Quote:
Originally Posted by BWinmill
Propping up the small bookstores may create a more competitive business environment. It won't be more competitive in the often cited example of prices, but the diversity of bookstores will be able to provide a richer variety of books. Those bookstores will live or die based upon their ability to provide a product that consumers want rather than what a single retailer decides they want to push. On top of that, they are protecting local jobs. Local jobs are good for the local economy as well as government coffers.
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Being French
I'd like to add that
by law in France the price of books is set by the publishers - it's been like that for yonks apart for a short period in the early or mid 80s IIRC. Retailers are allowed to discount but only by up to 5%.
The downside of this is that obviously books can be a tad expensive, and having now been in the UK for nearly 20 years, I sometimes balk slightly at the price of French books (I do buy quite a few, be it paper or kindle format) The upside is that the small local independent bookshops are able to still operate and I think, to a certain extent also that the publishers are more willing to put out a wider variety of books. So I can see the government trying to help the small independents now that ebooks are getting popular but which they obviously can't provide unlike the big companies like the FNAC or Amazon
There's a small town there I go to regularly which only has one tiny, tiny bookshop, but it's absolutely crammed full of interesting books, not just the bestsellers (I found the complete works of Khalil Gibran in there...) and prices are obviously not that different from the large FNAC in the nearest big town.
So, yes I can see both sides of the coin really, particularly as people there are quite attached to their small independent shops (of any type)