This April 12, President Macron was at the Paris Book Festival, which opened Friday morning and is scheduled to last until Sunday. He pleaded for the establishment of a contribution on the second-hand book market, in order to prevent its players from circumventing the law providing for a single price for new books in France.
“We are going to put in place at least one contribution which can help protect the single price and also allow our authors, publishers and translators to be better helped
,” explained the Head of State without further details, specifying that the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, was going to make announcements on the subject before the end of the show.
“What is true is that the used book, when it is marked by certain platforms, it is a kind of misuse, in any case a circumvention of this single price
,” added the president of the Republic.
Second-hand books are in fact a serious competitor to publishing houses, which see recent titles arriving at reduced prices. In 2020, the Xerfi firm estimated this second-hand market at 888 million euros. That of the new one was 4.3 billion euros, according to the GfK firm.
On the book market, France stands out by having been the first country in the world, in 1981, to pass a law imposing a single price on new books, among other measures to ensure the sustainability of bookstores. This law has since been copied in other countries.