Amazon Drops Free Locker Delivery for New Books in France
The retailer is ending a practice that critics said let it sidestep a law meant to protect independent bookshops.
Amazon will no longer offer free delivery of new books to its pickup lockers in France, according to Le Figaro, a reversal confirmed by Le Monde. The free-shipping option to lockers had been a strong selling point for the platform, but booksellers and their advocates argued it also let Amazon get around the loi Darcos, which restricts free delivery of new books outside physical bookshops.
The change follows a legal defeat for Amazon. Le Monde reports that the Conseil d'État rejected, this past spring, the company's challenge to a government decree that bars free book delivery outside bookshops. Amazon had argued that its lockers should not count under that rule.
Télérama frames the retreat as a win for independent booksellers, who have long argued that free shipping on new titles undercuts the price floor set by France's fixed-price book law and erodes the advantage a physical shop can still offer.
For readers who buy online but also value a nearby bookshop, the practical effect is that a new book ordered through Amazon for locker pickup will no longer arrive at no extra cost — closing a loophole that had made the platform's locker network more attractive than ordering the same title, at the same price, from a local store.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.
