France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#181

Post by calvinmorrison » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 2:02 AM UTC

chucksmash wrote: post #155

panzagl wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I did pickup quite a few good computer related books at The Strand, then again they have millions of books on site to browse. In fact i did get my C programming book there, my awk book and also a fun book called my googlewhack adventure. Also a book by microsoft publishing that gives a bottom to top view of computers (i forget the title) and an absurd Pop-Up book about computers and telecoms in the 80s

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#182

Post by makeitdouble » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 2:12 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #169

makeitdouble wrote: post #144

A 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 lowe…

> 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.

It just removes the price out of the equation. There will be any number of other factors pushing a customer to choose a store or another.

On a personal level, delivery network was a big one, and Amazon wasn't the best on this as you can't choose in most cases (delivery guys randomly calling on my phone because they got lost in another town...). But everyone will have their pet peeve, some people will just chose on how warm they feel about the company.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#183

Post by makeitdouble » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 2:12 AM UTC

themitigating wrote: post #170

pier25 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Or with more stores, longer hours, free shipping....

Well, no free shipping anymore ...

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#184

Post by _carbyau_ » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #85

Hokusai wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most centralization incrementally kills local industry And it makes the world more fragile and less diverse and interesting. Capitalism is founded on the idea of many producers competing for many customers. Amazon model steps as middleman so producers have only one buyer, and consumers have only one seller. That gives them a lot of power to control prices, and what is produced or consumed.

producers have only one buyer, and consumers have only one seller. Monopsony and monopoly all in one. For international HN'ers, a question: is the boardgame "Monopoly" popular in your country? Here in the US it's an old classic.

Australia here. It is an old classic. Emphasis on old. Up to about 2000 seemingly every house had a copy and possibly more than one copy as the various StarWars etc variations came out.

But our house doesn't have it and I'd be fine if my kid never saw it.

The world of modern boardgaming is so much more varied and fun.

Monopoly lost to the competition. :-)

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#185

Post by makeitdouble » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 2:19 AM UTC

option wrote: post #176

makeitdouble wrote: post #144

A 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 lowe…

so the consumer loses here

Depends on what you mean by that, but if it's about getting lower prices, the consumer probably "lost" more than a decade ago.

I don't have an opinion on how freshly published best-sellers should be sold, to me it's the same as new movies going into theaters...I personally don't care and will wait for the home/digital version. It's not like it will rot in place.

Amazon can still lower price on old books if they really want to. All in all it's about dirty plays between (big) dirty players, and regulators are mostly running around closing loopholes.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#186

Post by makeitdouble » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 2:23 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #165

makeitdouble wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 considerin…

Does Amazon really not have it's logistics built out that much in France? In the US local infrastructure is basically just last-mile delivery except for more rural areas. Also IIRC, Amazon shutdown at the begining of covid because of labor relations and a court order prohibiting shipment of anything but medical supplies-- not directly connected to it's general logistics and shipment capabilities.

They have extended logistics, but there is enough parallel infra used by all the other players that I personally don't see a difference (Amazon is not much faster to me, and sometimes worse).

On the Amazon shutdown, yes, it was strongly political and societal, not an operational error. I was just looking at it as a natural experiment on what happens when Amazon as a store stops.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#187

Post by makeitdouble » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 2:27 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #168

makeitdouble wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is shielding everyone else really. Amazon is using its money to basically price dump books, forcing competitors to the same path if they want to stand a chance. Having the other players also get into dumping is not a desirable outcome.

"Everyone else" meaning who exactly? Who is Amazon harming in the books industry other than small retailers?

Big retailers ?

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#188

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 2:28 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #178

WalterBright wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Couldn’t Key Bank have used the money for conservation as well? But is simply naming a stadium after the name of your bank somehow better?

I already answered that question.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#189

Post by bsder » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 2:56 AM UTC

pkaye wrote: post #161

bsder wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With regards to big players and economies of scale, it's notable that on the other side of the exchange we have more people brought into the fold than ever, whether we're talking about books Are more people actually brought into the fold? The rise of Amazon seems to correlate with fewer people also needing libraries and that libraries store fewer books. The problem is that the prerequisite for using Amazon and libr…

Though even libraries switched from card catalogues to computer databases long ago so some computer skill is even expected there.

True, but the more important thing than even the card catalog was that once you found one book, there were other books on the stacks "right next to the found book" due to the fact that the books were organized by either the Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal systems.

Consequently, your searches had a built in "proximity" result--which would give you more knowledge and keywords to do your next search with.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#190

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 3:12 AM UTC

jwond wrote: post #120

jollybean wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things are worth preserving, some are not. Walmart has increased the standard of living of the lower class quit considerably. In the 1980's everything was kind of expensive. From 1990-2010 with the rise of real globalisation it was just unbelievable what could be had for a a few dollars. I think most people would notice it if Walmart were to suddenly disappear. That said, anything cultural is probably worth pres…

> In the 1980's everything was kind of expensive. From 1990-2010 with the rise of real globalisation it was just unbelievable what could be had for a a few dollars. I don’t see this as necessarily a good thing. People buying a bunch of low quality products that are designed to be as cheap as possible and then just tossing them in the trash when they inevitably break is terrible for the environment.

> I don’t see this as necessarily a good thing. People buying a bunch of low quality products that are designed to be as cheap as possible and then just tossing them in the trash when they inevitably break is terrible for the environment.

The other two options are poor people go without completely, or rich people share their wealth with poor people and lower their quality of life so poor people can raise their quality of life.