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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

#61

Post by threatofrain »

throwaway789257 wrote: post #50

France 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 inc…

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, movies, or apps. Otherwise there wouldn't be any leverage by which to squeeze out smaller entities.

In modern times, this is an incidental cost of access.

There's also some understandable doubts about the long term results of this tradeoff, as it is suspected that the final stage of this play is to raise prices again, thereby squeezing access up to some "optimal" equilibrium.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#62

Post by pier25 »

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 50% [1].

[1] https://imgur.com/edK0YWP

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#63

Post by Bayart »

fallingknife wrote: post #27

> 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.

Discovery 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.droz.org/france/section/Collections

- https://www.honorechampion.com/fr/29-champion

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#64

Post by WalterBright »

saurik wrote: post #49
WalterBright wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Is 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…

My 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.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#65

Post by intricatedetail »

sokoloff wrote: post #60
intricatedetail wrote: post #6

This 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.

If they’re not paying the right taxes, why not just prosecute them for violating tax laws?

In 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.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#66

Post by tpush »

WalterBright wrote: post #35
Waterluvian wrote: post #16

Not 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.

I was in B+N last summer, and as I recall they had 6 full shelves of "Trump Is Bad" books. I amuse myself by collecting them, and have 36 so far (all different). I pick them up at the thrift store for a buck or two. I started a Biden collection, but only one book so far. Things that make you go hmmmm....

Presumably there are more "Trump is bad" (weird simplification, but ok) books than ones on Biden because a) Trump has been president longer and b) Trump's actions harmed more people.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#67

Post by mullingitover »

spoonjim wrote: post #46
mullingitover wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a harsh but fair move on France's part to stop unfairly subsidizing rural areas. Honestly living in rural areas should cost more - maintenance of infrastructure, power, etc are significantly more costly for rural areas in a way that's not nearly accounted for by their tax base.

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 areas with force, that's the whole point of having a national military - it's not like we're going to forcibly conscript everyone just because they happen to live in the region.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#69

Post by arthurcolle »

coldtea wrote: post #57
arthurcolle wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consolidation is traditionally viewed as anticompetitive, believe it or not.

And it's usually the end result of competition with behemoths like Amazon, believe it or not.

They could have sold books online earlier, they chose not to.
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