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By Chris Meadows

lenook CrunchGear points to a Reuters story about efforts by five major French bookstore chains to set up a “national e-book platform” to pre-empt invasion by Amazon and Google. They have asked the government and publishers to help in this effort.

However, France’s largest publisher, Hachette Livre, is notably skeptical, saying that publishers and booksellers do not always have the same interests.

France has always been touchy about foreign cultural influences—most famously maintaining an organization tasked with coming up with French equivalents to foreign-language loan words. French interests have also sued Google Books over the unauthorized scanning of French-published titles (and won) before coming to an agreement to work with them.

CrunchGear’s Devin Coldewey points out that the retail chains in question are chain stores run by multinational interests (who have probably been gouging the publishers for years). As for cultural preservation, Coldewey asks the rhetorical question, “[H]ow much culture do you feel the US lost when Circuit City closed?”

I suspect that the retailers’ efforts are probably doomed to failure at this point. Amazon and Google just have too much momentum, and it is doubtful the publishers have as much to lose as the retailers who are seeking their help. Either way, they will still be selling their books.

 
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