The multiple lives of books or how readers have changed their habits

Did you think that to get books you had to find a bookstore or a library? This is only partly true. “Read differently” is the theme of our regional survey magazine: a focus on the second-hand book market which is growing more and more. Readers can thus combine their ecological convictions, preserve their wallets and indulge their desire for ever more books.

Which reader are you? Compulsive, contemplative, lazy or focused? What do you do with your books once you’ve read them? Are you storing them methodically in your personal library which is starting to buckle under their weight? Or do they serve as a bedside table, a wobbly furniture stand or any other personal use conversion?

A regional investigation team traveled across Champagne-Ardenne to observe the other lives in our books. Those who escaped the trash or the pestle. Here are three reasons to watch “Read differently” available in replay here, between two readings.

It’s a small, unmissable shop in a covered passageway in the heart of Reims (Marne). A very small bookstore made of successive sliding shelves, which has existed for 90 years. “It’s a legendary place here” exclaims a customer. Aude Dupays, the bookseller, recognizes that running her shop “it’s Tetris and optimization!”. She wants to offer as many choices as possible because she wants to satisfy everyone, even those who haven’t found what they were looking for. “I want to have as much choice as possible. Because I have people who come to my store with a particular request that I don’t have; but since I have a choice, they can come away with something they hadn’t thought of at all.” All the art of commerce.

But today’s bookseller is also one who sells online, like Aude Dupays, who, not content with running her shop, also sells books all over the world thanks to the web. “We have to see what we can sell! I haven’t sold this in stores for 20 years and now it’s going to Australia!” not to mention that it allows stocks to be sold.

Online bookseller, traveling bookseller also, who brings the book to the reader, like Jennifer Foutrier does in the Troyes (Aube) sector.

A second-hand market, traditional or modernized, which buys and resells at low prices; but which has had to adapt and which delights big readers, or collectors looking for that rare pearl.

There are the essential Emmaüs stores, the waste paper fairs, but other integration or charitable associations seize this windfall to earn a little money. This is the case of the “Au fil des chemins” association in Vitry-le-François (Marne). Individuals who want to clear out their homes a little, or who have inherited from a reading ancestor come here to get rid of their stocks of old books. Liliane and Denis are one of them: “we’re going to move, so we’re clearing out. We want to share it with other people“.

The system works so well in this association that to sell off deposits, part of the books are sold by the kg.

The trend is no longer to systematically throw away to get rid of. As the associations that collect books have multiplied, it is easier for individuals to drop off the boxes in a place close to home, with a bonus feeling of good conscience. Both altruistic and ecological, donating to an association is a hit.

And that is the absolute gift. I drop off, I take, I rest or not. Who gives, who reads? Mr. and Mrs. everyone. Sometimes, it is the municipal libraries, or the neighborhood centers which supply the deposits.

Pascal Labelle (deputy for culture of the city of Reims) explains: “They [les livres] come from the weeding of our libraries. Books that we remove because they are less read, older, because we have them in duplicate, to make room and accommodate new releases. We have 15,000 new documents arriving, we have to make room for them.”

Reading boxes have multiplied fivefold in seven years.

Works are no longer seen only as market goods, but as cultural and social exchanges that bring happiness to those who hold them in their hands.

“Read differently” regional surveys