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Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
First, I find it a bit odd that there is a perception that agency pricing is illegal, despite the fact that paper prices are essentially set the same way in most of the EU. E.g. France's "Lang Law," where the publisher sets the price and retailers cannot discount it more than 5%. In half of Europe, publisher setting the prices for paper books is not only legal, it's mandated by law. (The UK does not have a Lang Law btw)
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We used to have such a law in the UK: the "Net Book Agreement". In 1997 it was declared, following an investigation by the Office of Fair Trading, to be against the public interest, and therefore illegal.
The collapse of the Net Book Agreement has certainly lowered book prices, but it has also beeen directly responsible for the almost complete disappearance of small independent bookshops from the British highstreet.