Forward of in the present day's presentation of the French 2023 Finances to the Council of Ministers - the primary for the Macron authorities’s for the reason that lack of its general parliamentary majority - the French authorities has introduced that it's going to introduce a minimal cost for e-book supply orders below €35.
This minimal cost of €3 will assist small impartial booksellers struggling to compete with Amazon and different big on-line retailers.
“This can adapt the e-book trade to the digital period by restoring an equilibrium between giant e-commerce platforms, which provide just about free supply for books, regardless of the order measurement. Bookstores can't match these supply costs,” mentioned France’s Tradition and Finance ministries in a joint assertion.
“The €3 supply price shouldn't be dissuasive for e-book consumers and the €35 threshold will favour grouped orders, which is virtuous in environmental phrases.”
On its web site, France’s tradition ministry describes the e-book market as “the primary of the cultural industries” and says small, native outlets are significantly necessary to the trade.
A report delivered to the French Senate final 12 months notes that each Amazon and Fanc account for 80 p.c of on-line e-book gross sales in France, and that the dominant place of those firms permits them to supply free deliveries, thereby undercutting rivals.
The nation is estimated to have some 3,500 impartial bookshops.
One other chapter…
This isn’t the primary time that measures have been adopted by the French authorities to stage the enjoying discipline.
Since 1981, France has mandated fastened costs for books, with a most low cost of 5 p.c, and in 2010 expanded this regulation to cowl ebooks.
In 2014, the French authorities launched a regulation which prohibits free e-book deliveries, however Amazon and different distributors reminiscent of Fnac responded by charging a token 1 cent per supply. Native e-book shops usually cost as much as €7 for transport a e-book.
Laws was handed in December 2021 to shut the one-cent loophole by a minimal supply price, however the regulation couldn't take impact till the federal government had selected the scale of that price.
Pandemic help
Throughout the pandemic, the French authorities launched cowl for impartial bookstore transport prices to encourage distance promoting.
Then ministers of the Economic system and Tradition, Bruno Le Maire and Roselyne Bachelot, introduced in November 2020 a mechanism to assist booksellers to proceed their exercise by on-line gross sales. The State bore the prices of sending books throughout the confinement interval, permitting booksellers to cost their prospects solely the transport prices on the authorized minimal charge of €0.01.
Bruno Le Maire mentioned that the federal government was “absolutely mobilized to assist native companies affected by the disaster” and that the brand new system permits “impartial booksellers to develop their distant gross sales exercise with none distinction in supply value with main digital platforms.”
Bachelot acknowledged on the time that by masking transport prices, “the State is as soon as once more standing by the bookstores, restoring honest competitors and selling their distance gross sales.”
What subsequent?
In keeping with Reuters, France now must notify the EU of its plans and may introduce the minimal price six months after the European Fee approves them.
French bookstores affiliation SLF (Syndicat de la librairie française) launched an announcement on Friday 23 September saying that the €3 price was inadequate, because it means bookstores will nonetheless promote at a loss when expediting books to prospects. SLF referred to as on the federal government to decrease French put up workplace charges for transport books.
The French authorities presents its finances in the present day, Monday 26 September.
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