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eBook Subscription Services Are Legal in France

youbooxIf you’ve been following digital publishing news over the past 6 months then you probably know that in late December French regulators expressed doubts that subscription ebook services were legal under France’s fixed price book laws. Those doubts solidified into a legal opinion in February 2015 when Laurence Engel, la Médiatrice du livre, ruled that all the existing services were illegal under the letter of the law.

Kindle Unlimited and its local competitors Izneo, Youscribe, and Youboox were given five months to bring their services into compliance with the legal decision. I don’t have news yet on Kindle Unlimited but I can report that Youboox, Izneo, and Youscribe are either now legal in France, or will be soon.

The three services had made proposals to Engel which were accepted, and they will be legal once they’ve changed their practices to match the proposals. They have six months to comply.

Izneo’s solution was relatively straightforward: they pulled any digital comic titles not published by MP Group ( about 1% of the 1,500 titles offered via subscription). This move made Izneo’s service legal by effectively granting the MP Group control. French law requires that the publisher control the price, and as the only publisher in that particular subscription service MP Group controls the price by default.

In related news, Izneo’s retail store boasts 12,000 digital comic titles from over 60 different publishers.

I’m having trouble parsing the details being discussed in the source articles on Youboox and Youscribe, but I can report that my source says both services are legal. Youboox affirms that it will continue to charge a flat 10 euro per month fee.

We are still waiting to learn the steps Amazon will take to make Kindle Unlimited legal in France, and the same goes for Scribd.

Stay tuned.

IDBoox, IDBoox, IDBoox

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Comments


fjtorres June 17, 2015 um 4:44 pm

I suspect it won’t matter.
It’ll be illegal no matter what they propose.
Just a wild guess. 🙂

Nate Hoffelder June 17, 2015 um 4:54 pm

Heh. I was just thinking that.

fjtorres June 17, 2015 um 5:43 pm

Simple logic: subscription services don’t sell books.
The subscriber receives no property rights.
So if the service isn’t selling books, why invoke book pricing laws?
But since they did…

Nate Hoffelder June 17, 2015 um 6:28 pm

See, there’s your mistake. You tried to apply logic to the law and to book publishing.

You knew thta wasn’t going to work, right?


AC de Fombelle June 18, 2015 um 5:33 am

Well, they can’t have it both ways, can they? eBooks aren’t considered as books when it comes to VAT (there is a special low VAT for books in France, it doesn’t apply to ebooks) so how can they be considered as books when it comes to fixed price book law?

LCNR June 18, 2015 um 8:22 am

Actually, the reduced VAT rate does apply to e-books in France. However, this has been ruled to be illegal by the CJEU, though I understand that the European Commission is considering amending the VAT directive in that regard and that contravening countries are dragging their feet so that they do not have to undo legislation that might not be illegal anymore in the near future.

The dichotomy (e-book/p-book pricing v. VAT rates) lies in the fact that VAT is a EU remit (VAT directive) whereas book pricing rules are subject to national legislation.


eBook Subscription Legal in France. Metadata Good For Book Sales TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics June 18, 2015 um 7:58 am

[…] eBook Subscription Services Are Legal in France (Ink, Bits & Pixels) Kindle Unlimited and its local competitors Izneo, Youscribe, and Youboox were given five months to bring their services into compliance with the legal decision. I don’t have news yet on Kindle Unlimited but I can report that Youboox, Izneo, and Youscribe are either now legal in France, or will be soon. […]


LCNR June 18, 2015 um 8:43 am

If I understand correctly, in the case of Youboox, publishers will basically set a price per page for each book. Therefore, I suppose that by maintaining the 9.99 € fee Youboox figures (or hopes) that the average monthly page-views cost per customer will remain below that threshold. If not, it might have to change its formula, e.g., by creating a premium offer for heavy readers.

Source: https://www.actualitte.com/article/lecture-numerique/la-mediatrice-du-livre-valide-les-modeles-d-offre-d-abonnement-illimites-d-ebooks/59028

Nate Hoffelder June 18, 2015 um 9:23 am

Thank you for the details, and for pointing me at that article. I follow Actualitte but that hadn’t crossed my desk yet this morning.


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[…] Ebook Subscription Services Adjust to French Law (Ink, Bits & Pixels) Several of the leading ebook subscription services in France—excluding Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, about which no word on the matter has yet been reported—are said to have adjusted their models to bring them in line with a recent ruling requiring publishers to maintain control over the prices of their ebooks, including on subscription platforms. […]


Eric June 19, 2015 um 8:16 am

Hello All,

I am the co-founder of www.cyberlibris.com, the oldest firm on that you all can eat subscription / streaming model (since 2001) in France. If you need first-hand info on what’s going on, I can help 🙂 Here is a link to a piece I recently wrote on subscription http://www.thebookseller.com/futurebook/part-1-ku-or-ko-streaming-subscription-and-big-data , Best, Eric


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[…] page; Scribd began a major rationalisation of the number of romance titles in its catalogue; and a legal ruling in France required all ebook subscription platforms to drop the ‘all you can ea… that defines them elsewhere around the […]


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