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Comment by niklasmerz | Hacker News Reader

As a German I don't have to worry too much about the prices of books. We have Buchpreisbindung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchpreisbindung

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It's funny how this comment seems to have most upvotes. Good morning fellow germans ;) It adds no real feedback to the original post but shows how much we germans love our Buchpreisbindung.

Another German here. I don’t know… Buchpreisbindung sucks when it comes to eBooks. It would be awesome if you could get the eBook at a reduced price if you have the physical copy.

Isn't that 100% on the authors/publishers? Such deals exist, bundling the ebook version for technical books. Might be misremembering, but some authors (of tech books, fwiw) always were happy for that feature. But then again they usually don't live off the royalties, but are developers/consultants anyway.

Amazon did this for a bit with some of their physical books, especially if bought from their retail stores. Looks like they shuttered this system in 2019: https://the-digital-reader.com/2019/09/30/amazon-is-shutting...

They do offer a discounted Audible book if you own the eBook: https://www.amazon.com/hz/audible/matchmaker

Exactly, the cheapest and fastest way to get a book in Germany is most likely your neighborhood book store on the way back from work. (And if they don't have the book in store, they can order it for the next day.)

The local bookstore can even do same day delivery.

I find it hard to believe that local bookkstore catalog is nearly large enough.

They can get you everything through their wholesalers. Might take three days then, but there's a pretty tight-woven net.

You can always check out https://medimops.de for used books.

We used to have a similar price-fixing thing in the UK called the Net Book Agreement [1]. Thankfully it got repealed and books became cheaper for all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Book_Agreement

"Thankfully" is an interesting view from the reader side. Would be interesting to know what was the impact on the authors side.

Got it cheaper because the authors got now less money or got it cheaper because the publisher got now less money?

Because I know, that (at least for technical books) the pay for the authors is not really great. It's more like a reputation than making money out of it.

Poor people should be able to buy books without having to subsidise your bookshop aesthetic.

Exactly. Enabling poor people to buy books is a far greater social good than having somewhere comfortable for hipsters to sit with their laptops and middle class mums to push their three wheeled buggies round.

Why? If you are poor you probably also have less real estate and so purchasing a non-trivial quantity of books is less convenient than borrowing.

Also not sure why you blast that sexism around.

Haha. "It doesn't matter if we make buying books expensive because poor people can't afford shelf-space." Nice.

Actually, you don't need to own a book to read it. We in Germany have a great concept for this, its called: Library, You can go to your local community library and decide to either read the book there or to take it home and read it where ever you like. The rent for the first 2 weeks or sometimes the first 4 weeks is free of charge.

These libraries these days even not only have books to rent out. They have online-books, games (like those physical games to interact physically with other people you like), and other medias.

Even the membership in those community libraries is mostly free of charge, with a few exceptions.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33149867

Libraries allow (not only) poor people to read as much books as they want for free or ~the price of a cheap book. That seems to be a much better mechanism to allow for literacy independent of income than trying to make books cheaper.

Why shouldn’t they get to own books like you can, without paying above market prices so middle-class people can have nice spaces?

Is that the main impact of the German law? I was thinking it might improve an author's chances of earning a reasonable amount of money from writing which I think could be a good thing.

Do you know if there's any correlation between the number of bookstores in a city and the amount people in those cities read? Is it possible that more expensive but also more ubiquitous books leads to more books being read, or are price and readership always inversely correlated?

>> Do you know if there's any correlation between the number of bookstores in a city and the amount people in those cities read? Is it possible that more expensive but also more ubiquitous books leads to more books being read, or are price and readership always inversely correlated?

I would say they are always inversely correlated if you are poor.

Does the German law also fix the price of used books? If not, then I could see how a thriving (but expensive) new book market could lead to a robust used market which could help readership.

One of the reasons why I routinely check used books first to get around that high price guarantee.

Thanks for sharing, reminds me of another old revered law in Germany, the Reinheitsgebot. Buchpreisbindung was introduced in 1888 and according to the Wikipedia article it fails to deliver cheaper books and even indirectly subsidize large bookstores like Amazon.

I really don‘t like Buchpreisbindung. It frequently makes books significantly more expensive than their English originals (I‘ve seen prices 10€ higher than the English version). That’s the primary reason why I choose to buy the original English versions instead (Buchpreisbindung does not affect non-German books as long as they are not specifically targeting the German markets like educational materials). A nice side effect is the noticeable improvement tin my comprehension skills for English texts.

Can't be bothered to translate this page to English, but from the comments I'm guessing it's the decision by the government to not tax books the same way they do leisure items?

I moved to the Netherlands a while ago, and was shocked at how much books cost. I learned that they're taxed the same as everything else, which seems short-sighted.

For those who don't speak German, this is the English-language article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price

Same in The Netherlands: https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0017452/2021-07-01/0

We have the same thing in France too.

As well as Greece, Italy, South Korea, Mexico, and a couple others: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Countries-with-a-Fix...

does that apply to used books, or just new? i think (?) the target for this website is used because there is a fixed price for newly published books. (however sometimes big box stores will mark them down or run a sale)

That's a great system that you have in Germany! Does it apply to used books also?

It doesn't, only for new books. Used or damaged books as well as clearance sales for example aren't part of this.

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