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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
Actually, sec. 2 (1) lit. 3 of the applicable "Law on the National Book Price Maintenance" (Buchpreisbindungsgesetz) mentions "products that reproduce or substitute books" and "must be considered predominantly typical for publishers or booksellers". (Produkte, die Bücher ... reproduzieren oder substituieren und ... als überwiegend verlags- oder buchhandelstypisch anzusehen sind)
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Right, I saw that, and it clearly includes e-books as books - what I didn't see was whether they would count as the same book or not.
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Originally the German Booksellers' Association argued that fixed prices do not apply to ebooks at all; they've only changed their position in 2008 (German statement).
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Originally treating them like audio books shows a certain lack of farsightedness...
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As far as I can tell ebooks are now considered another edition of the same book; just as paperbacks don't have to cost the same as hardcovers there's of course nothing that prevents publishers from setting a lower price for their ebooks as opposed to pbooks.
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Yeah, I'm just surprised that there's nothing more specific. Although with the publishers setting prices for both formats, I suppose it may not matter much (although it would allow them to set a lower price to equalize the price+VAT).