Imagine all the bookstores
A week in French book culture
Bonjour, mes amis. I just returned from France, where I accompanied my talented partner, American author Benjamin Whitmer, on his two-week national book tour. Although some of his books are available here in the USA, most of his career takes place in France. His novels are translated by Jacques Mailhos and published by Editions Gallmeister. Touring through just a few of France’s independent bookstores with him and our Gallmeister chaperones was a revelation.
I grew up in a bookstore. Although it’s been closed since the early Reagan Administration, old-timers today still remember Truckee River Book & Tea as one of the places that made Truckee so special, so friendly, back in its analog days. Spending time in some of the bookstores of Alsace-Lorraine reminded me of that time; the bookseller/owners joking with regular customers, hastily pushing bookshelves around to make space for author events, with the ease of people who do this all the time, because they do!
Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? I was feeling very Johnny Rotten as I sat in bookstore after French bookstore and remembered how nice it feels to have a local bookstore that functions like a community clubhouse. Where everybody knows your name, as it were. My hometown Boulder Bookstore is one of those, but most American communities are not so fortunate.
That’s how bookstores still operate in France, which has more independent bookstores than most countries, about 5.2 bookstores per 100,000 people. In a country of 68M, the French have ~3500 independent bookstores . The United States, pop. 333M, has only ~2500!? (Shoutout to bookseller extraordinaire Emily Sinclair of Paonia Books for sending me down this statistical path). Is this the book culture Americans really want?
It’s not the one I want. But there’s no real mystery as to why France has such a thriving literary scene: they protect it by law. Long before Amazon.com existed, in 1981, the French passed a law ensuring all French-language books be sold at the same price, no matter where in the country they were sold. In addition, books were only to be discounted up to 5%. Once Amazon arrived, it had to follow the same rules, and the French barred the company from offering free shipping, arguing that it would destroy the structure and culture of French bookstores. They were right! Today, France (pop. 68M) has 5.2 bookstores per 100,000 people. The USA has 0.76.
It’s not just that—a lot of these bookstores are expanding, some adding separate children’s bookstores and others simply serving different neighborhoods. Their bookstores were staffed not only with helpful employees but with university students working as interns, as part of undergraduate and masters degree programs in bookstore management! There’s even a nationally funded institute, the INFL (Institut National de Formation de la Librairie), which supports the ongoing health of the bookstore trade. I’ve always felt at home in bookstores, but in France I felt like a child of the desert seeing the ocean for the first time: you mean all this water is just… available?
When I spoke with French readers, they seemed to have no idea how dire things are for American bookstores and book people (readers, writers, publishers, book reviews) in general. The French still admire American literature and seek it out; Editions Gallmeister publishes quite a few American authors who are revered in France but cannot find publishers in the USA.
About the only downside I could find to the French bookstore situation is that, in France, authors cannot turn to Amazon.com to see how their book is selling. Books are sold on the platform, but it’s not a dominant bookseller, so its book rankings don’t mean very much. Which makes sense. I mean, I just bought a giant box of paper towels from Amazon… why would I look to a paper towel vendor for advice on what to read next? And who’s benefitting from this situation? Certainly not readers, writers, or publishers. The paper towel vendors are doing just fine in America, though.
I mentioned all this to a woman I met in La Cour des Grands bookstore in Metz; she was the organizer of the town Book Festival, which happens several times a year there (and in most French towns and cities).
“It’s so nice that you have all these book festivals!” I said.
“You don’t have them in the United States?” she responded, looking a bit shocked.
“We have book festivals, but not as many as France. And not as many bookstores.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. It’s like your political elections,” she said, “there are so many wonderful, intelligent people in America. And yet so rarely you elect those people to be your leaders!” We both laughed and then she shrugged, as only a Frenchwoman can do. “Don’t listen to me,” she said, “after all, here in France we do the same thing with our politicians. They’re no good.” She smiled. “But at least we have our books!”
Le sigh. Imagine all the bookstores we could have had all this time, America.
PS: My dad traveled to French book festivals in the 1990s as a guest of his publisher, Editions Gallimard. Here’s a photo from one of those tours I found at his house in Montana just a few months ago:
Vive the Gallic-American literary exchange!
xo Buzzy