Rocketing sales lead to new English bookshop in Nice

One of France’s leading independent bookshops has opened an English branch to cater for soaring demand for titles in that language.

Around the World, which launched in Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) in June, is an off-shoot of Librairie Masséna, the city’s biggest bookstore and located several metres further up the same street in Rue Gioffredo.

Its owners say that sales of English books have rocketed since the pandemic lockdown, making a new bookshop dedicated to them a no-brainer.

Librairie Masséna had only two small sections of English books in 2022, which were quickly emptied by customers. 

Sales of English language books more than double

The following year, it posted a sign on the shop’s front window advertising its English-language stock, and doubled its shelf space for these titles.

“We noted a 60% increase in sales,” said Marie Serra, 42, co-owner of Librairie Masséna with Dominique Barbat Garcia, 58.

The new shop sells 5,000 books across various genres including romance, young adult fiction, science-fiction, thrillers, non-fiction, English classics and French novels translated into English.

Around the World’s manager is Amy Trowell, a 49-year old British woman, who said its opening day had been “very promising”. 

Among the customers were Australian, Norwegian and American tourists, but local shoppers were also overjoyed.

Perle Héritier, a 20-year-old English language and cultural studies student at Université Côte d'Azur, took home an English copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita that she had been seeking for a year.

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Books in other languages may soon be on shelves

“The catalogue of options here is unrivalled,” she said.

For her part, Ms Serra said the new shop will continue to offer big advantages over online retailers.

“Our added value is to offer advice, discussion and open clients to new books or genres, something Amazon cannot,” she said.

The French government gives independent bookstores considerable protection from larger competitors, including Amazon and Fnac.

In 1981, the Loi Lang limited discounts on newly released books to 5%, preventing national stores from undercutting independent ones.

More recently, the government announced a €3 minimum shipping charge for online book orders under €35, in a bid to get bookworms to browse and buy at their local stores instead of online.

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Ms Serra has not ruled out expanding to other languages in future, including Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese.

“This is why we called it Around the World. If it works out well, we will make it bigger,” she said.


Around the World is open from Monday to Saturday, from 10:00 to 19:00.