More than 160 years ago, French economist Frédéric Bastiat published his famous Candlemakers’ Petition. In this satire, producers of candles and other lighting products asked the government to restrict unfair competition from... the sun!

Fortunately, no one would be foolish enough to seriously ask the government to enact such restrictions.

No one except in Quebec.

The seven major professional book publishers have been lobbying to “stop price wars that would eventually lead to a library oligopoly of three or four multinational corporations and infringe on our ‘bibliodiversity.’” Their efforts were successful, as in August 2013, then Parti Quebecois Culture Minister Maka Kotto created a parliamentary commission examining the question. One of the resulting new policies imposes a maximum price reduction of 10% on new books and e-books.

This means large merchants such as Wal-Mart can’t offer large discounts on new books.

Only the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) expressed opposition to the policy in the National Assembly. Spokesperson on culture Nathalie Roy said that, once again, families struggling with high prices and taxes will be penalized with more expensive books. She added that there is no guarantee this measure will increase book sales.

Blaise Renaud, CEO of the Renaud-Bray bookstore chain, also questioned the bill. What would stop Amazon, whose warehouse is in Toronto, and bookstores outside of Quebec that sell books over the internet, from offering discounts?

But these considerations are of little importance for the bookmakers. Like Bastiat’s candlemakers before them, they only care about their self-interest. They claim that without such a measure, book diversity will be destroyed and 12,000 jobs in the book industry will be at stake.

Little do they know that a floor price for books would endanger the industry even more. According to the Montreal Economic Institute, a 1% increase in retail prices decreases sales up to 3%. With the 10%-maximum reduction, this could mean a decrease of sales by Quebec authors of 17.6%, mainly among occasional readers. On the other hand, avid readers would be encouraged to look for cheap alternatives such as e-books and online purchases.

A decrease in book sales has been observed in France, where price controls on books were adopted decades ago. Households in the early 1980s spent about 0.46% of their budget on books. Twenty years later, it was down to 0.38%.

So if bookmakers really want to help their industry, they must look outside the scope of government. Increasing prices and decreasing competition can only accelerate their doom. Instead, they should embrace modern technology and sell their books directly on Amazon. Indeed, the website lets authors sell their books at whatever price they want (from $0.99 to $200) and lets them keep 70% of the revenue. Such previously unknown authors as Hugh Howey have become so successful that their books are being adapted for the big screen.