Quote:
Originally Posted by Philippe D.
It's not a purely French thing. I was in Scotland last summer, and in a Waterstone's (probably not a huge brand, but still a name you'll find all across UK) some of the books came with written recommendations from the store employees on the shelves - signed, so if you bought a book on one's recommendation and liked it, you could try others recommended by the same person.
It depends on what you'd call "big"  but bookstores larger than just the ground floor of a building are rare - you'd only find one in a major city, if that. Anything bigger is usually selling much more than books (like, CDs and DVDs, possibly computers, cameras - it's not just a bookstore, and usually books are only a small part of the business).
The law against discounting books is very specific to books. It was voted in the early '80s, intended as a way of protecting small bookshops from being driven out of business by, typically, supermarkets. That was way before ebooks or electronic distribution of anything, so I'm not sure whether it applies to, say, ebooks, and it certainly says nothing about music or movies. It worked reasonably well; small bookstores do still exist around here. I don't know if it influenced, say, the way the publishing industry evolved (we have lots of small publishing companies, but then, book publishing is hardly a global market - people will almost exclusively buy books in their own language).
I'm not even sure how this law applies to books published in other countries. Books published in France always have their price printed on the back cover, and bookstores are not allowed to discount it by more than 5%, or offer promotions like "buy 2 get one free". |
You misunderstood my big box store comment. I thought you might. Let me try to rephrase. Not big as in the size of the store, but big box as in the stores buy in large quantities to resell. Examples would be Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's, Academy, Best Buy. Pretty much, whether you are in Texas or Washington, you will find the same brands at cheaper prices than say your local stores.
Here on books, the stores buy X number of copies for whatever the publisher wants to sell them for. Example: The latest bestseller: the publisher might sell it to B&N for $5 a copy if they buy in lots of 100,000 or more. The local bookstore would have to pay at least $15 a copy if they bought 100 or less. So even publishers charge different prices per quantity. (Numbers are made up because I don't have the actual figures.) Then the seller decides the price they want from the consumer.
Oh that theory is on most items not just books.