More than fifty people took part in the Paris City Hall’s call for applications closed on Friday February 18 at 4 p.m. (not counting the letters expected on Saturday) to fill the eighteen vacant places of booksellers on the banks of the Seine, in Paris. A selection committee, made up of three booksellers, four elected members of the Council of Paris and four representatives of the world of books and business, will nominate the elected members in March.
The regulations, updated in 2019, specify that “the references, the quality of the projects, the nature and the volume of the products envisaged for sale as well as the economic viability of the activities presented” are the determining criteria in the choice of occupants. 75% of the main authorized trade concerns old books, second-hand books, new books from independent publishers and engravings.
“It’s not a job you do to become rich”, Jérôme Callais, president of the Cultural Association of booksellers of Paris
“We have not found the same activity as before the pandemic, or even before the movements of the yellow vests”, explains Jérôme Callais, president of the Cultural Association of Booksellers of Paris. According to him, “out of the 241 spaces occupied by the 220 booksellers, only a quarter of them are open on weekdays, and more than half on weekends”. Sometimes, some seem discouraged by low sales, disgusted by bad weather or feel like they are doing extra work.
“It’s not a job you do to get rich,” does he warn. “You need passion, to like the exchanges. In a world that advocates excessive consumption, we have a chance, because the book is without doubt the most magical means of constructing the person,” he adds.
Want to expand the sales area
Located on the Quai des Grands-Augustins, Florence Delaunay, resolutely optimistic, saw in the pandemic “a way to renew”, in particular thanks to the addition of vinyl records (within the limit of a single box) and Internet sales. It already had its own site, La Bouquiniste, while another collective site, Bouquinistes de Paris, was created during the health crisis.
With 300,000 books offered in the open on nearly 4 kilometers of quays, booksellers would like their sales area to be extended so that they can benefit, as was the case before 1943, from 10 linear meters each, i.e. equivalent of five boxes painted wagon green. And not 8.60 meters, like today. This would make it possible to offer 80,000 additional volumes to customers. Olivia Polski, trade assistant for the City of Paris, told the World to be “rather favorable” to this reform that it could “look on a case-by-case basis”.
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