MoC says French Government to Help Bookstores

[Prestidigitweeze]

"Cultural minister Aurélie Filippetti says the French government is creating a fund to help struggling independent bookstores to ensure that France 'never suffers the same fate as the United States.'"

The Story

[tubemonkey]

Propping up a business model that can't sustain itself in the digital age is a waste of taxes; especially in light of France's "huge budget deficit".

[EowynCarter]

I agree. It seam to be delaying the inevitable.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

"Cultural minister Aurélie Filippetti says the French government is creating a fund to help struggling independent bookstores to ensure that France 'never suffers the same fate as the United States.'"

The Story

Yeah, a free market is pretty terrifying to some.

[Ninjalawyer]

Buggy whip manufacturers, local candlestick makers and music sellers that specialize in cassettes must be steamed that they're not also getting a handout.

All joking aside, the real problem is that France is not going far enough; they're treating the symptoms rather than than the sickness, and that sickness is the future. What they need to do is declare that, in France, the year will never advance past 1990 and that all innovations since 1990 are now illegal. Only by stopping the inevitable march of time can France hope to preserve the rose-tinted view of its past culture that it is so desperately clinging to.

[Penforhire]

Seems quite French. Viva la bookstore!

[fjtorres]

Then there is this:
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/0...is-oui084.html

Pieces are starting to fall into place for e-books to be widely promoted and adopted in France. Here are some of the undercurrents of what may just be an upcoming revolution:

Neutrality of media: The French government decided in January 2013, alongside Luxembourg, to fight the European Commission by reducing the value-added tax on e-books. And, at the same time, it is changing the definition of what a book is in order to include e-books. The courts will have to decide and we'll see if the judges accept the notion of neutrality of media, meaning that a book is a book whichever way it's distributed. It's little bit the French David fighting the European Goliath, but the French have always fought hard for their culture.

Publishers' attitude: It is thankfully changing fast as they are now embracing e-books without restriction -- except for the DRM (digital rights management) they still want to protect their books with, but that's another story. Some publishers now have 75 percent of their catalog in digital format, although the total offer still only represents 90,000 titles versus 2,700,000 available in English. (See French newspaper Libération.) That said, the all-important Syndicat National de l'Édition even says so:

Publishers in France are now fully aware of the importance of having a digital offer that is as attractive and as broad as possible. (National Publishing Association)

[frahse]

I am always inspired by the folly of the French.

It makes the rest of us seem so sane.

Oh, and have they raised taxes on their remaining Billionaires to make up for those who have fled the country?

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by taustin

Yeah, a free market is pretty terrifying to some.

...including virtually all corporations (no matter what jurisdiction they call home), which do everything they possibly can to avoid ever actually being in one.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

...including virtually all corporations (no matter what jurisdiction they call home), which do everything they possibly can to avoid ever actually being in one.

One should not that the United States that France does not wish to be like has an independent booksellers association, which in the last few years, has had record new membership. Independent book stores are experiencing a renaissance, because all but one of those all-powerful corporations in the retail book trade have . . . gone out of business from being unable to compete in a changing market.

[HarryT]

Many countries have fixed pricing for books specifically to support independent bookshops. There is a view that the benefit of this to society outweighs the benefit of being able to buy a few cheap bestsellers from the local supermarket. It's an argument I have sympathy with.

[tubemonkey]

I despise government subsidies.

Perhaps people should put some thought into the implications of this decision before touting ideology. Free markets and centralized economies both have issues. I'm going to focus upon the problems with the former since the comments (thus far) seem to indicate that there are a lot of opponents to the latter. So consider this:

Free markets seem to tend towards an imitation of centralized economies, albeit with businessmen rather than politicians as the leaders. (Famous examples include Standard Oil, AT&T, and IBM.) Once that happens, you have many of the same problems as a centralized economy. The situation with bookstores in the U.S. also suggest an additional problem: the collapse of a single business can lead to the near collapse of an industry. Think about it: many communities had limited access to bookstores prior to the collapse of the brick and mortar stores, now they have even less access. Shifting their business to online retailers doesn't really solve the problem either, since it is dominated by Amazon with limited prospects to escape (thank-you DRM!). On top of that, a few of the jobs that existed within the community have left it.

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.

Now I know that things aren't as clear cut as that. I simply wanted to present an opposing view point because France may be doing the right thing.

[tubemonkey]

Thanks to the internet, I now have greater access, more variety, and cheaper prices to material than I did with traditional B&M retailers and libraries.

vive l'internet

[Yolina]

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.

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)