Ckicked out the door, Amazon comes back through the window. Since October 2023, the online commerce platform is obliged to charge a minimum of 3 euros for each delivery of books for any order below 35 euros. This necessarily slows down its sales, since, previously, its Prime subscribers only paid 1 euro cent for this service.
Convinced of having found the flaw in the system, the French subsidiary of the online commerce giant announced the implementation of a free book delivery solution, using… its own automated lockers. The company has a network of 2,500 collection points, located mainly in small towns or rural areas, particularly in shopping centers where books are sold.
Géraldine Codron, the book manager at Amazon.fr, was delighted to “this new practical and economical offer” for readers. And this while, under the terms of the law on the book economy, the delivery of new books “cannot under any circumstances” be free, “unless the book is collected from a book retail store.”
“An actor without faith or law”
Unsurprisingly, the French Bookstore Union (SLF) doubts the legality of this process, and Guillaume Husson, its general delegate, repeatedly reminds us that Amazon is “an actor without faith or law, who attacks a text supported by the government and voted unanimously by parliamentarians”. Above all, he wonders if he “it is enough to be within the confines of a hypermarket to satisfy the terms of the law”.
This new offensive came after the ruling of the Council of State rendered in May. Seized by Amazon, for whom the law on the book economy is “contrary to the rights and interests of consumers” and can “penalize readers, authors and reading in general”, the high court had referred the question to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The quarrel between booksellers and Amazon is not new. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, independent booksellers cried out about the unfair nature of the competition that Amazon was inflicting on them. Booksellers claimed that sending a book cost them between 6 and 7 euros and that they lost money by sending a paperback book to a customer by post. The State then took responsibility, in November and December 2020, for the shipping costs of booksellers to allow them to compete on equal terms with Amazon, Fnac or Cultura.
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