If you live in France, buying a book online can cost more than you might expect. Order a €9 paperback (about $10) for home delivery, and you will pay at least another €3 (about $3.40) for shipping. The retailer simply didn’t decide to charge you more.
Since October 2023, French law has required a minimum €3 delivery charge for orders of new printed books worth less than €35 (about $39), unless you collect the order from a bookshop. It is part of a government effort to protect the country’s bookshops.
The reason is simple. Independent booksellers can’t match a large online platform (think Amazon) that offers free shipment to millions of customers. If you make home delivery cost something, buying from a shop begins to make more sense. In May 2026, France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’État, rejected Amazon’s challenge to the rule, maintaining that it serves a legitimate purpose.
But here is a complication. A reader who lives near a bookshop can collect an online order without paying for delivery. Someone with no nearby bookshop, however, faces the €3 minimum to get a small order of new printed books delivered home.
Price controls have another limitation. France has regulated book prices for more than four decades, yet many independent booksellers are still struggling. Poland is now preparing a different approach, one that would influence the commercial terms between publishers and the companies that sell their books.
Both countries face the same difficult question: how do you protect the businesses that bring books to readers without making those books more expensive or harder to get?
Why Fixed Book Prices Aren’t Enough
The oldest tool in this debate is the fixed book price. The publisher sets the retail price of a new book, and shops can’t undercut it or can do so only slightly. France has worked this way since 1981, when a law capped retail discounts at 5%. Germany has had a fixed-price law since 2002. When its own Monopolies Commission recommended scrapping it in 2018, the governing parties refused, arguing that books are a cultural good, not just a product.
Economists usually expect arrangements like this to raise prices. For books, the evidence tells a more interesting story. In a 2024 study, Rhys Williams compared European countries with and without fixed book prices over time and found that fixed-price countries sold about 16% more books, with no noticeable rise in average prices.
Williams suggests that when bookshops can’t compete on price, they have more reason to compete through book selection and convenience. That could help sustain a wider network of shops. It is a rare cross-country analysis, and relatively few countries changed their policies during the period studied.
Britain offers a useful contrast. Its Net Book Agreement, which let publishers fix prices, collapsed in 1995 and was ruled unlawful in 1997. A 2008 evaluation for the Office of Fair Trading found that readers gained something: bestsellers sold at about three-quarters of their list price by 2005, and more titles were published.
Over the same decade, independent bookshops’ share of sales fell from 28% to 11%. That decline coincided with the rapid growth of supermarkets, chains, and online retail, so it can’t all be blamed on the end of fixed prices. The comparison illustrates the trade-off policymakers face: allowing deep discounts can make bestsellers cheaper, while fixed prices may help sustain a wider network of bookshops.
Figure 1. What changed in British bookselling after fixed prices ended
UK book-sales share by retail channel, before and after the Net Book Agreement ended
Source: Office of Fair Trading, An Evaluation of the Impact upon Productivity of Ending Resale Price Maintenance on Books (OFT981), February 2008. Note: Shares of UK book sales by retail channel. Start years differ by channel as reported in the source; channels shown do not sum to 100%. These shifts coincided with the growth of chains, supermarkets, and online retail, so they should not be read as caused by the end of fixed prices alone.
If fixed prices were enough, though, France would be the proof. Instead, its bookshops appear to be struggling. In 2025, 85 bookshops closed and 83 opened, the first net loss since its monitoring series began. Independents’ share of new-book purchases slipped to 25.7%, behind large chains such as Fnac and Cultura, while online retailers took about a fifth of the market.
Figure 2. Where France bought new books in 2025
Share of new printed book purchases by channel, 2025
Source: Kantar data published by the French Ministry of Culture, as reported by ActuaLitté, 25 June 2026. Note: Shares of consumer purchases of new printed books, not publisher revenue or bookshop margins. Large specialist stores include chains such as Fnac and Cultura.
The Problem Behind the Cover Price
To see why protection hasn’t translated into security, look at where a bookshop’s money goes. A June 2026 study by Xerfi found that about 63% of an average independent bookshop’s sales went toward inventories: buying the books and other goods it sold. Staff salary took 18%, and rent and other outside costs about 16%. Net profit came to little more than 1%.
Figure 3. Where an independent bookshop's money goes
Average French independent bookshop, 2024, as a share of total sales
Source: Xerfi, La situation économique et financière des librairies indépendantes, study for the Syndicat de la librairie française, June 2026 (static analysis of 1,736 bookshops, 2024, weighted average). Note: Shares of total sales across the whole business, not the breakdown of a single book. Goods bought for resale is derived from the reported 36.7% commercial margin. “Other items, net” is the balance of other operating income, depreciation, interest, and corporate tax, calculated by PublishingState. Figures do not add exactly to 100 because of rounding.
A fixed price protects the cover price. It doesn’t protect the bookseller’s share of it. That share depends on things readers never see: the discount a shop negotiates with publishers and distributors, the cost of returning unsold stock, shipping, and rent. A shop can be shielded from price-cutting rivals and still have almost nothing left at the end of the year.
The outlook is worse. Xerfi projects that if sales hold steady, French independent bookshops will suffer losses by 2027, and a further fall in sales would push losses to 2.6%–3% of revenue.
Figure 4. Bookshop margins could turn negative by 2027
Net margin of French independent bookshops by size, actual, estimated, and projected
Source: Xerfi, La situation économique et financière des librairies indépendantes, study for the Syndicat de la librairie française, June 2026, p. 103. Note: Net margin including exceptional items, as a share of sales, for Xerfi’s constant panels of bookshops. 2025 is an estimate; 2027 values are Xerfi projections under two scenarios (striped bars). Because these panels are a smaller, constant sample, their 2024 values differ slightly from Xerfi’s static analysis of 1,736 bookshops.
This is the problem Poland appears to recognize. In September 2026 the culture ministry asked for its draft law to be legislated. The ministry has outlined the proposal’s main features while indicating that publication of the full draft and public consultation would ensue.
Once enforced, new books, ebooks, and audiobooks would have a fixed price for 12 months. Distributors could take no more than 45% discount of the cover price, which the ministry says would stop the cost of fixed prices from being pushed onto publishers and authors. Authors would be guaranteed at least 10% of the cover price and translators 3%, and sellers would report their sales to a state system.
In other words, Poland is not only regulating what readers pay. It is also making rules how the money from each sale is divided. Exactly how the discount cap would work in real contracts will become clear only once the legislation passes. Whether any of the benefits would reach independent shops is an open question.
Who Benefits, and Who Pays?
Rules like these are usually defended as helping “the book trade,” as if everyone in the trade wanted the same thing. Not everyone does. The clearest way to judge these rules is to take the main players one at a time.
Figure 5. Who benefits, and who pays?
How three measures affect the main groups in the book trade
| Fixed price on new books | France's delivery charge | Poland's 45% discount cap | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent bookshops | Gains Protected from price-cutting on new titles; evidence suggests more shops survive | Mixed More bookshops now sell online; government found no particular effect on shop numbers | Unclear Depends on how distributors respond; text unpublished |
| Publishers | Mixed Stronger hand with large retailers; some Polish publishers fear lower sales without launch discounts | Little change Government evaluation found no fall in new print book sales | Gains Designed to protect publishers' and authors' share |
| Large retailers and platforms | Bears a cost Lose price as a competitive tool | Bears a cost Lose near-free delivery; Amazon cites a survey in which buyers report cutting back | Bears a cost Less leverage in negotiating discounts |
| Readers near a bookshop | Mixed Fewer bargains on new releases; denser network of shops | Little change Free pickup from a shop avoids the charge | Unclear Effect on prices depends on publishers' cover prices |
| Readers far from a bookshop | Bears a cost Fewer bargains on new releases, with less benefit from local shops | Bears a cost Pay at least €3 on small orders; official evaluation found no sign they buy less | Unclear Effect on prices depends on publishers' cover prices |
Sources: Williams (2024); French Ministry of Culture evaluation (2025); Livres Hebdo, 8 December 2025; Rynek Książki, 22 October 2026; Prawo.pl, 19 June 2026. Note: PublishingState’s assessment of likely gains and costs, based on the evidence cited in this article. Poland’s measures are proposals; their effects are expected, not observed.
On paper, independent bookshops look like the one receiving most protection. A fixed price stops a rival from selling the same new title for less, and the French delivery charge narrows the gap between buying online and buying in a shop. Yet the French government’s own evaluation of the delivery charge, sent to Parliament in October 2025, found no particular effect on the number of bookshops. Its clearest benefit was different: more bookshops started selling online, and the range of online sellers widened. Useful, but not a solution to a 1% margin.
Publishers have mixed responses. Fixed prices can strengthen their hand against large retailers, and Poland’s discount cap is meant to protect their share. But some of the loudest opposition in Poland has come from publishers themselves. Several publishing houses warn that ending discounts on new releases could add up to 15 złoty (about $3.80) to a book’s price and shrink sales. For publishers whose business depends on heavily promoted launches, a fixed price looks less like protection than a constraint. The ministry replies that publishers set cover prices themselves and could make them realistic from the start.
Large retailers and platforms lose their most powerful tool, price, and they have fought back with their own numbers. Amazon says the French delivery charge has cost readers more than €100 million (about $112 million), and in a survey it commissioned from Ifop, 44% of book buyers said the charge had led them to buy fewer books. A bookselling alliance led by the booksellers’ union, with Fnac and E.Leclerc, published a study concluding the opposite: sales shifted toward shops without any fall in volume. Each side has an obvious interest in its findings.
For readers, the picture is more complicated than the opening example might suggest. The available evidence offers some reassurance, although it does not settle the question. The government’s evaluation found that the delivery charge had not pushed out disadvantaged or rural buyers and that sales of new print books had not suffered because of it.
The Conseil d’État noted that lower-income and rural readers have continued to buy a growing share of their books from the big online sellers. They pay more per order, but the official evidence doesn’t show them buying less. That evaluation, of course, was written by the government that introduced the rule, so it isn’t independent either. No study yet measures the charge’s effect the way Williams measured fixed prices.
Poland’s readers face a more direct question. A 12-month fixed price affects every new release, and many readers are used to waiting for discounts. The competition authority, UOKiK, reportedly expects higher prices and less reading, though its opinion hasn’t been published. A simulation commissioned by the Polish Book Chamber suggests prices could stay similar, but only if publishers lower cover prices and trade terms change. Both outcomes are possible, and which one prevails will depend largely on how publishers set their prices.
What Would Count as Success?
If the goal is to protect bookselling for readers’ sake, the rules should be judged by what happens to readers and shops, not by what the law intends. That means asking practical questions. Are bookshops opening and surviving, and are they making enough to stay open? What do readers actually pay once delivery and discounts are counted? Can people outside cities still get books easily? Is the range of titles sold getting wider or narrower? And are people reading more, or less?
Most of these questions can’t yet be answered with confidence. Poland’s proposed sales-reporting system could help answer some of these questions, particularly if the resulting data were made available to independent researchers rather than restricted to government and industry bodies.
Protecting Bookselling Without Losing Sight of Readers
France and Poland suggest a more careful conclusion than either side of the debate usually offers. Fixed prices have a reasonable case behind them: the cross-country evidence suggests they help sustain shops and sales without pushing up average prices. But they don’t make bookselling profitable, and France shows how thin protection can be when margins are close to zero. The newer measures are attempts to reach that deeper problem. So far, they rest more on conviction than on evidence. France’s delivery charge looks like neither the disaster Amazon describes nor the rescue its supporters hoped for.
There is also a quieter shift under way. According to industry groups, France’s state funding for books and reading, excluding public institutions, fell from €23.2 million in 2025 to €17.4 million in 2026. Two proposals to fund the Centre national du livre through levies on online book marketplaces were also rejected by the National Assembly on November 2, 2026.
Rules cost governments almost nothing. Funding does, a point the Conseil d’État itself made when it dismissed a postage discount for independent bookshops as too costly for public finances. As public money tightens, more of the cost of protecting bookshops falls on retailers, publishers, and readers rather than taxpayers.