France tries to protect its book industry from Amazon by banning free book delivery

The French parliament has voted to pass a law introducing a minimum delivery price for books bought online. Representatives of this market hope that this will strengthen the competition of local bookstores against Amazon. 

Amazon, for its part, commented on the situation and said that this move by the French government will complicate the purchase of books for consumers living in rural areas and hoping for free delivery. In addition, representatives of the IT giant believe that the new law will reduce the purchasing power of consumers.

The law was passed after the COVID-19 pandemic. During the blockchain, consumers began buying literature en masse from online retailers. In 2019, 20% of all 435 million books were bought online. At the same time, the market share of France's 3,300 independent bookstores fell sharply as they could not compete with Amazon.

The new law bans free delivery of books and introduces a minimum delivery price. The law has not yet come into force but is expected to do so early next year. By gg we'd like to add that reading books in digital format will not suffer from this law, since there is no concept of "delivery" in this case.

Source: reuters