[HN Gopher] France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon
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France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon
Author : 80mph
Score : 72 points
Date : 2021-10-26 21:18 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| Just switch the epubs or learn English and import books.
|
| French wankers information wants to be free.
| president wrote:
| Why not? Didn't China move to shield pretty much every industry
| from overseas ones?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| What is the origin of the law that bans free book deliveries?
| throwaway789257 wrote:
| 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 incrementally kills local industry, including
| the local culture industry. TV, railroads, chain stores, Wal-
| mart, you name it -- they are all killing something local.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| >Most centralization incrementally kills local industry,
| including the local culture industry. TV, railroads, chain
| stores, Wal-mart, you name it -- they are all killing something
| local.
|
| This is probably true, but also probably inevitable. As the
| world shrinks we lose local flavor but gain a more commonly
| held homogeneous culture. I'm not sure that this is new, just
| faster than it was before.
| xattt wrote:
| > railroads
|
| Would you be able to elaborate on this or was it hyperbole?
| Personal experience is where there is passenger rail service
| are inherently more interesting.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| > Most centralization incrementally kills local industry,
| including the local culture industry. TV, railroads, chain
| stores, Wal-mart, you name it -- they are all killing something
| local.
|
| Although I agree with this, but I don't think it is necessarily
| a bad thing for the customers. Some industries are best
| centralized and some are not. For the business of selling books
| I think it's best to have a lot of sellers.
| supertrope wrote:
| In the United States Robert Bork advanced the "consumer
| welfare" philosophy of anti-trust policy that allowed for
| monopolies that provided lower prices or better
| products/service even if competition is crushed. In the
| European Union loss of competition is a harm per se.
| threatofrain wrote:
| 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.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > 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.
| reissbaker wrote:
| I'm curious whether French independent bookstores have been
| harmed much by Amazon. In the US, Amazon has probably actually
| been a boon -- the number of independent bookstores has grown
| dramatically over the last decade, in part because Amazon
| squashed the previous era's giant book retailers like Borders and
| Barnes and Noble, who had been crushing independent bookstores.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| 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.
| passivate wrote:
| I don't think books are obsolete, many people still enjoying
| reading them, and buying them. Also, there are plenty of
| government subsidized programs that are popular with people. No
| economic model can perfectly match our sensibilities. We as a
| society protect things that we think need protection. It's
| really as simple as that.
| coolso wrote:
| It's forced obsoleting. Forced existence is the pushback. There
| are better methods though I agree. When we finally bring more
| manufacturing back to the US I think that'll be a natural way
| to put a damper on Amazon's harm to our country
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| 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.
| reissbaker wrote:
| _The entire copyright industry for example._
|
| You mean like... books?
| WalterBright wrote:
| 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....
| tpush wrote:
| 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.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| It's more than just a "business"
|
| The reason of the downfall of our civilization is because of
| that specific problem, you think about everything as a
| business, including countries
| konschubert wrote:
| This will make all online book sales more expensive, not just
| Amazon's.
| pier25 wrote:
| 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
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Oh wow, Amazon is such a threat! Whatever will Larousse and
| Hachette do... maybe remain competitive? </3
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| For 2019, before the pandemic, parent company Lagardere made
| about $200 million on $7 billion in revenue. Amazon made $11B
| on $280B in revenue. So 40-50 times bigger.
|
| In the last 4 quarters Lagardere lost $376M on $4B in revenue.
| While Amazon exploded to $29B on $443B in revenue. So more like
| 100 times bigger.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Yeah -- just make no profit for two decades until everyone with
| shallower pockets bled out, stupid.
|
| It's called competitiveness, baby, and it's easy peasy lemon
| squeezy!
| [deleted]
| coldtea wrote:
| 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.
| newsclues wrote:
| There certainly has been a fair bit of consolidation in the
| publishing industry, other than Amazon becoming the dominant
| retailer.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Consolidation is traditionally viewed as anticompetitive,
| believe it or not.
| coldtea wrote:
| And it's usually the end result of competition with
| behemoths like Amazon, believe it or not.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| They could have sold books online earlier, they chose not
| to.
| fallingknife wrote:
| > 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.
| Bayart wrote:
| 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
| jjgreen wrote:
| I'm not: French bookshops are really rather good.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| I wonder how many of the hard copies were bought as gifts or
| purchased by wandering tourists looking for a paper companion.
| r00fus wrote:
| All for a way to protect small businesses which actually pay
| local taxes vs. Amazon which doesn't pay taxes in the US at all -
| but not sure a minimum ship price is the best approach.
|
| Isn't there a better way, perhaps based on physical presence?
| caslon wrote:
| Is there a word for laws that disproportionately affect people in
| rural areas so that a government can play protectionist for urban
| companies? I hate Amazon as much as anyone, but in this case
| they're definitely not _wrong_ , even if they're probably lying
| about their reasoning.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > 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.
| coolso wrote:
| I've cut back on my Amazon purchases 90%. It's been nice
| visiting actual stores and getting something same-hour.
| Sometimes I pay a dollar or two more. But buying local(er)
| feels good for my soul. It's nice not having to wonder if
| every single positive review is real or fake, or if real, if
| it's accurate. It's also nice not having to sift through
| direct-from-China products with extremely strange names and
| poorly written box descriptions.
|
| Anyway, I'm not sure what your point is. You can hate
| something and still use it. Especially if that something
| actively made it much harder to not use it. It's the same
| with made in USA goods. Most people crave them. But thanks to
| our government and corporations, it's difficult to do it - or
| at least, do it affordably. Does that mean people prefer made
| in China? Or that they're just posturing when they say they
| don't like made in China? No.
| saurik wrote:
| 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
| something if you use it" take is ridiculous.
| coolso wrote:
| Didn't you hear? Losing your US-manufacturing job so
| everyone can buy cheap throwaway Chinese goods with loads
| of fake reviews is actually good for the economy, or
| something. You should be made fun of for thinking
| otherwise.
| WalterBright wrote:
| 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.
| bduerst wrote:
| Just FYI, _Virtue Signalling_ is a pejorative that
| implicitly marginalizes and accuses someone of abnormal
| behavior. The GP here is calling that out even if you
| didn 't specifically use the term "virtue signalling" in
| your original comment - the behavior here is entirely
| normal.
|
| The phrase's roots come from the alt-right looking for a
| replacement for SJW accusations not being taken
| seriously:
|
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior#.22V
| irt...
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| yeah I mean I love amazon personally. sometimes things go
| wrong but same as any business.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Yep Amazon is mostly great
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Where is Amazon great? The catalog is awful, the search
| function is awful, the recommendations are awful and the
| reviews are fake. Trouble is, it wasn't always like that,
| but somehow the shitty state of the site benefits Jess
| Bezos.
| bduerst wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Resistance is futile.
| bduerst wrote:
| I really wasn't that difficult, and more to the point,
| there are people who are saying they're using Amazon less
| and are really using it less.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| Good for you. For me, after the local grocery store went to
| shit, with Prime Now and Amazon Fresh I've shifted almost
| all our spending to Amazon.
| bduerst wrote:
| Yeah, we were lucky in that we had a couple good options
| locally for produce other than Whole Foods too. The
| Safeway has gotten really bad, and the mail services I
| tried were all over the place.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Specific quote is: > Imposing a minimum shipping cost for books
| would weigh on the purchasing power of consumers.
|
| The other side is a bit more complex, but Amazon is definitely
| subsidizing shipping costs from their yearly subscription and
| seller fees. The argument is that this is unfair to smaller
| companies which don't have capital to burn... and that is kind
| of true? I think there are valid points on both sides.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Predatory pricing
| threatofrain wrote:
| I'm being sly, but I do think that _utilitarianism_ can fit
| this situation, as I presume urban power in a republic comes
| from population size more than geographic placement.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I can't read the full article thanks to the paywall so maybe
| I'm missing it, but: where is the urban protectionism here?
|
| More generally, my limited understanding of French politics is
| that they have a _very_ strong agricultural interest that 's
| disproportionate to the populace, similar to the US. The
| limited news I read about French domestic politics indicates
| that their government generally accommodates and subsidizes
| non-urban citizens, much like ours does.
|
| Edit: Here's the (Amazon) quote about rural concerns:
|
| > Amazon said the legislation, adopted by parliament but not
| yet enacted, would punish those in rural areas who cannot
| easily visit a bookstore and rely on delivery.
| bduerst wrote:
| Reuters doesn't use paywalls. Is it blocked in other
| countries?
| woodruffw wrote:
| Oh, this was my mistake. It's not a paywall, it's just
| asking me to register to continue to read for free. Says
| something about my advertising blindness.
|
| (I'm in the US, visiting from a US IP address.)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Perhaps we need a new term for this, encompassing both
| paywalls and "registration walls".
|
| "Dating wall" perhaps? Whether it's asking you to pay up,
| or just to register an account, it's still asking you to
| enter into a relationship with the content provider, and
| you bounce off because you'd rather not have that
| relationship.
|
| Relationships are a burden, there's only so many one can
| keep track of.
| _jal wrote:
| I just call them, "Nope."
|
| I'd really like a plugin that will override styles on
| links to sites on a list I get to keep.
| [deleted]
| jsnell wrote:
| People living in the cities will now be able to buy a book
| significantly cheaper than someone living in a rural area.
| And a bookstore in a city will be able to outcompete a rural
| one, since they'll have more local sales but the rural
| bookstore will not be able compete on price for the mail
| orders.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I guess my point with this is twofold:
|
| * Accepting Amazon's claim: this strikes me more as the
| _removal_ of a rural subsidy (cheap delivery to hard to
| reach places, Amazon skipping out on every tax they can to
| lower prices) than the imposition of an urban one. Maybe a
| distinction without difference economically, but it 's an
| important political distinction.
|
| * Not accepting the claim: wouldn't this _support_ rural
| bookstores? Amazon 's conceit here is that people want
| convenience, which a local rural bookstore surely provides
| over an urban one for rural dwellers. Whether they
| "compete" with urban bookstores is sort of a red herring,
| given that (small) bookstores _qua_ businesses tend to be
| labors of passion that aren 't looking to edge out some
| distant urban competitor. That doesn't mean they can (or
| should) go broke, just that the economics aren't
| necessarily a dog fight between rural and urban.
| jsnell wrote:
| A rural bookstore won't have sufficient density of local
| customers to be viable. They need to make additional
| sales from somewhere. That "somewhere" has to be mail
| order, where they maybe could be competitive due to lower
| costs. But now they can't actually compete.
|
| (This is all purely hypothetical, and explaining how the
| statement could be true. Probably it isn't, since there's
| no way an indie bookstore competes on price with Amazon.)
| mullingitover wrote:
| 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.
| spoonjim wrote:
| 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.
| mullingitover wrote:
| 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.
| ur-whale wrote:
| To all posters who harp on the "this is stupid" theme: I do
| agree, but saying this is imo short-sighted.
|
| Much more likely, we're witnessing a good old-fashioned lobbying
| effort bearing fruits at the expense of the consumer and in favor
| of a small but politically connected group of businesses.
| belval wrote:
| This seems to be incentivising the customer to shop in-person
| instead of online and seems spectacularly uninspired, they could
| have simply waived taxes on books for companies headquartered in
| France? Or really anything that isn't simply forcing the customer
| to pay shipping?
| fallingknife wrote:
| That would probably violate trade agreements.
| amelius wrote:
| And laissez-faire was a French invention.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Bastiat is unknown in France.
| coldtea wrote:
| It was one of those inventions you gift to inferior cultures...
| tpush wrote:
| Can you please not start a dick measuring contest between
| cultures in these comments. Thanks.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| 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.
| sokoloff wrote:
| _If_ they're not paying the right taxes, why not just prosecute
| them for violating tax laws?
| intricatedetail wrote:
| 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.
| phtrivier wrote:
| It's funny that we still pin Amazon against bookstores - I was
| under the impression that Amazon is shipping _everything_ those
| days, and that books are not what most people go to Amazon for
| any more.
| rafaelturk wrote:
| 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.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| 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..
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| Most government proposed solutions create new problems instead
| of fixing the original? Do you have any data to back that claim
| up?
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