Friday, April 01, 2011

Swiss to Reinstate Fixed Book Prices

Publishing Perpectives - 31 March 2011
by Amanda DeMarco

On March 18 the Swiss parliament approved a fixed price system for books in German-speaking Switzerland, both for online and in-store sales as of next year. The debate over fixed book pricing is a complicated and volatile one in Europe. Various degrees of price control exist side by side, and countries vacillate on the legality and benefit of fixed price systems. In Germany all books, including e-books and books sold as apps, are included in the fixed price system. French law excludes books that don’t closely correspond to a printed edition (apps), as well as foreign buyers and sellers. Britain hasn’t had fixed book pricing since the Net Book Agreement was declared illegal in 1997.

Since the 2007 repeal of the fixed price system in German-speaking Switzerland, publishers there have been fighting to reintroduce it. Various proposals have excluded online sales, which would have been catastrophic for physical stores. The issue finally came to a head earlier this year, when both houses of Swiss parliament separately approved a fixed price system for both in-store and online book sales, requiring Friday’s final vote for ratification.

Full story here.

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