unique culture and identity of isolated tribes in Amazon (the rainforest, not the company); trust me, you don’t want to be in some of these places if you are a woman or disabled. Local shops need to find creative ways to do business (coffee offers, meet ups etc), instead of lobbying that governments kills competition. Or do something else.
- anticodon 5y agoYeah, let's replace all world cultures with monoculture of McDonalds, Coca-Cola and Disneyland. After all, US being able to pour printed money at absurd quantities means it has the best culture in the world, and all the others vastly inferior?.. It's so sad.
- forgotmyoldname 5y agoOne problem is a lot of people really will buy the cheapest thing without even thinking about it. Then 5 years later they'll complain that wages are down, local shops are closed up, the quality of products they bought went to hell, and the only thing their town has is a raggedy Walmart. It's kind of hard to compete with a multinational trillion dollar corporation that actively seeks to crush your small business through unreasonably low prices and third world manufacturing just to eliminate future competition and secure a profit stream. And now that people thought they'd saved their town from Walmart, Amazon is coming in to clean out the rest.
- 74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago20 years late ...
- pyuser583 5y agoAmazons book selling business has been getting worse. It’s hard to search hard to find books, or books with common names. Shipping times are nothing special. It’s funny how “book selling” went from being Amazon’s core business to a distraction. Edit: I recommend EBay if you want to buy a physical tome.
- rossamurphy 5y ago“French law prohibits free book deliveries but Amazon has circumvented this by charging a single centime (cent). Local book stores typically charge about 5-7 euros ($5.82-8.15) for shipping a book.” Interesting how Amazon charge a “centime”, which hasn’t been legal tender in France since 2002…