Reappeared in the Senate the old idea of setting book prices. It has been around for more than ten years and, in 2018, it came close to becoming a reality, circulating through the shady corridors of Brasília.
It is a special case of price fixing because while the usual practice is to fix the price of a product to prevent it from being charged more, in this case, the intention is to prevent the merchant from charging less.This time the attempt at price fixing comes from the Senate.
There, Senator Teresa Leitão revived an old project, proposing that when a book is released, the publisher establishes a price. For the first 12 months, bookstores cannot offer discounts exceeding 10%.
Furthermore, in a second edition, the price fixing would apply for another six months.Back in the last century, a young man named Jeff Bezos worked in the financial market and wanted to change his life.
He attended a series of lectures by publishers and booksellers, was surprised by the imperfection of that market, and had an idea: he founded Amazon.He started in a warehouse in Seattle selling books online and the rest is history. Bezos revolutionized the book market and retail itself.
He delivers fast and offers discounts. Today Amazon is the world’s largest bookstore. It is estimated to have captured half of the book market in Brazil. In its wake, publishing houses and other companies created online sales services. Some, like the retail chain Americanas, failed miserably.
As it turned out, the chain had been looted.All retail trade goes through the capitalist process of creative destruction. Initially, supermarkets took a slice of the street shops’ business.
Then, e-commerce came to reshape the sale of books to shampoos, but only bookstores want to fix their prices.Bookstores have an apostolic aura.
After all, a book is not a bar of soap. Illusion. Books, soaps, and trucks are commodities. So much so that many years ago, when it was cheaper to print a book in China, some publishers started printing them in Shanghai and bringing the volumes to Brazil.
The two largest national bookstore chains went bankrupt, much more because of their financial acrobatics than because of competition. When the big chains were drowning out the small bookstores, no one talked about price fixing.
It is complained that customers go to a bookstore, look up books, and then go home to order them online. The merchants making this complaint shop online and do not think about fixing prices for sandwiches. Moreover, all major publishers have online sales operations.
If they charge higher prices or push physical book sales over e-books (which are cheaper), that is their problem.Book price fixing exists in other countries, such as France, Germany, and Spain.
The idea is bad, but it must be admitted that these nations function properly. It would be worth copying their public health and education systems as well. Copying only book price fixing, Brazil would be chasing after a relic of the past. It replicates the worst while repressing the new.
