France, queues in front of bookstores before they close for lockdown. Photo goes viral

France went back into lockdown (or, as the French call it, confinement) yesterday, October 30: the entire population must stay indoors and can only go out to take their children to school (schools in fact remain open), go for a walk in the vicinity of the house, or buy basic necessities. There has been great controversy because basic necessities do not include books, and the government has also ordered the closure of all bookstores, creating no small upset in the world of culture, not least because, notes the Syndicate of French Bookstores, the government measure has “opened a highway to Amazon.” to no avail, so far, have the appeals, including that of 250 publishers and cultural figures (including world-renowned names Gallimard, Jacques Attali, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Françoise Nyssen, and many others), to ask President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron to review the decision to keep bookstores closed.

The exceptions are few: it sparked discussion yesterday with the announcement by Dijon Mayor François Rebsamen, who said in a tweet that “since you can safely buy books in bookstores almost anywhere, tomorrow I will sign an ordinance to authorize Dijon bookstores to stay open if they want to.” There are those who appreciated the first citizen’s countercultural choice, but there are also those who criticized it (“what’s the point,” one Twitter user wondered, “if we can only go out to buy basic necessities and books are not considered such?”, but there are, however, those who object to the concept of “basic necessities” and even those who respond ironically, “buying chips is more essential than buying books: given recent terrorist events, one is allowed to doubt”). Other controversy was triggered by the large-scale retail chapter, which initially could sell books, but was then forced to close the departments that sell them: and here, therefore, it is criticized that rather than open bookstores, it is preferred to close those who could still sell books, doing a further favor to Amazon.

Book department of a closed supermarket. Photo by TF1 reporter Antoine Habert

Given the situation, the French still tried to stock up on books last October 29 before the closure. A photograph taken by Astrid Dujardin and relaunched on social media by publisher Stephen Carrière went viral, showing a long line of people waiting in the rain to enter the Le Furet du Nord bookstore chain’s store in Lille’s Grand-Place, one of the largest cities in northern France. “This is why we are fighting,” Carrière wrote.

But several newspapers are also talking about queues in front of French bookstores, including the Times and Le Parisien: the latter also devoted an extensive report to the queues at bookstores in Paris, reporting the impressions of salespeople at the Divan bookstore, one of the largest in France, who say that “there is the world like on Christmas Eve.” There is a lady approaching the checkout counter with a dozen novels in her hands (“a life without books and culture is unthinkable,” she says), there is a 30-year-old computer scientist who does not consider himself much of a reader but is there because, he says, “when I heard that bookstores were going to close their doors again, I went into a rage, they are so important .... this morning I received my salary, so I decided to make a gesture of solidarity, and I think I will spend more than 100 euros.”)

“For the past five months,” Divan’s director Philippe Touron declares instead, “thanks to the masks and gels, we have been exemplary and few cases of Covid have been recorded in the bookstore. From tomorrow, French people to buy books will have no choice but to turn to large-scale retail [the measure of closing book departments had not yet been taken, ed.] Or even worse, to Amazon.” And online sales, Touron argues, are not a solution: “70 percent of our turnover comes from impulse sales. On the Internet it drops to 10 percent.”

Still others are gearing up for home deliveries as was the case during the first lockdown. Still others are doing take-out book sales, which despite the confinement is allowed: “the bookstore,” tweeted Librairie La Marge in Ajaccio, Corsica, “has set up a take-out service Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Send us your order and come pick up your books! We don’t give up anything!”

Pictured below: the photo in front of Le Furet du Nord in Lille (ph. Astrid Dujardin)

France, queues in front of bookstores before they close for lockdown. Photo goes viral

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