the endangered booksellers of the quays of the Seine
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Present for 400 years on the banks of the Seine, Parisian booksellers are less and less numerous. The profession is struggling to attract while the City of Paris is looking for buyers.
Along the banks of the Seine, famous green boxes as old as the Eiffel Tower. Collector’s books, postcards, engravings … For 400 years, the stands of Parisian booksellers have seduced locals and tourists. But the containment dealt the fatal blow to some of the sellers. Jérôme Callais, one of them, alerted the City of Paris to the number of empty spaces. “There are 15% of booksellers open during the week, 40% on weekends, it’s not going. There is a big discouragement, a big weariness.”
Today threatened, the profession is nevertheless an ancestral tradition. “Books were once often said not in bookstores but on stalls”, details Armelle Villepelet, guide. If second-hand booksellers are passionate about books and literature, Victoire Rouis affirms it: “We can’t live off that. We do this because we love books, being in the streets.” The City of Paris has launched a recruitment campaign to find buyers.