REPORTAGE. "I can’t really imagine what happens next." : why are independent bookstores in more and more difficulty?

Bookstores are feeling the blues at the moment. Monday 1^is June marks the opening of the receivership procedure for the Nosoli group, which brings together the booksellers Furet du Nord and Decitre, a little over a month after that of Gibert Joseph, the first independent bookseller in France.

The sector’s total turnover fell by 2.5% during the first four months of 2026, according to the French bookstore union. Outside of Paris and the inner suburbs, the fall even reached 5%. Like here, in Massy-Palaiseau, in Essonne. That day, we meet Catherine in the lobby of the media library. She says she has reduced her spending since she retired: “Before, I bought them every month. Now, it’s every three or four months for budget reasons…”explains the retiree.

A few steps further, Lydia is stocking up on manga for her daughter. The young mother rarely visits bookstores and, unlike Catherine, it is not a question of money. “When we have to buy a book, we go to Amazon, it saves time for me. When I’m at work, I go to my phone, I order and the next day we have it at home”she explains.

Jeff Bezos’ multinational is not solely responsible for the difficulties encountered by French independent bookstores since the number of regular readers has been declining in recent years. Anaïs, encountered in the center of Massy, ​​confirms this by observing her “college friends, there are few who read. The telephone is more attractive”.

However, young people are not the only ones concerned. Sitting on a bench in front of l’Arborescence, a small independent bookstore on the shopping street, Daniele used to devour the books one after the other. Today, she will not enter the store entrance, even if“they are very nice”, car “At 6 p.m., I look Slam“. The ritual of reading in the company of her husband, who died a year earlier, is now replaced by that of the small screen.

Less budget, less time or changes in habits… This is why customers are becoming rarer in Elise Guillaume’s bookstore, l’Arborescence. Once the golden period during Covid passed, its turnover fell suddenly. “After Covid we made 650,000 euros in turnover, today we are more like 480,000”deplores the bookseller. The drop in resources allocated by the State to the Culture Pass over the past three years has nothing to do with it, according to her, because “It’s an approach that caused certain departments to explode, we were able to double our offer in manga for example. Then, little by little it was reduced, it disrupted the economy of the bookstore.”

While resources are reduced, costs increase at the same time. “The cost of transport mainly is exploding, the rent, even if it was planned, is going up”points out the shopkeeper.

The store’s employees thus paid the price for these transformations in the economy of Elise Guillaume’s bookstore since the latter had to eliminate the equivalent of two full-time workers out of three and take on an apprentice. In order to replenish her cash flow, the merchant had to take out another loan via a bookstore association. “I hope that this will allow me to spend the summer peacefully. For the moment, I can’t really think about the future, I’m concentrating on the short term”s’inquiète Elise Guillaume.

The bookseller is holding on to keep this business alive, by offering meetings. And like other colleagues, what allows him to keep going remains the stationery, as in Montreuil, in Seine-Saint-Denis. “We sell cards, notebooks, school materials, fine arts and creative leisure”summarizes Amanda Spiegel, from the Folies d’Encre bookstore. The field is more profitable for booksellers currently, according to the latter, also vice-president of the French bookstore union, an organization which also demands a tax on large publishers and platforms.

“Stationery for us now represents 15 to 20% of our turnover. Selling stationery allows me to maintain a poetry or theater section at the bookstore”details Amanda Spiegel. Even if the owner of Folies d’Encre chooses the price on the label in the stationery section, this is not the case for books: the price displayed is set by the publisher of the work and must be identical everywhere in France.

“The publisher, once he has set this price, defines a discount which he grants to the bookseller. The minimum discount that we demanded for a long time was 36%, but with inflation we have to regain some margin, at least a 37 or 38% discount. Otherwise, there will be waves of bookstore closures. We does not need to recover much to get his head above water and overcome this crisis”complète la commerçante.

Despite an increase in the closures of these book havens in 2024, the opening of 57 stores has offset these losses. However, these figures remain well below the three previous years with the inauguration of 108 establishments on average according to the national book center. For the moment, the bookstore remains one of the least profitable businesses.