Anyway

Here’s a fas­cin­at­ing piece dis­cuss­ing how fixed prices on books in Ger­many was actu­ally push­ing prices down (con­trary to eco­nomic the­ory), while sup­port­ing a wide range of booksellers.

When I was last in Ger­many, apart from my usual beef about Ger­man book­sellers not tak­ing credit cards, I found no reason to com­plain about the range of books that was avail­able. Children’s books are more expens­ive than I’m used to here, but a lot of that is also because most children’s books are only avail­able in hard­back and thus inher­ently more expens­ive. Paper­backs seemed reas­on­ably priced in gen­eral, and of good typo­graph­ical quality.

Peter Brant­ley has some ques­tions at the end of his piece, which I think can be applied not only to books, but also tele­vi­sion, news, indeed many aspects of what is com­monly called “cul­ture”. When the mass media and mass enter­tain­ment industry are des­per­ately try­ing to increase rat­ings by cater­ing to the fads and whims of the mass mar­ket, is this a “race to the bot­tom” as has been pos­tu­lated? Is the long tail suf­fi­cient to enable people with diverse interests (and that’s all of us at some stage or another) to have those needs met, those itches scratched? How do people find those groups, if they don’t know what to look for?

Choice is import­ant, know­ing that you have choices is even more import­ant. It’s a bit like free speech.