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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

#201

Post by forgotmyoldname »

aborsy wrote: post #191

Basically 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 pla…

One 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.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#202

Post by tdeck »

ineedasername wrote: post #179
tdeck wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'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.

Fair point, I have no special knowledged of the pricing, but it is incredibly cheap.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#203

Post by artwr »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #181
chucksmash wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Was it Charles Petzold's Code? If so that's a wonderful book.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#204

Post by popcube »

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?

usually, discount is from publisher

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#205

Post by pverghese »

Shadonototra wrote: post #43
rafaelturk wrote: post #8

My 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.

Maybe 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..

Maybe some of us dont want to have to deal with people for a simple transaction.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#206

Post by WalterBright »

tshaddox wrote: post #199
WalterBright wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already answered that question.

You didn’t. And also, the whole reason Amazon named it that is because they are pledging to make the arena powered by renewable energy. You can certainly argue how significant that is, but it certainly doesn’t seem all that different from buying a park and naming it after climate change.

> You didn’t.

I've said my piece. It's up to the readers to make up their own minds.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#207

Post by makeitdouble »

jareklupinski wrote: post #200
makeitdouble wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

> It just removes the price out of the equation. I too welcome our post-scarcity future :)

This feels like a joke, but deciding on where/how to buy something completely ignoring the price (same everywhere) is refreshing.

There's few similar experiences, perhaps movie theaters before they started monthly plans/membership programs. I can't think of any other day to day instance where price comparison is explicitly rendered moot.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#208

Post by Semaphor »

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.

Monopoly: Big yes for Germany.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#209

Post by makeitdouble »

ineedasername wrote: post #163
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).

making them just another option among the others Not quite. Amazon will make more profit than it does by removing the shipping subsidy. Then, given their preexisting market position and logistics/delivery network, it's still likely to be faster to get a book from Amazon if a local store doesn't have a copy. If you don't have to have the book right now and are already a regular Amazon shopper, Amazon still has a signi…

To put in context, France is pretty small, approximatively fitting a 1 000 x 1 000 km box.

Delivering goods produced in France to French people isn't as complex as shipping stuff worldwide, and local players do under 2 days delivery for a while now, with ~3h delivery if you're willing to go to a nearby shop of the franchise.

Also, local delivery services can suck, and your 1 day delivery just ends up being a trip to a random post office 1 week later as they close during your work hours.

All in all, Amazon's advantage is on product variety and consistent customer experience. For best-seller books, that's a lot less of an edge.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#210

Post by bserge »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #190
jwond wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 qualit…

I still don't see how a millionaire giving away 1/10 of his wealth lowers their quality of life. Unless you think a QoL of 15/10 is acceptable.
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