Since October 2023, the law imposes a minimum shipping fee of €3 for home book delivery. This measure is taken to support the bookselling sector, which has been lamenting Amazon's free book deliveries. In fact, this measure is primarily aimed at the American online retail giant, which has developed a clever countermeasure.
The law specifies that these shipping fees do not apply to collection from a book retail store. Amazon has seized the opportunity and is offering readers the option of collecting their books not only from supermarket counters—where there is often a bookstore—but also from automated lockers installed in stores. More than 2,500 collection points are thus available throughout France.
This trick is no laughing matter for book mediator Jean-Philippe Mochon. The independent public authority could only note the disagreement it had with Amazon's interpretation of the law. The company rejects the interpretation of the legislation and "intends to maintain free locker pickup." This is "a real challenge to the implementation of the law," it maintains. This disagreement concerns a third, or even more, of the free pickup points.
Amazon believes that some of the mediator's conclusions "are based on a biased interpretation of the applicable law." A true dialogue of the deaf that will now be resolved in court, as mediation has failed. The Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, who obviously sided with the booksellers, denounced last December a "circumvention of the legislation".
Source: AFP
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