Amazon, inflation, overhaul of the Culture pass… Will a good literary return be enough to save booksellers?

The new novels by Pierre Lemaitre, Murakami and Vanessa Springora are arriving, among five hundred other works, in bookstores. But faced with increasing costs and competition, they are struggling to rejoice.

Rwinter literary return to school will have been as abundant — more than five hundred novels. And promising, with magnificent novels and stories (Vanessa Springora, Florence Seyvos, Rachel Kushner…), recognized authors continuing their great work (Leïla Slimani, Haruki Murakami…), endearing first books (La Grande Sophie). So many more… Enough to imagine that “a radiant future” awaits booksellers – to paraphrase the title of the third part of Pierre Lemaitre's tetralogy on the Trente Glorieuses, also on the program for this fall. Except no. For them, the future is not bright. After an enchanted post-Covid interlude, the bookstore is faltering. This is what the first results for 2024 say, which show a turnover down 0.6%.

Not enough to make a mountain of it, you might think. Except yes, because the bookstore is one of the retail businesses that earns the lowest income. At +1%, we are happy, but the slightest disruption has immediate consequences. And 2024 has had no shortage of them. Election years are always unfavorable for the book market, and the dissolution has added to this. The Olympics emptied Parisian bookstores for a while. And then there is this inflation which, for two years, has caused costs (rent, electricity, salaries, transport) to skyrocket, while turnover was running out of steam. And that the margin was melting, forcing us to cut back on everything and sometimes postpone the repayment of bank loans. “We’re really bad, it’s not a posture,” says Alexandra Charroin Spangenberg, president of the French Bookstore Union.

To add to the concern, Rachida Dati came in the fall to announce an overhaul of the Culture pass. Bad news for the book. He is the first beneficiary of this “check” for 300 euros offered to all young people aged 18. If it were to fall or be shifted partly towards live entertainment, booksellers would suffer, further accentuating their imbalance. Not to mention Amazon, which continues to provide unfair competition to booksellers by circumventing the law which imposes a minimum of 3 euros in shipping costs on book shipments. So, if you are still at the stage of good resolutions: let yourself be carried away by this generous literary return and take a detour to the bookstore.