In France the book industry is going to hit the table again against the oligopolies of retail. In this case against a known enemy of the small bookseller: the price of shipping costs.
0.01 euros: that’s what Amazon has been charging since 2014 for shipments to its Prime customers anywhere in the country, the minimum set by law. In reality what they do is absorb the price of the shipment and cut it from their margins because the big companies have it better to do that. Like Amazon, Fnac offered its 2.3 million subscribers a minimal flat rate for which they paid no shipping costs. According to the French bookstore union (SLF), it costs small shops to send a book by mail between 6.50 and 7 euros.
Destroying pricing. All this, in the opinion of the booksellers, contravenes the spirit of the same Lang law, of 1981, which established a single price of the book as here: the supermarkets dumped the prices of the books because on the one hand, the higher When you buy, the lower the costs for the seller, and also because they preferred to attract customers in this way to buy more products from their establishments.
We were in a temporary situation: In November and December 2020, and in order to compete with Fnac or Amazon, the State had been subsidizing the costs of shipments to French bookstores. In those two months, the online sales of these businesses multiplied by five, according to the figures they handle. However, and due to current European laws, the State cannot maintain this type of public aid for trade in perpetuity. Either extinguish it, or reframe it as law. Thus, a senator, Laure Darcos, offered the decree that is now studying the implementation of establishing fixed shipping prices, also for loyal customers. The text has already passed Congress and will now be debated in the Senate.
The right price? It is what they will have to raise. According to Geraldine Bannier, rapporteur of the commission, if the rate is too high it will generate “a loss of dead weight for the sector”, while if it is too low “it will not modify the market”. The syndicates of booksellers want to bet on a high price, between 3 and 5 euros, while the union of distributors of cultural entertainment is inclined for about 2.90 euros. The latter say that if, for example, the 7 euro pocket book costs you five more with shipping, 12 in total, many buyers will decide to stop ordering that book not only in independent bookstores, but elsewhere. A net loss for the entire sector.
Stopping the consumer: if this bill is passed, booksellers would be able to “catch up” with Amazon because the giant could not offer an improved service to that of booksellers. As is also obvious, this fixation will harm the pocket of buyers, who will have to assume the payment of these shipments when large companies, which can charge less to the consumer due to the variation margin allowed by their volume of purchases, find it impossible to take advantage of it. It is certainly a very French way of tackling this competition problem. On the other hand, France and the United Kingdom have almost identical population figures, and, while in the first country there are 3,300 independent bookstores, in the second there are less than 1,000. The French blame it on the Lang Law.
And what about Spain? Last year, and when discussing this same issue, Correos “allied itself” with independent bookstores against Amazon. The Ministry of Culture managed to lower the average price of sending books from the current 4.40 euros to 3.09 euros, reducing the rate by 1.3 euros. It is still more than the zero euros paid by Prime.
Photo: ActuaLitté.