Another lockdown, but this time, Parisians demand book stores stay open

April 1, 2021 1:54 PM

A poll conducted during the second lockdown found that 52 percent of the population considered bookshops essential businesses. In France, the price of a baguette is protected by French law, and so is the price of a book. This says a lot about the place of reading in French life. In 1981, the loi Lang, named for then-president François Mitterand’s flamboyant minister of culture, Jack Lang, mandated that all booksellers, whether chains or independent (the law now also applies to online retailers), charge the same price as their competitors. The maximum discount allowed for books is 5 percent. The law not only protects independent bookshops from larger chain outlets, it ensures cultural diversity, guaranteeing that a wide range of titles can be published, including books that have cultural value but won’t become bestsellers.
posted by folklore724 (11 comments total)

Right thinking Frenchmen also petitioned early to re-open the libraries, "les boulangeries des rêves"
posted by BWA at 3:09 PM on April 1, 2021 [3 favorites]

librarie is French for bookstore, not library.
posted by ManInSuit at 5:47 PM on April 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

A friend of mine has been sending us snapshots from her bike rides around the city, and she is pissed that people aren't following the rules. I will remind her of this, and see if she finds it consoling.

(Seriously! She is mad enough to have stopped looking for any silver linings.)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:36 PM on April 1, 2021

The law...ensures cultural diversity, guaranteeing that a wide range of titles can be published, including books that have cultural value but won’t become bestsellers.

It does no such thing. How could it? The French love books, but this law is problematic in many ways and makes books more expensive, not easier to produce.
posted by snofoam at 6:38 PM on April 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

librarie is French for bookstore, not library.

Yeah, well. Even Homer nods.
posted by BWA at 8:02 PM on April 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

Bookshops and off-licenses were both classified as essential businesses in Scotland. Government's got its priorities right up here, at least.

Alcohol: you do not want to send alcoholics into acute withdrawal. Nor do you want to deprive the stir-crazy non-alcoholics of a relatively safe avenue for self-medication at home. Allowing off-sales also reduced pressure to re-open pubs, which are a whole lot worse because they are social hubs.

Books: I'll just note that the First Minister tweets about her reading habit regularly.
posted by cstross at 2:48 AM on April 2, 2021 [5 favorites]

Alcohol: you do not want to send alcoholics into acute withdrawal...

Books:

I appreciate the parallel here.
posted by doctornemo at 7:35 AM on April 2, 2021

A poll conducted during the second lockdown found that 52 percent of the population considered bookshops essential businesses...
“Without a bookshop I can’t think.”

Mes amis! mes semblables!
posted by doctornemo at 7:37 AM on April 2, 2021

It is interesting to me to look back a year at the ways that various businesses tried to lay claim to being an essential business so they could stay open. Guitar Center was one I remember being pretty laughable.

We have kept our business (art materials) closed to in-store shopping partly because I don’t have it in me to face the daily grind of dealing with mask-less customer drama. I know we have been fortunate to make it this long on a combination of government support, savings, an understanding landlord, mounting debt, and online sales.

I would be interested to see more from the owners and staff at these French booksellers to see how excited they really are about being open.
posted by jimw at 8:52 PM on April 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

jimw, wearing masks isn’t a choice here so the things shopkeepers are policing is maximum number of people in the shop (defined per square metres), and distanced queuing.

These measures haven’t saved all of the bookshops, the iconic yellow branded Gibert Jeune in the Latin Quarter closed recently.
posted by ellieBOA at 11:17 PM on April 2, 2021

Theoretically it isn’t a choice where I am, either, but the reality on the ground is that there are a lot of people wearing chin strips or going with uncovered noses, and will balk if you call them on it. Yesterday, my wife got into it with an Amazon delivery driver who was waiting to drop off some packages in our building lobby with his nose hanging out. If that’s not what the French booksellers are experiencing, I envy them.
posted by jimw at 10:17 AM on April 3, 2021 [1 favorite]