
French bookshops revolt after prize selects novel self-published on Amazon - allthebest
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/15/french-bookshops-revolt-after-prize-selects-novel-self-published-on-amazon
======
Jun8
The _Guardian_ article quoted here is a bit more substantive
([https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/15/french-
booksho...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/15/french-bookshops-
revolt-after-prize-selects-novel-self-published-on-amazon)).

Basic story is: Author
([https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Koskas](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Koskas),
no English wikipedia page) who had other books published, could not find a
publisher for his latest book, so self publishes it on Amazon's Createspace.
So, this is _not_ a book published by Amazon, which I first thought was the
case.

Is this any different from, say, giving an Oscar to a movie that Netflix
produced and only available (at least initially) through it? See here for a
discussion on precisely this question:
[https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/11/netflix-the-
osc...](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/11/netflix-the-oscars-the-
battle-for-the-future-of-film)

Amazon is stamping out bookstores, so fighting against that, I think, is
perfectly OK; however, pushing back against original content just because it
came from Amazon sounds absurd or protectionist.

~~~
Aissen
What seems to piss the bookstore syndicate, is the fact that they'll have to
buy this book from Amazon if it ever wins this prize (or simply not distribute
it, which was never seen); and Amazon is their arch-enemy, on a crusade to
destroy all bookshops.

~~~
wolfgke
Just a shower thought: Why doesn't the bookstore syndicate simply offer an
option for self-publishing, too, instead of complaining around?

I am not a particular fan of Amazon, but I believe that the best way to set
bounds to Amazon is to offer an alternative or even something better.

~~~
lozenge
Amazon has probably completely automated the process. Without knowing whether
the book will sell 1 or 100,000 copies they can automatically switch between
print-on-demand and printing runs. They can do this because they can ship from
any warehouse to your door. They can send the initial short printing run to a
single warehouse and then scale up if necessary.

A bookstore relies on having enough copies available at every store, so they
would need to at a minimum ship and shelve some copies to all their large
branches.

~~~
killjoywashere
> A bookstore relies on having enough copies available at every store

The bookstore syndicate could collaborate with a third-party, like alibris.

~~~
wolfgke
> > A bookstore relies on having enough copies available at every store

> The bookstore syndicate could collaborate with a third-party, like alibris.

This is exactly my line of argument and the reason why I wrote "Why doesn't
the _bookstore syndicate_ [...]". A single bookstore clearly cannot manage
this on its own. The bookstore syndicate, on the other hand, has much more
options available.

~~~
lozenge
Either they are selling online only like Amazon, or they need to print and
ship books to hundreds of retail stores. Whether they are a bookstore or a
bookstore syndicate makes no difference.

~~~
killjoywashere
The stores can cast themselves as warehouses, print one copy and see if it
sells either in-store, or online through Alibris. If yes, print 2, warehouse
at 2 other stores (which can incidentally be "warehoused" on display shelves).
If sold, print 4. If sold, print 8. O(n^2) up to some point then switch to
linear or O(log(n)) growth. Eventually, your last run will print.

------
dschuetz
It's a bit strange though, paradoxical even. Someone publishes a book
independently, because posh french publishers didn't think the book would
sell. Now that Amazon is involved and being the only way to obtain the book
the bookstore owners refuse to... what exactly? Acknowledge it as a book they
cannot put on a shelf? But, no! It's not about the book anymore! It's all
about defending bookstore owners from Amazon and publishers who refuse to
publish books.

Also, the issue that it's available _exclusively_ via Amazon is mind-boggling
to me. Perhaps it's one of Amazon's exploitative terms and conditions? Or
perhaps the author's vindictive reaction?

The only person that did everything right in this whole mess is the author who
self-published a good book. Everyone else has lost their minds.

~~~
greenshackle2
The bookstore syndicate's press release is addressed to the Renaudot Prize
jury. They are explicitly trying to convince the jury to not vote for Koskas'
book, not because of its literary merits (or lack thereof), but just because
it is published by Amazon.

After Koskas was passed over by publishers and so took the reasonable step of
self-publishing, the bookstores are now trying to throw him under the bus,
blatantly in the pursuit of their own self-interest, because the Renaudot
Prize winner will likely sell well, so they don't want a book they can't sell
to win.

~~~
dschuetz
Yes, I see now why it's easier to blame Amazon instead of the traditional
publishers.

------
jfasi
Warning: raw personal opinion ahead. You're welcome to downvote, but I'd
prefer it if you left a response so I can learn something.

Europe in general but France in particular seems _completely_ unprepared for
the changes technology and the web are still rolling out. The market seems to
me to be a morass of entrenched, sclerotic industries that grew fat after
decades of governmental protection. Naturally, in many cases the response is
simple: more governmental protection.

As dominant as Amazon it, at least in the US is has a nascent rival in
Walmart, a massive retail chain that's frantically piling onto the internet to
try to catch up. The American system has produced a challenger to Amazon's
mega-consolidation by seeing another champion of mega-consolidation attempt to
pivot its business. Where is France's answer to Amazon? Does France not have
large national retail chains? Why are we not seeing companies to buying one
another up in order to form like Voltron against a large threat like Amazon?

My (admittedly uninformed) impression is: because the competitive and
regulatory environment doesn't seem allow for it. Laws on hiring and firing
workers. Laws limiting discounts on books. Laws governing corporate takeovers.
Why else would industries whose very existence depends on cushy regulatory
favors have no way of dealing with tech giants besides more regulatory favors
(Article 13, Article 11, Right to be Forgotten, the entire charade of fines
for "anti-competitive behavior")?

Instead of ripping off the bandaid and establishing a new and competitive
economy by deregulating, taking the hit, and nurturing a new generation of
cutthroat competition, France and the EU has protected its weakest and least-
competitive industries, to the detriment of its people and the world at large.

~~~
etiennemarcel
Well we have Carrefour (second largest retail store chain after Walmart).

I understand your position from an American point of view but I don't agree
with it. What you see as unnecessary regulation we see as the right way of
governing, and what you see as protecting dying industries we see as
preserving a way of life.

Since 1981 (or so) the price of books has been fixed by law. Nobody can sell
them lower than that price. If you walk through Paris (or most cities) you'll
see a number of small library shops that contribute to local economy and
culture. I find that very nice!

Other retail industries have not been so lucky. Many smaller towns (10-50k
inhabitants) have seen their city centers die out because of large outlets
opening outside of town, and because of Amazon. I guess you could the say that
the free market has decided what was the future. But these cities have become
dead towns, people have moved to the suburbs, contributing to sprawl and car
pollution. Social life has been reduced, and a recent study showed that the
far right/protest vote was higher there. Today the political opinion is
starting to shift and there's talk of more regulation to try and preserve
smaller cities.

Anyway, there's a lot more that could be said in this eternal debate between
the "American" and "European" point of view. But I mean we're not Soviet
Russia. We may not have Facebook (I can live with that) or Apple (that would
be nicer), but regulations are only part of the issue. And we're not clinging
to some antiquated world view, we're just trying to make sure change doesn't
crush people too fast.

~~~
briandear
But the French public chose to shop at the large outlets. But there are some
that find it ok to restrict freedom to essentially subsidize a “way of life”
that they value — despite other people not also valuing it as much (otherwise,
why would they shop at Auchan?)

The individual should be trusted to enjoy their own way of life without
government forcing people into some idealized way of life devised by
politicians who have tax-payer funded hairdressers making €11,000 per month as
Hollande did.

Meanwhile a typical French person has to deal with crazy-expensive taxes and
ridiculous protectionism that, for example, prohibits buying aspirin at a
supermarket. Or even a supermarket that stays open past 9pm. Allowing people
to buy aspirin at a supermarket isn’t going to “crush people too fast.” Except
maybe pharmacists. But solving my headache is worth more to me than saving a
pharmacist’s “way of life.” Pharmacies do just fine in the US despite not
having a monopoly on over-the-counter medicine. But, attempt to change the
law, which rational French have suggested, and pharmacists go on a national
strike.

[https://m.france24.com/en/20140930-french-pharmacists-
strike...](https://m.france24.com/en/20140930-french-pharmacists-strike-over-
plans-liberalise-market)

There is a reason the French economy is stagnant — and stagnation crushes a
country far more profoundly than innovation or market liberalization.

French wine is the “best in the world,” (according to the French,) yet they
have high tariffs on US wines to “protect” an industry they claim is the best?
French winemakers hijack Spanish trucks and dump thousands of liters of wine
into the streets to protest. And the French public allows these policies to
continue — despite, ironically being fully in control of the wine they
purchase at the supermarket. It’s a great illustration of people wanting to
“preserve” a way of life — until it inconveniences them. Market liberalization
doesn’t change anyone’s way of life unless they want it too. People could
still avoid shopping on Sundays, buy only French wine and reject all things
foreign. However, that isn’t what the public wants: they want freedom to live
“their” way of life, not some idealized way of life imposed upon them. French
people aren’t characters in a movie and they deserve the freedom to buy what
they want, when they want and from whom they want. They deserve the freedom to
engage in commerce in a way that optimizes for their needs. Certainly have
some common sense regulation such as health and safety, but what business is
it of the government if I want to buy aspirin at a fucking supermarket at
10:30pm and some supermarket is willing to sell it to me? If such freedom
would “crush” people, then let the. Be crushed. I have a headache and don’t
have time the desire or inclination to hunt around the countryside for the
government-designated overnight pharmacy just so I can wake up a reluctant
pharmacist to buy aspirin or whatever I need.

For those not aware of the overnight pharmacy system in France, here is some
interesting reading: [https://excuseme-
whereis.com/site/d58c88a9255a4289a5b812d3b3...](https://excuseme-
whereis.com/site/d58c88a9255a4289a5b812d3b3dc9787/default?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexcuseme-
whereis.com%2FCote_d_Azur_P.html#2951)

My point is that France is being crushed already — not from liberalization but
from stagnation. Liberté sure — as long as it doesn’t piss off the pharmacists
or farmers

~~~
PeterStuer
In many cases, self-optimization by individuals is nefast in a socio-economic
environment that actively seeks out concentrating benefits and externalizing
detriments.

Let's take cars as an example. For every 'individual' owning a car is better
than not owning a car. After all, whether you own a car or not, you live in
the same pollution and discomfort caused by everyone else having cars. So you
might as well part-take in the benefits rather than only suffer the downsides.

HN readers are a smart analytical crowd so they are not afraid of models and
numbers. Here goes:

Take a toy world with 1000 'people'. In this toy world, you get 500
'enjoyment' points from owning a car, a huge benefit, and you get -1
'enjoyment' points from someone else owning a car, a small detriment. It is
clear that when nobody would own a car, the aggregate sum of all 'enjoyment'
points would be 0. Nobody cares about the aggregate as each 'rational'
consumer is trying to optimize their own benefit.

For each and everyone, the 'optimal' decision is to get a car, even if they
might notice at first the small negative impacts, as it immediately ups their
'enjoyment' by a serious amount. Sure, some other people buying cars brought
my enjoyment to a small negative number, but getting one myself immediately
offsets that.

It is not until fairly late in this cycle, in this model when the number of
cars exceeds 500, that the individual perception that the world was better off
without cars altogether might set in. However, even when this occurs, the
'rational' decision for every consumer is still to buy/own a car. If everyone
has a car, then everyone's enjoyment sits at an abysmal -500, yet getting rid
of your own car immediately brings you enjoyment down to -999.

These systemic 'race-to-the-bottom' scenarios exist in many forms in the real
world, and are the underlying mechanic in many of the most detrimental
situations we find ourselves in, environmentally, but also socioeconomically.
They can only be curbed by collective restriction on 'freedoms', something
that is blasphemy to many, I know, and nearly impossible to achieve through
our current political organization.

There are no easy answers to this. However, every time you hear someone utter
things like 'vote with your wallet' when you object to the negative
externalities something has , know that they are promoting a system that
inherently leads to disaster.

------
kbar13
i don't get it. how is amazon threatening the bookshops' livelihood when it
was the traditional publishers who didn't pick up the book? shouldn't bookshop
owners be upset that publishers aren't able to scale properly?

~~~
Aissen
Self-publishing isn't really an issue here. The fact that it's self-published
(through Amazon services) _and_ is available exclusively at Amazon is what
pisses off this syndicate.

Which I find weird because they'd expect the author to handle shipment to the
3000+ bookshops all by himself ? I've heard some self-published authors do
that, but this is madness.

~~~
kbar13
right. i understand why booksellers would be upset that they aren't able to
stock a bestselling book. but i don't understand why they're mad at amazon and
not at publishers for not working with the author.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
> they aren't able to stock a bestselling book

They are able. They just don't want to.

~~~
kristianp
Not really. If they purchase the book from Amazon and resell in their shops,
they would be making a loss due to French price restrictions.

~~~
PHGamer
lol what? im kinda curious what the french price restrictions are

~~~
vatueil
From the article:

> _France is highly supportive of its independent booksellers: it has fixed
> book prices, and caps discounts at 5%, passing a bill in 2013 to stop
> retailers such as Amazon from combining the 5% discount with free delivery._

> [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/france-
> online-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/france-online-
> books-fixed-price-system)

------
victorNicollet
It's entirely possible for a bookshop to sell a book self-published through
CreateSpace : the author can purchase larger prints from CreateSpace (at a
lower price than the Amazon list price) and have them sent to the bookshop.
But what happens to unsold inventory ?

The traditional publisher takes almost all the financial risks : they pay for
editing, type-setting, marketing and for the initial printing run of the book,
without any guarantee that sales will cover the investment. Bookshops do buy
the books, but they are allowed to return unsold inventory after a while, and
the publisher takes the loss.

With a self-published author, who shoulders the risk of printing a copy and
delivering it to bookshop shelves ? For CreateSpace in France, that's 15€-ish.
The author can't, the bookshops won't, and the traditional investor (the
publisher) is out of the equation.

~~~
village-idiot
Ah, that explains why publishers seem to pass on winners fairly often: every
false positive has to be extremely expensive.

------
donmatito
An Amazon-published book, winning a prize, pisses the "traditional book
industry"

A Netflix-produced movie, winning a prize, pisses the "traditional movie
industry"

In both case, these are syptoms of tectonic shifts in the way media,
entertainment and art are produced and consumed. Both fights look like
rearguard actions, although I am much more sympathetic to the bookstore fight
(they are not the one who chose not to publish the book)

------
dvfjsdhgfv
The book itself is quite entertaining, but the layout... Gosh, I hope the
author gets a professional to do the layout of the next book, it's really
annoying.

------
m-p-3
> he was forced into put out an edition of Bande de Français himself after no
> French publisher picked it up.

If the bookshops wants to be mad after someone it should be against the
publishers who decided to not do business with him.

Too bad, but if he wasn't let down by all of them, they wouldn't be put into
that difficult position.

------
growlist
A few things strike me about France's 'cultural preservation' type approach -
firstly, in preventing change a decision is being made that a period in time
represented the high water mark for France's development, and that change from
that point can only be negative; given that before this period change was
allowed, and that indeed it was change that led to the perceived high point,
isn't it strange to now say: 'no more change, change is bad!'.

Secondly, who gets to determine what industries/culture gets preserved, and
what process is used? I'd be surprised to find out there is any kind of
consistent process behind this.

Thirdly, aren't these booksellers supposed to be businessmen after all?!
Perhaps if they are so attached to a goverment-protected role involving
culture they would be better off in a library or museum.

------
harshreality
Partly the author's fault. He could publish his book simultaneously through
smashwords (the only caveat is you have to make sure other distribution
channels don't undercut Amazon's price... that's an important part of Amazon's
rules), to avoid Amazon being the sole source of the book.

~~~
damageboy
Fault? He is getting free publicity to the point he is even on the front page
of HN (not that he care about this specifically). Show me the last time this
happened with a French book up for a prize.

------
Camillo
It's still not clear to me why no publisher wanted to publish the book.

------
pervycreeper
>Amazon has no literary opinion

This is not exactly true. Amazon has removed books from its publishing
platform based on their content, and even makes pseudo-literary judgements by
forbidding "placeholder" or "dummy" text.

~~~
duskwuff
Neither of those is a matter of _literary_ opinion. A book full of Markov-
chain gibberish created to receive KDP revenue, or to serve in a money
laundering scheme, is not a work of literature -- it's an instrument of fraud.
Removing these books is simply a (entirely reasonable) business decision.

I'm not sure what you're thinking of in particular when you mention books
removed "based on their content", but I can think of any number of scenarios
where this is, again, a perfectly reasonable decision.

~~~
liberte82
We might not be seeing major issues now, but I think it would be fairly easy
to foresee one or two major publishing cartels controlling all publications as
things continue to consolidate with internet powerhouses. Sounds absolutely
ripe for censorship concerns.

