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France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

reuters.com

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Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#151

Post by Koshkin »

kaashif wrote: post #140
coffeefirst wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve changed my mind about this. ebooks should make more sense, but people just like paper. And why not? We spend so much time in screens it’s nice to have things that are physical.

I had a Kindle for a few years, but I like paper books. After a long day at work, it's nice to relax with something that would survive a coronal mass ejection or nuclear EMP.

Unfortunately, the modern world is such that when the IT goes down the only use you will want for a paper book is as something to, well, kindle a fire with.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#152

Post by benreesman »

I 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.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#153

Post by WalterBright »

tshaddox wrote: post #139
WalterBright wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> arbitrary and vacuous Not really. It was called Key Arena before because Key Bank funded it. It was good advertising for them. The buildings on college campuses are also named after their donors. It acknowledges who paid for it. Names can also just be for fun, like the Seattle Space Needle. The Emerald City is also the official nickname for Seattle. Climate Pledge Arena is about as fun as "eat your broccoli, it's g…

Key Bank bought the naming rights and named it "Key Arena." Amazon bought the naming rights and called it "Climate Pledge Arena." The only sense in which one of those arbitrary names is "virtue signaling" and the other isn't it that some people just don't like it when anyone mentions climate change in public.

Amazon doing it doesn't make it any less virtue signalling. I'd be much more impressed if Amazon had used the money instead to buy some forest land and turned it into a nature conservancy. I wouldn't be critical of calling that "Climate Pledge Park".

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#154

Post by paulcole »

panzagl wrote: post #134
amluto wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’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.

Ugh, 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…

The part you’re missing is that virtually everyone follows virtually everything at a surface/casual level which keeps that “discovery” alive.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#155

Post by chucksmash »

panzagl wrote: post #134
amluto wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’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.

Ugh, 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…

It's not pretentious, it's true. The "Programming" section of chain bookstores would always be not-very-many shelves of "Teach Yourself X in Y Days" or "X for Dummies" books. I don't remember ever seeing any of the seminal books for noobies like "The C Programming Language" or SICP at Barnes & Noble/Borders/Chapter 11.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#156

Post by matheusmoreira »

reissbaker wrote: post #33
matheusmoreira wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. 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.

The entire copyright industry for example. You mean like... books?

Physical books? No.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#157

Post by smabie »

coldtea wrote: post #56
arthurcolle wrote: post #26

Oh wow, Amazon is such a threat! Whatever will Larousse and Hachette do... maybe remain competitive? </3

I'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.

I 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.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#158

Post by makeitdouble »

kaashif wrote: post #145
makeitdouble wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are laws preventing price dropping on new books. If Amazon has to start charging for shipping, they will be charging the same as every other bookstore in total, making them just another option among the others. Some will still prefer Amazon, but there is no downside anymore to chose another online shop (and there’s plenty big and reputable ones).

After complete price equality, I don't think it will be possible to have mandatory equal delivery times, so surely Amazon will still win out based on faster delivery.

They still mostly rely on the local infrastructure. Even going through gig economy based approaches won't set them apart from the other players doing the same.

Amazon is dominant, but not as much as we would tend to believe. It was forced to stop operations in France for a few weeks at the beginning of the pandemic, and demand just shifted around, service wasn't worse, delivery times weren't very different considering the situation. Comparing it to the effect of AWS shutting down, it was pretty unexpected.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#159

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #47
bduerst wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, 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.

Resistance is futile.

[deleted]

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#160

Post by pessimizer »

cromwellian wrote: post #149

I 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…

You'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.

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