Book industry on alarm over bid to repeal fixed book price law

The bookshop capital of the world, Buenos Aires risks losing most of its independent bookstores, the Argentine book sector warned last week. Several book industry chambers, including publishers, distributors, authors, and independent bookstores, alerted to the government’s intention to scrap the country’s fixed-price regulation. The move is part of a major bill authored by the deregulation ministry led by Federico Sturzenegger, which also affects the pharmaceutical and real estate businesses, and is expected to land in the Senate following the winter break.  Passed almost unanimously by Congress in 2001, the Defense of the Bookselling Activity Law #25.542 requires publishers to set a single retail price for books across all sales channels. Since then, it has been one of the cornerstones of the Argentine publishing industry, which has tripled the number of new titles published every year, as well as doubled the number of publishing houses.  Today, Argentina has around 1,500 bookshops, and one of the highest bookstore-per-person ratios, according to Argentina’s Book Chamber (CAL, for their Spanish acronym) The Milei administration’s argument for slashing the law is based on a fervent belief that deregulation will spark competition and make books cheaper for the average consumer. Last Saturday, Sturzenegger defended the decision to repeal it on his X account in a heated debate with journalist Luis Novaresio, saying the law “prohibits” selling cheap books and calling it a “deadly sin.”  “President Milei wants Argentina to be the freest country in the world. Freedom will result in more readers and greater access [to books]. But for booksellers this seems like a question of survival,” he posted. This is the third time the Milei government intends to dismantle the law. In 2023, they added the derogation articles to the presidential decree DNU 70/23 that gave extraordinary powers to President Milei. In 2024, it was included in the so-called Ley Bases, a major state reform. Both times, the articles regarding the book industry — as well as other cultural legislation — were removed from the final versions after intense media campaigns and meetings with legislators. A virtuous market “The fixed price doesn’t eliminate competence,” CAL said in a statement released on Friday. “On the contrary, it directs it to quality of service, advice, catalog variety and promotion of new emerging authors,” they added. According to the chamber, it also prevents competition from being reduced merely to the financial capacity of offering lower prices, “bringing stability to the market” while also “fighting piracy.”   They also note the double nature of books as both commercial and cultural goods. Law 25.542, they claim, promotes a uniform book price “not to intervene in the market, but to ensure the market does not limit access to culture.”“Its goal is to foster more bookstores, more publishers, more authors and, ultimately, to give readers a wider range of books to choose from.” The scenario booksellers warn about is a typical dumping maneuver: once supermarkets and large online platforms use aggressive discounts and sell bestsellers at a loss in order to grab a larger market share, lure customers into more profitable products, and get rid of the competition, they have no restraint to raise book prices at will.  And they will, they assure, citing cases like the United Kingdom, where a similar move resulted in serious market concentration and, in the end, book prices rising over inflation rates.  Rejection for Sturzenegger’s project spans from independent bookshops to top chain stores. Adolfo de Vincenzi, CEO of ILHSA — the company that owns the Yenny and El Ateneo bookstore chains, one of the largest players in Argentina’s book market — also spoke out against deregulation. “If everything is deregulated, books account for just 0.5% of a supermarket’s sales. They can give them away without any problem. A country like Argentina, known for its vast network of bookstores, would end up with a dying industry. I can easily imagine supermarkets or Mercado Libre entering this market and destroying it in a matter of seconds,” he said. Céspedes Libros “Bookshops today compete on a range of items like curation, catalogs, recommendations, or even location. Why break a virtuous market?,” Céspedes Libros owner Cecilia Fanti told the Herald.“One can only attribute this to ideological fanaticism. They keep repeating a libertarian catchphrase about deregulation and prices while accusing independent bookstores of taking advantage of readers,” said Fanti, who is also vice president of the Argentine Chamber of Independent Bookstores.“On the contrary, our relationship with regular clients is precisely one of the areas where we all compete. In the ten years since we opened, we’ve seen the children of our clients become young adult readers, and young readers become parents — or even grandparents — who come to find books for their children and grandchildren,” she added.  “It’s hard to tell whether this is part of their ideological crusade or if there are hidden players whose interests are not related to the publishing ecosystem — or if it’s both,” Alejandro Dujovne, head of the Centro de Estudios y Políticas Públicas del Libro of the San Martín University said to elDiarioAR. Book industry referents also challenged the alleged nature of the government’s goal. If the aim is to make books more affordable, they claim, there are other, less destructive ways to achieve it. Mainly, lowering paper costs, which account for more than 50% of a book’s end price, a business that is currently dominated by an oligopoly.  “What we need to lower book prices is greater purchasing power, less banking taxes, lower interest rates, derogation of the check tax, and a greater offer of paper,” posted publisher and distributor Blatt & Ríos on X.  “We need a bigger market, not a smaller one like they are proposing.” The UK’s cautionary tale Aside from the hard-to-compare US market, countries with a strong and diverse publishing industry have some sort of fixed book price legislation, defenders of the law say. The examples are far from state-controlled economies, with France (whose Lang Law was a model for the Argentine bill), Germany, Spain, Japan and South Korea as examples. The United Kingdom, instead, is a cautionary tale. In 1997, the UK abolished its century-old Net Book Agreement (NBA), an arrangement set in 1899. While bestsellers initially became cheaper in supermarkets, the long-term fallout was severe: over 500 independent bookshops closed within a decade, and average book prices eventually rose faster than inflation, according to the UK’s Booksellers Association.