Since November 5, Amazon has once again offered free delivery for book sales. The American platform uses its automatic lockers, located in many small businesses, where customers come to collect their purchases. A tip which allows you to avoid the 3 euros of compulsory shipping costs for the sale of books online, but which necessarily displeases the competition, including independent booksellers.
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With this free online delivery on the online platform Amazonit’s a double penalty for booksellers and readers, explains Pablo Yanover, employed at the independent bookstore BDNet in Paris, near Bastille, for 15 years:
“ The fact that people order online means that they may spend less time in bookstores. The visibility of certain titles could simply disappear. This could reduce the quantity of new releases per year and cause certain titles, which would have seen the light of day and which are of real quality, to no longer appear. It can also be laborious for us, because we also have a mail order service that Amazon has already largely eaten up. We manage to get by with somewhat special prints and things that are signed by the authors that we can only have at home for example, which we obviously don’t have on online sites. »
Other customers recognize the benefits of ordering through Amazon. In front of the comic book shelf Mortelle AdeleMathilde Noé came with her daughter, looking for a birthday present:
“ It’s the practical side that means that when I need a book quickly for a need, for school, for a gift… I sometimes go through Amazon. Afterwards, I still try to favor bookstores around my home, and when I can, I go there, like today here. »
The French Booksellers Union is questioning the legality of this new Amazon strategy and hopes it will be banned.
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