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Originally Posted by wyndslash
that's a lovely bit of news  i suspect it's a bit of a social thing for them as well (meet friends, etc etc) but i'm not french so i wouldn't know :P |
I think it has more to do with this, also from the article:
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A more compelling reason is the intervention of the state. In the Anglophone book world the free market reigns; here it is trumped by price fixing.
Since 1981 the “Lang law,” named after its promoter, Jack Lang, the culture minister at the time, has fixed prices for French-language books. Booksellers — even Amazon — may not discount books more than 5 percent below the publisher’s list price, although Amazon fought for and won the right to provide free delivery.
Last year as French publishers watched in horror as e-books ate away at the printed book market in the United States, they successfully lobbied the government to fix prices for e-books too. Now publishers themselves decide the price of e-books; any other discounting is forbidden.
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And as for these guys!
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On the third Sunday of every month this organization takes over a corner of the Rue des Martyrs south of Montmartre. A small band of retirees classify used books by subject and display them in open crates.
The books are not for sale. Customers just take as many books as they want as long as they adhere to an informal code of honor neither to sell nor destroy their bounty. They are encouraged to drop off their old books, a system that keeps the stock replenished.
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Depriving the authors and publishers (and artists, and booksellers, and taxman, and...,and...,and...) of their income. They should be ashamed of themselves.