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Although protected by the law on fixed prices for books, independent bookshops in France have struggled to maintain their market share against bookselling giants such as Amazon and the chains. In trying to do so, they have developed a rhetoric based on the singularity of the experience in physical shops, stressing a sense of intimacy akin to that associated with the domestic sphere. Their being independent – no matter how slippery the notion – has also been a key argument. Using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of symbolic goods, this paper aims to show that this strategy has been effective in singling out something that 'only' independent retail can provide, something that proves particularly attractive to certain categories of customers. The article draws on semi-structured interviews carried out with owners of small and medium-sized independent bookshops, together with observation during events and debates, to provide some insight into a key element of physical bookshops' resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is dedicated to the study of the dissemination of Spanish books—books written in Spanish—during the 16th century in Brussels. This study is based on an inventory of the bookseller-printer Michiel van Hamont made in 1569, at the request of the authorities searching for heretical books. This is the first survey conducted on this subject. Spanish books that have effectively circulated within the Southern Netherlands, have generally been neglected by scholars. They mainly focused their attention on local production (which books were printed by whom) and export to the Iberian World (Kingdom of Spain and Americas). They studied the rise of Antwerp as a major centre of Spanish vernacular editions and its role in the dissemination of Spanish books. The first findings in this paper show that the distribution of Spanish books in Brussels in the mid-sixteenth century is merely a marginal phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]