This Saturday, April 27, booksellers will offer gifts to their customers on the occasion of the Independent Bookstores Festival. To receive a book and a flower, all you have to do is go to a bookstore that does not belong to a chain or a business group. In Quimper, two of the city’s three independent bookstores celebrate this day. The opportunity to highlight these stores, but also to thank “those who keep the bookstore alive,” insists Catherine Le Pape, manager of Librairie et Curiisés. “A lot of people hear about the party and come to the bookstore that day,” notes Jean-Michel Blanc, director of the Ravy bookstore, “but they are already loyal customers” who need to be promoted.
The Verbes association and the French Bookstore Union are organizing this day for the 26th time with other associations. Following the model of Sant Jordi, in Catalonia, they offer booksellers the opportunity to offer readers a book selected in advance as well as a rose. This year, “customers will be offered a copy of the collection “The Animals of Nobody/The Animals of Everyone” by Jacques Roubaud,” specifies Jean-Michel Blanc. In France, more than 500 bookstores are uniting on the occasion of this day and this year are highlighting OuLiPo (Ouvroir de literaturepotential, literary movement created from a research group in the 1960s, editor’s note) .
Seeds as an alternative
But in Quimper, there is not just one way to celebrate the independence of bookstores. After participating in this operation for 17 years, Catherine Le Pape decided to set up her own initiative to thank her customers. “I was tired of buying roses without really knowing where they came from,” says the bookseller. Two years ago, it turned to the Quimper cooperative Graines de Liberté to offer an alternative. “It’s more fun to offer seeds, and it enhances the seed trade,” smiles the owner of Librairie et Curiisés, “and the seeds, like bookstores, are alive.”
Just like her, the Pluie d’été bookstore in Pont-Croix and Les Mots Voyageurs in Quimperlé will offer readers beautiful Nigellas from Damascus. As for the book offered, a pocket format, to choose from a dozen different titles, will be offered. “The customers are super happy, everyone says that seeds are a better idea than roses, they are aware of the preservation of biodiversity,” says Catherine Le Pape.
