Paris (AFP)
In the Latin Quarter, the heart of knowledge in the French capital since the Middle Ages, the impending closure of four bookstores belonging to the Gibert group, one of the oldest book sellers in the country, illustrates the difficulties of a sector which, suffocated by real estate prices, is reinventing itself elsewhere.
On the left bank of the Seine, this district where the Sorbonne University was established in the 13th century is home to dozens of bookstores: smaller ones, ultra-specialized in law, occasion or Canadian literature, gigantic like the Gibert-Joseph boutique and its six floors on Boulevard Saint-Michel.
But today with its slew of franchised stores installed along this boulevard connecting the banks of the Seine to the Sorbonne, this "center of attraction" has "become a provincial town center", loose without apparent malice a bookseller de Boulinier, historical seller of the district.
Mistreated by rising rents, this bookstore, born in the 19th century on this same boulevard, had to move its main store to smaller premises last spring.
Focused on school and university education, then faced with competition from online sales and its juggernaut Amazon, the neighborhood bookstores have seen their number drop by 43% in 20 years, according to figures communicated to AFP by the Parisian urban planning workshop (Apur) in the 5th and 6th arrondissements.
The Latin Quarter, the epicenter of the student revolt of May 1968, remains a major university hub in the capital, but fewer than 10,000 students now reside there, according to INSEE.
Slowly, the center of Paris, "gentrified", less populated, turned to tourism, while the Parisian faculties "decentered" towards the outskirts and the suburbs, observes François Mohrt, town planner at APUR.
- Growth among the "little ones" -
The next bookstores to abandon it are historic: the Gibert group, the leading independent bookseller in France, which has been there for 135 years, plans to close at the end of March four of its six Gibert-Jeune shops on the very touristy Place Saint-Michel, separated by the Seine from Notre-Dame cathedral.
Surrounded by shelves already half empty, one of the 69 employees whose post will be deleted told AFP: "It's violent, but we did not expect to last 10 years".
In 2020, the pandemic emptied the square of its tourists, then Bruno Gibert, a former leader of the group, sold the building which housed the largest bookstore in the square.
The rents could not stay the same for these stores in difficulty ... accelerating their fall.
To preserve "cultural trade" and "stop its decline", the mayor of Paris is trying to preempt the walls of bookstores in great difficulty, explains the assistant in charge of Commerce Olivia Polski.
The town hall offers rents "slightly below" market prices, to relocate them by focusing on a model "that works": small local bookstores that can "also make a tea room", she said.
Because in Paris, as in the rest of the country, it is the generalist neighborhood bookstores that give hope to the sector.
According to the Syndicat de la librairie française (SLF), independent bookstores have resumed growth since 2017, despite a slight decline in 2020 (-3.3%), penalized by "three months of closure" during confinements.
These are the smallest shops - those with turnover of less than 300,000 euros per year - which progress the most: their sales jumped by 15% last year.
For Guillaume Husson, general delegate of the SLF: "There is a social aspect which is essential today if we want your bookstore to function".
And the proximity, the human relations between booksellers and customers are qualities that readers seek more "in small structures", he notes.
The Gibert group draws the same lesson.
He will keep his six-storey store next to the Sorbonne but rule out any new opening in the Latin Quarter.
And he is considering opening bookshops "less than 150m2" in outlying Parisian districts and "possibly in the suburbs", but "the primordial question of rents will have to arise first", tells AFP its general manager Marc Bittoré .
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