“We don’t force French people to go to bookstores,” explains Vincent Montagne, head of the French Publishers Association. “They go to bookstores because they read.”

And the French government doesn’t allow them to discount their books more than 5%, so Amazon.com isn’t undermining local stores through deep discounts. France has around 2,500 bookshops now.

“We couldn’t have opened our bookstore without the subsidies we received,” Ms. Pérou said. “And we couldn’t survive now without fixed prices.” She and her husband own L’Usage du Monde in Paris.

Pamela Druckerman suggests this plethora of bookshops affords the French the choices we all want, but what do the booksellers offer that publishers don’t produce? Is choice in reading a selling, not a publishing, option? (via The Literary Saloon)