An article in the International Herald Tribune (July 10,2014) titled “The French do buy books. Real books”, describes two French laws, the “Lang Law” that says that book prices cannot be discounted more than 5%, and a new rule that states that discounted books sold online cannot be shipped free. The two laws aim to eliminate the advantage for online booksellers like Amazon,while preserving choice for consumers. Will such price constraints, which increase costs to consumers on average, create benefits of increased book variety ? Should books be treated differently than other products in preserving their availability?