Traditional booksellers in France struggle to stay competitive with the online heavyweight.(Sayra2001, Wikimedia Commons)

This past October, politicians frustrated with Amazon’s fast and cheap book-selling model approved a bill that prohibited Amazon.com and other online retailers from shipping discounted books for free, in order to protect France’s culture of traditional bookstores whose owners have complained that Amazon is hurting their business. 

Amazon, however managed to quickly skirt the law. “We are unfortunately not allowed to offer you free shipping for ordering books,” reads the FAQ section of its website. “We have therefore set delivery fees at one euro-cent for each order that contains books and that is sent by Amazon in order to systematically guarantee you the lowest price for your book orders." 

But the second provision of the law is one Amazon cannot dodge so easily. Now, only physical bookstores can legally discount book prices. Though the price cut can only be up to 5 percent, brick-and-mortar stores now have a big advantage. 

It remains to be seen what ingenious action Amazon will take to “right the market.” Or Jeff Bezos could just appeal the decision in court for being anti-competitive. 

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