Regularly buried, never defeated, the book has superpowers. Resilience during crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, resistance to technologies that disrupt uses in music or cinema, it is carried high in France by inventive and curious local booksellers. In the Val-de-Marne, a specialized school teaches this passionate profession. For a year, we followed 16 professionals in retraining at the School of the Maisons-Alfort bookstore, and their journey from dream to radical change in life. Their tone and humor have earned them the nickname “second-degree booksellers”.
Sharing their learnings, observing their entrepreneurial projects was an exhilarating experience. Now, they are opening a shop in the four corners of France, as Thomas Bidault did in Marseille with the Tsundoku bookstore in 2022. The collective adventure becomes individual, but the solidarity of these project leaders in the service of books is undeniable. . Sharing of experience, visits, encouragement… For “their” journalist and 17th comrade in “second degree”, their dynamism and their benevolence carry, even in uncertain times, a great promise for the future.
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