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What is your opinion regarding the principle of the fixed book price?
In the countries where book prices are free, economic competition plays a major role in book prices, but in countries where the fixed book price is implemented, a unique book price is imposed, and it is aligned with the price of the small bookshops, in agreement with the publishing houses.
The fixed book price is really contrary to any logics of capitalist market economy. It is sometimes considered as “communist” or “anti-modern”.
Nevertheless, if it’s implemented in several countries, it’s because books are not considered there as “goods like others”, but as very special and the fixed book price is then there to protect culture and creativity, to protect independent quality bookshops and publishing houses, against the downward slides of market economy. The fixed book price is seen then as a factor of equilibrium and of justice. It was a thing to say that printing companies and bookshops are free, but it’s another to say that they actually have the means to be free.
In the countries with a free book price, a decrease of the number of titles and of the bookshops is noticeable. In the USA or the UK, for example, big bookshop chains have proliferated before online selling started to dismantle the network. What is even more serious is that the bookshops in these countries finally keep mainly the novelties on their shelves, to the detriment of the classics. On the contrary, the book market has developed in a more harmonious way in countries with a fixed book price, such as Germany or France.
Countries with implementation of a fixed book price
Germany (it first appeared in Germany, in the XIXth century).
France
Argentina
Austria
South Korea
Denmark
Spain
Greece
Hungary
Italy
Japan
Luxembourg
Mexico
Norway
Netherlands
Portugal
Croatia
Belgium
Countries with free book price
United Kingdom
United States of America
Slovenia
Brazil
Australia
Canada
Estonia
Finland
Ireland
Poland
Czech Republic
Sweden
Switzerland
Venezuela
These lists of countries should be more or less accurate.
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