The closures were put in place so quickly that you may not have had time to replenish your stock of books to read by the fireside or under the duvet, before the bookstores temporarily closed their doors.
How, then, to buy books at this time?
The ideal is to favor independent bookstores, which more than ever need the support of readers to keep their activity afloat.
If it is not possible to actually enter bookstores, a large number of them offer home delivery of orders, as well as Click & Collect.
This purchasing method involves ordering online or by phone, and picking up your purchases at the store door.
This is an alternative to home delivery, which allows, as a bonus, to recover the books ordered more quickly.
Not all independent bookstores have an online sales site, or even a site at all.
This is why a large number of brands are coming together on platforms to join forces in the name of reading for all.
Here are a few.
Buy your books in bookstores, but online
Among the sites to be favored during this period of confinement, we can cite LaLibrairie.com, which defends a local book economy by offering click & collect in the bookstore closest to your home.
2,500 points of sale are listed in France and if you cannot find any within a reasonable distance from your home, you can always have it delivered to your home.
Place des Libraires is an online platform with a similar proposition.
Here, more than 780 libraries are referenced, and again favor click-withdraw.
When you are looking for a book, you can check its availability at a bookstore in your neighborhood in real time.
All you have to do is collect your purchases and pay on the spot.
LesLibraires.fr also displays a combination of click & collect and home delivery: if your usual bookseller does not have the book in stock or is not open, you have the option of having it delivered.
Almost 5 million items are in stock, with rapid dispatch.
For its part, the Librairies Indépendantes site brings together 1,000 shops and offers 20 million books.
Here, no catalog available: it's up to you to type the name of the book you are looking for, and then select the bookstore you want to go to to retrieve it.
The click & collect is therefore privileged.
Finally, Librest.com brings together various booksellers in eastern Paris, who offer to pick up your order at the establishment of your choice.
The click & collect is therefore the only proposition of the site, which takes a limited number of orders per day to be able to manage them all properly.
Buy books online from French brands
There are other ways of acquiring books on the Internet while favoring French brands.
GibertJoseph has an online store within the Rakuten platform: it is possible to have thousands of books delivered to your home thanks to a very large catalog.
Don't miss any promo!
Receive the best offers from Le Parisien
I'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to enable you to receive our news and commercial offers.
Learn more
Finally, La Fnac also delivers the books of your choice to your home, but also offers click & collect in its stores: you can collect your orders one hour after placing them, to benefit immediately.
There is no longer any reason to skip reading.