Bookstore

The bookstore is a Commerce whose main role is the Vente of books. There exist various types of sales outlets of the book: bookstore of new books (general practitioner or specialized), Bookstore of old books and occasion, houses of the press, bookseller's and stationer's, bookstores travelling, large surfaces…

Situation of the bookstores in France

The Ministry for the Culture French, relayed by the various regional offices of the book, developed and supported these twenty last years the concept of “independent bookstore”. Are thus drawn aside specialized large surfaces (Fnac, Virgin…), hypermarkets and other surfaces multiproduits which can have a more or less developed ray books. The bookstores are also isolated which sell only the old one or occasion as well as the international bookstores which propose books in foreign languages, which escape the laws on the price from the book in France. As “bookstore” an sales outlet is thus regarded whose new book is the main activity - what makes it possible to integrate certain bookstores paper mills and particularly important houses of the press. The surface or the number of books proposed is not significant alone.

Definition and segmentation

Remain a true problem of definition of the bookstore. A first definition of the bookstore is that of the INSEE which counts in France a little less than 19.000 companies under code APE 524R (“Retail business of books, newspapers and paper mill”). It is the Île-de-France, the areas the Rhone-Alps and Provence-Alp-Coast of Azure which count the greatest number of bookstores (but also largest population…).

The companies of diffusion of the book for their part adopted a segmentation in levels of customers:

  • the first level (sometimes segmented in “bookstores has” and “bookstores B”); according to the companies of diffusion, this category gathers 700 to the 1.300 most important customers (bookstores and large surfaces cultural), either in quantitative terms (turnover carried out with the diffused editors), or in qualitative terms (capacity of the bookseller to “launching” a title, work on the funds of the diffused editors, etc). These bookstores represent on average from 60% to 75% of the turnover of the diffusers; they profit from this fact of more frequent visits of the representatives and the commercial handing-over highest;
  • 700 to 800 hypermarkets, which profit from a specific team representatives;
  • the second level (4 000 to 12.000 sales outlets according to the diffusers), which gathers the small sales outlets of proximity, the supermarkets and the stores popular;
  • the third level which indicates the very small sales outlets and the sales outlets occasional which do not have an open account at the distributers and are supplied near wholesalers or of the regional platforms of the distributers. Indeed, one of the tendencies of these last years is the multiplication of the sales outlets of the book, as one can as well find in a store of do-it-yourself, a pharmacy, a store of toys.

As for the Trade union of the French bookstore, its charter specifies that, “to be professional, the trade of books must be directly managed by a bookseller. The bookseller acquired a culture which enables him to have sufficient knowledge (…). It is formed with the commercial, administrative and financial management sciences of the purchase and the sale of the book (…). The independent bookstore does not depend on a company or a financial group whose logic is, by trade, financial (…) Independence is the freedom which a part reasonable has the leader of bookstore to devote of what could be the clear profit margin of its company, to finance: the share of slow rotation of the stock which constitutes its funds of reference, and of the personnel of sufficient number able to choose and advise. ”

The Law Lang

In France, the Loi Lang fixes the principle of the flat price of the books since 1981.

See also: Law Lang

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

  • Trade union of the French bookstore
  • File " Price of the livre" on the site of the Ministry for the Culture
  • the text of the Law Lang
  • Draws to me a bookstore: photographs of the bookstores carried out by Pierre Gimenez
  • Transverse: Talks, meetings for the new shapes of mediation in bookstore, [[Inventory-Invention]]

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