Published on June 19, 2024
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France has 3,500 independent bookstores, most of which are in very fragile financial health. This is not for lack of multiple aid from the State which, since the 1980s, has decided to make bookstores the axis of Good and to defend them against all others. Exit including authors, publishers and especially readers. Buying your book in a supermarket or at Amazon is bad, the right act being the purchase in an “independent” bookstore.
Despite the Amazon tax of 3 euros on shipping costs, which heavily penalizes all French people who do not live near a bookstore, despite a proposed tax on second-hand books, bookstores are still not coping.
Here is even France Culture which discovers the fixing of prices by planning leads to harmful consequences:
“The book market is regulated by the 1981 law on the single price of books. This means that it is publishers, and not booksellers or retailers, who set sales prices to the public. So the bookseller, when he sees his charges increase, cannot, of his own accord, pass this increase on to the selling prices. He needs the publisher to increase his sales prices, or the broadcaster/distributor to offer him better commercial conditions. »
However, far from the idea that we should reconsider this law of the single price of books. No, the solution, according to them, is more state intervention, subsidies, to save bookstores.
“But according to the union, the public authorities could go further: ensure that the reduction on books from which local authorities benefit (libraries, town halls, universities, etc.) goes from 9% to 5%; which would free up 6 million euros, and allow booksellers to double their annual profitability. »
The French cultural exception is above all an exception for socialism.
