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

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#211

Post by mitigating » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 5:33 AM UTC

claaams wrote: post #180

wibagusto wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they can sell more books if open longer, have more resources, etc. But one thing is for certain: if you buy from a retail store you will actually get the real book, not some cheap fake garbage.

Getting fake or low quality garbage from Amazon has made me stop using their product most entirely. I have 0 faith in it and I will gladly pay the inconvenience of driving or 5-10% more for a retail store brand.

There's some percentage of people that always want to pay the lowest price and if the product turns out to be fake they return it. Say you order 100 things over a month and 5% turn out to be fake the only cost is time (Amazon pays for shipping if the product is fake I believe). That's compared to paying 10% more on every product plus the time it takes to go to the store.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#212

Post by mitigating » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 5:35 AM UTC

andreime wrote: post #195

BurningFrog wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is actually protecting the small book stores, right? Looks like it's protecting everyone except the book buying consumer.

one could argue that in the long term book buying consumers are protected from a monopoly that would probably appear

Does that monopoly result in increased cost for the customer? I assume there is harm to the general economy the problem is quantifying that and also convincing people to pay more for something.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#213

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 5:36 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#214

Post by mitigating » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 5:36 AM UTC

amluto wrote: post #125

pier25 wrote: post #62

Please 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 5…

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.

Amazon 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).

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#215

Post by bserge » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 5:37 AM UTC

lwouis wrote: post #174

chrisseaton wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people wanted it anyway why would they need a law to enforce it? I want to shop locally. I don’t vote for a law to require myself to shop locally. I just go ahead and shop locally. The only need for a law is to force someone who doesn’t want to shop locally to do so against their will!

People are driven by biological impulses. It seems reasonable to me to want to protect yourself from your own future impulses. I remember reading about an experiment at Google where they reduced snacking by simply putting an opaque cover on the snacks. When people see chocolate bars, there is a chance they'll turn and get one. They may consider they made the decision rationally but they didn't. In moments of rational…

Yeah, the primitive vs advanced brain struggle is real. Unfortunately it doesn't quite translate to social systems.

In the quest for ever increasing safety, someone might ban tap water because one guy choked on it. That would be hilarious.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#216

Post by spoonjim » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 5:38 AM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #67

spoonjim wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have incentives for rural living you 1) depopulate your food production labor base and 2) don't have people in a place that will defend it with force.

This probably sounds crazy, but I think the best way to incentivize food production laborers is to pay them a fair wage. Rural areas have a mix of the estates of the top net worth individuals and the laborers who work there. The wealthy are subsidized along with the working class. It makes more sense to stop subsidizing the rural areas entirely and then pay the working class fair wages. As for defending the rural are…

I don't know about France but in the US the number of high net worth individuals who live in rural areas without making their money there (e.g. big farm owners, mine owners, etc.) is very small.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#217

Post by manmal » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 5:59 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

I wonder whether the customer really wins, if, eventually, one or two companies control handle all book sales. Global vs local optimum situation.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#218

Post by tomjen3 » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 6:03 AM UTC

andreime wrote: post #195

BurningFrog wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is actually protecting the small book stores, right? Looks like it's protecting everyone except the book buying consumer.

one could argue that in the long term book buying consumers are protected from a monopoly that would probably appear

But they do so by creating a new monopoly where there publishers set the price.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#219

Post by black_puppydog » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 6:06 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.

I would welcome this. The French brick and mortar book stores are great and I love nothing more than spending hours at end walking through their aisles. They typically look small from the outside but then they are built like mazes, retrofitted into the building they happen to inhabit, branching out left and right, up and down.They specialise in topics, apparently by preference of the owners. Around my corner I have one that focuses on psychology and urban planning for example.

The one thing they're really lacking is a good distribution system. Trying to order a book they don't have in stock, especially foreign ones, can often result in multi week delivery times or even a flat-out "no" which is insane to me since I'm from Germany and there we've had next day delivery to any shop in the country since the mid 90s at least.

So this should help level the playing field and make it worthwhile for the book shops to compete in delivery times, because if I understand this correctly I would NOT have to pay delivery if I go to pick up a book in the store?

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#220

Post by Nasrudith » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 6:21 AM UTC

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…

Yeah - it is just a simple matter of numbers as opposed to pretentiouses or humblebragging. The number of people interested in a book is highest for the surface/casual level and it is seldom that there will be enough demand for often expensive and slow to move texts. There isn't much call for say republishing of authenic 19th century surgical technique books. Maybe some casual readers would buy it at a lower price point but almost certainly not if it is several hundred dollars.