Bookshops all over the world are bouncing back. But in France, they never died

In 2022, my husband and I purchased a small farmhouse in the countryside outside Montcuq in southwestern France. The village swirls like a snail shell around its towering donjon, a keep that has kept watch over the surrounding countryside since the 12th century. With our two children, we’ve added four people to the population, which, at last count, was around 1,800. A speck on a map of France, an hour or so north of Toulouse, Montcuq is one of the rare rural villages most French people have heard of because when spoken aloud with a silent ‘q’, its name sounds identical to ‘mon cul’, to put it as politely as possible, the French word for ‘my ass’.

While that’s been the source of much amusement among our friends, one of the aspects of our new French country life that I’ve found most surprising is that such a small village has a bookshop, Livres, Books, and Company. In our digital world, when we can be reading the first chapter of our favorite author’s latest novel within seconds of paying for it, one of the last services I expected to find, alongside the standard bistro-tabac-boulangerie trio, was a space dedicated to the printed word.

Not that I’m complaining. As a writer and ex-bookseller, the charming two-story stone village house that Livres, Books, and Company inhabits has quickly become my happy place—and my two daughters now run up the creaky wooden staircase to the kid’s corner as if they were at home. 

We browse French and English fiction alongside villagers who’ve come in to collect their most recent order, tourists after a title to relax into along the banks of the breezy Lot river, and pilgrims with their backpacks and walking sticks looking for something light to keep them company as they tackle the Chemin du Puy, one of the four Camino de Santiago routes through France. No one seems to be able to leave without giving the resident cat a pat, either.

Driven by online communities such as #BookTok and #Bookstagram, literary tourism, or journeys inspired by beloved books, is on the rise. Avid readers are now paying to travel on organized tours that bring pages to life, such as tours of Prince Edward Island in Canada for Anne of Green Gables fans, or walking itineraries through the Yorkshire moors that inspired Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

“Our regulars often tell us they much prefer buying from an independent bookshop. We understand their likes and dislikes through speaking to them, and not from an algorithm.”

- Amy Trowell, Masséna around the World

France offers something else for bookloving travelers, however: It’s the country where the bookshop never died. There are more than 3,000 independent bookshops nationally; by comparison, the United Kingdom counts approximately 1000, and the United States around 3,200.  “On average, France has one bookshop for every 30,000 inhabitants,” says Olivier Pennaneac’h, Project Officer at one of France’s regional book agencies, Agence régionale du Livre Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.  It’s among the densest networks of independent bookshops in the world. 

Much of the reason for this proliferation of independent bookshops can be explained judicially: 1981’s Loi Lang (Lang Law) states that a book must be sold at the same fixed price, no matter whether the retailer is a large chain store, an online retailer or neighbourhood bookshop. “That means, unlike countries like the United Kingdom and the United States where each retailer can sell it at whatever price they wish to, in France there’s no competition on price and that’s what allows for such a network of bookshops,” says Pennaneac’h.

Paris alone has 400 independent bookshops; among them the Shakespeare & Company, legendary for publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses when no-one else would. So much has the English-language bookshop become a pilgrimage for bibliophiles that it’s more likely than not that you’ll face a queue to enter. 

Overlooking Notre Dame on the banks of the Seine, the rickety shopfront feels like an artist’s impression of the bookworm dream come to life: A warren of centuries-old rooms crammed with interesting titles, handwritten notes by staff peeping from pages, tempting you to leaf through titles you might otherwise ignore. I’m not the most patient type, but I didn’t mind waiting 20 minutes to step inside this past December; in my mind, people queuing for bookshops is a sign that we’re not all lost to endless scrolling. Inside, there’s a strict no photo ban, which only heightens the feeling of digital disconnect.

In the south of France, another of my favorite bookshops, Nice’s Masséna around the World, provides more than beach reads that pair perfectly with a cool glass of local rosé; it’s also a hub for author events, book signings and even hosts a monthly book club. Surrounded by a small but carefully curated selection of books, co-managers Amy Trowell and Amandine Salagnac also offer something an online retailer doesn’t: Personal recommendations. “Our regulars often tell us they much prefer buying from an independent bookshop,” says Trowell. “We understand their likes and dislikes through speaking to them, and not from an algorithm.”

While you might (fairly) expect that the country’s bookshops are concentrated in its big cities, what I find particularly remarkable is their presence in some of the most rural corners of the country. In fact, in the five years between 2017 and 2022, half of all new bookshops opened in a town with fewer than 15,000 inhabitants; a quarter with fewer than 5,000 residents.

Much like the rural bistrot, which has a role far beyond just serving food, these countryside bookshops are much more than places to sell books. They also help animate communities and sustain local cultural life. Livres, Books, and Company, for instance, has an enchanting walled garden to pause for a coffee or listen to live music on warm summer evenings.

The Open Book in Wigtown, Scotland’s National Book Town, offers guests who book a week’s accommodation the keys to run the bookshop as well. So popular is the idea for a vacation that there’s a two-year waiting list to stay.

It seems that across France, everyone has their own Livres, Books, and Company. A sleepy village of just 300 residents in the rural Charente region, Aubeterre-sur-Dronne is considered one of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (France’s most beautiful villages) for its cobblestone streets, lavender fields and subterranean church carved into a limestone cliff. Lorna Hempstead is a regular at the village bookshop, La Lisière, Librairie du Dehors. “Gauthier, the owner, is so helpful,” Hempstead, an Australian in France, says. “He hosts talks, author visits in both French and English, exhibitions and environmental activities.”

As romantic as the idea of running a bookshop in a bucolic French rural village sounds, it’s by no means easy business. “Bookselling is the fourth least profitable retail trade in France, so it’s a profession driven by passion” says Pennaneac’h. After what he refers to as a recent “big spike” in the opening of bookshops, 2025 was the first year when the CNL, or Centre Nationale du Livre (National Book Centre), announced more closures this year than openings (85 versus 83).

But the French still remain a country of readers; according to the same source, 63 percent say they read at least five books per year. And in good news, other countries are reigniting their passion for reading too. In the United States, for example, 762.4 million printed books were sold in 2025, a second year of growth. What’s more, between 2020 and 2025, the number of independent bookstores in the country jumped by 70 percent; last year alone saw 605 open.

Bookshop tourism is also quietly becoming a travel category in its own right. In the French Pyrenees, Montolieu is one of eight “village des livres” (book villages). Home to a permanent population of only 800, its 15 second-hand and antiquarian bookshops attract more than 52,000 visitors a year. 

Likewise, Hay-on-Wye in Wales (the world’s first book town) hosted nearly 200,000 people at its annual literary festival in 2025. Taking it one step further, The Open Book in Wigtown, Scotland’s National Book Town, offers guests who book a week’s accommodation the keys to run the bookshop as well. So popular is the idea for a vacation that there’s a two-year waiting list to stay.

Although there’s no equivalent experience (yet) in France, I’m hoping one day someone might launch a cross-country crawl connecting some of its most delightful libraries independents (independent bookshops). There are definitely worse ways to see a country than by following its bookshelves.

For more information on the bookshops and book experiences mentioned, see:

Livres, Books, and Company; Agence régionale du Livre Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur; Shakespeare & Company; Masséna around the World; La Lisière, Librairie du Dehors; The Open Book; Anne of Green Gables Tour Prince Edward Island; that inspired Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights Yorkshire tours

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