Sophie Fornairon's independent bookshop in central Paris has survived the rise of Amazon partly thanks to a French law that prohibits price discounting on new books, but she says it still undercuts stores like hers on shipping. Free book deliveries are prohibited under French law, but Amazon gets around this by charging a single centime.
Now booksellers hope new legislation - adopted by parliament but not yet enacted - could level the playing field.
It will set a minimum price floor for book deliveries, in the hope of protecting the neighborhood bookstores that are held with special affection in France. Like Fornairon's Canal Bookstore.
"We're in a tourist quarter of Paris, and we see Americans come into the bookstore, and they tell us, 'We have not seen a bookstore since... we didn't even know that an independent bookstore could still exist."
Amazon says the law would punish those in rural areas who can't easily visit a bookstore.
More than 20% of the 435 million books sold in France in 2019 were bought online and the market share of France's 3,300 independent bookstores has been slowly declining.
Support from President Emmanuel Macron helped push the legislation, which does not target Amazon by name, over the line. The move is the latest by France to shield national culture against big tech firms.
