What results has helped small, quality publishers like Berenberg. But it has also — American consumers should take note — caused book prices to drop. Last year, on average, book prices fell 0.5 percent.  Now this system is under threat from, of all people, the Swiss. Just across the border, the Swiss lately decided to permit the discounting of German books — a move that some in the book trade here fear will eventually force Germany itself to follow suit, transforming a diverse and book-rich culture into an echo of big-chain America.  If you’re a skeptic, you might associate fixed pricing with a German impulse toward conformity and an aversion to traditional haggling cultures. A German will stare blankly at you if you even suggest such a thought. Instead they will stress the special place books have in society.  “Germany has always considered itself a late nation, by which we mean that we came together late in history as a nation, and what has always brought us together is the concept of education,” said Thomas Sparr, the Frankfurt publisher of Suhrkamp Verlag, a large and prestigious house. “Books are inseparable from our self-identity.”  Andreas Remmel, who with his 35-year-old twin brother, Paul, runs Bernstein-Verlag, in Bonn, a two-man, five-year-old operation that, as it happens, specializes in books about Goethe, explained, “It goes back to Goethe.”  “With our system,” Mr. Remmel said, “ small German booksellers can specialize and cater to neighborhood and certain communities, and they also have their own opinions about which books they want to sell, which gives us a chance to find a niche. Everything doesn’t depend on the taste of a few buyers for the chain stores.”  The fixed-price system is not unique to Germany. France had it, gave it up and reinstituted it after finding that discounting hurt small booksellers. But in the German-speaking book world, the system has long been a source of special pride until Switzerland jumped ship this spring.  Despite vigorous lobbying from German and Swiss publishers and independent booksellers, the Swiss government sustained a ruling by the Swiss Competition Commission to overturn the fixed-price law and allow discounting there.  It’s still early, but some Swiss prices have since gone up. Discounts for best sellers are forcing Swiss booksellers to raise the prices for other books.  I called Rafael Corazza, director of the Competition Commission, to ask what he was thinking. “It’s not normal for one market to have special regulations,” he explained. “It was a cartel. The German and Swiss booksellers said it was for a good purpose — they made a cultural argument, but we are an economic commission. They said the system fosters a broader, deeper market for books, that discounting will hurt the small booksellers who support the small publishers, and then you will have fewer books and more focus on best sellers.”  Are they right? I asked.  “I’m not quite sure they’re completely wrong,” he said. “Nobody knows for sure yet. But nobody can read one million titles, so the question is, is it better that more people read fewer books or that fewer people read a lot of different books?”  Mr. Berenberg, on hearing of this remark, laughed. “Without price maintenance, you have what you see in America and in England, namely the equivalent of the abolition of small and medium-size bookshops. We, as a small publisher, need them, because once they’re gone, we’re next.”  It’s what nearly everybody here told me. “This is existential to us,” said Arnulf Conradi, a retired publisher, who founded Berlin Verlag.  Peter Molder, a literary agent from Cologne, added: “We’re used to the government supporting cultural programs. In America, it’s about private wealth. Here the question is what the public can do for culture.”  Heike Fischer, a Cologne publisher, said: “But it’s also about the idea of equal protection. In this system everybody has the same chances, whether you’re a small or big publisher or bookseller, or a consumer in Berlin or some small town.”  French publishers offset Swiss discounting by charging Swiss booksellers more than French ones, a move that German publishers might emulate.  Meanwhile, opinion is divided about what the Swiss decision will mean in Germany. Michael Naumann, a longtime publisher and editor, now running for mayor of Hamburg, as Germany’s culture minister some years back won a battle with the European Union to protect Germany’s fixed-price system. He’s not too worried, he said.  “The fixed book price has worked for more than a century and has provided us with the most competitive book industry, something the market ideologues don’t quite understand,” he said.  But Elisabeth Ruge sounds fearful. She runs Berlin Verlag, the German publisher of Richard Ford and of the English-language edition of the most recent “Harry Potter,” which has sold more than one million copies here. It’s not just the Swiss market, she said, but especially the growth of the German chain stores that troubles her.  “Small literary bookshops here sell our books and other literary books,” she explained. “The chain stores don’t even see our sales reps anymore.” Her representatives visit 2,600 independent bookshops in Germany, three times every year.  “If the chains don’t see the reps, that means publishers don’t have the means to talk about their books,” she added. “Look at what has happened in Britain with Waterstone’s and W. H. Smith. They’re nothing like what they used to be, in terms of quality, now that they’ve taken over the whole market.”  “Three-quarters of our list will never make money, but it’s important to publish those books because we believe in them and because they create an atmosphere of quality,” she said. “People then trust us when we say a book is good.”  That’s what any American publisher would say, but here, Germans as a nation believe publishing quality books to be a cultural obligation.  I stopped at Marga Schoeller’s shop in Berlin. Thomas Rodig, a tweedy, soft-spoken man, helps run it. The store was founded in 1929, then became the first bookstore to reopen in West Berlin after the war, the place where Auden, Beckett, Eliot, Mann and Hesse came to read and hang out. It’s now a quiet rabbit warren, catering to loyal patrons in the neighborhood.  “I feel relatively calm for the simple reason that here almost everyone agrees,” Mr. Rodig said. “We want to make sure that a large number of books can be produced and distributed in Germany.”  For a second he seemed baffled that I would even ask the question.  “Because we need them,” he answered.
If you want proof that a cultural divide separates Europe and America, the book business is a place to start.