In Meurthe-et-Moselle, the village of Fontenoy-la-Joûte boasts 10 booksellers for only 300 inhabitants, making it one of the eight book villages identified in France. This venture, launched thirty years ago in an agricultural community then in decline, met with immediate success.
Disused barns transformed into bookstores
Behind the facade of a traditional Lorraine village, with its church and old farmhouses, lie hundreds of thousands of secondhand books stacked from floor to ceiling in converted agricultural buildings. Each bookseller has developed their own specialty, whether it be novels, history books, or comics, like David Vitali, based at L'Étable aux livres, who offers albums starting at €1,50.
According to former elected officials of the village, the conversion of disused farms into book shops has opened a new chapter for this agricultural community that was losing momentum, giving a second life to rural buildings threatened with disappearance.
Resistance to online sales
While the number of booksellers has decreased over the years, from around twenty to about ten today, those established in Fontenoy-la-Joûte continue to focus on the physical experience of browsing shelves, in contrast to online shopping habits. According to a study by the National Book Centre cited locally, more than a third of French readers now buy their books from secondhand bookstores or flea markets.
The village, along with Bécherel in Ille-et-Vilaine and Montolieu in Aude, is among the French pioneers of this concept of a book village, which originated in Wales in the 1960s and has since been replicated on five continents.
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