French bookshops link to fight Amazon

Libraires de l’Est is based near Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, and 17 shops have set up librairesdelest.fr, which has all their stocks and offers home delivery or pick-up in store.

It is not a direct sales site, but shows all the shops’ stocks, with orders filled by the shop.

It is up to the bookseller to manage the orders and supply, even ordering from the national database

Libraires de l’Est co-ordinator Marie-Pierre Rei­bel said it was not trying to rival Amazon, but was more a way to challenge its way of working.

She said: “We don’t have the means to rival them but we can challenge their aggressive marketing.

“We keep local shops with local jobs – about 150-200 in Lorraine alone – but we cannot take Amazon on directly.

“Many large bookshops do significant business online, but there are other much smaller ones who see any online sales as a simple ‘plus’, although in reality they would rather deal with real people in front of them.”

The law on the prix unique du livre means prices are the same online or in shops.