Buying French Novels

[issemiyaki]

Any idea how to get French novels in the U.S.?

Unreal how difficult it is to get French books here. You would think no one speaks French in this country.

I've even tried going to Amazon Canada, and I'm having trouble.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Hopefully this will help others along he way.

Thanks all!

[DaveBee]

Any idea how to get French novels in the U.S.?

Unreal how difficult it is to get French books here. You would think no one speaks French in this country.

I've even tried going to Amazon Canada, and I'm having trouble.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Hopefully this will help others along he way.

Thanks all!

Legal free sources for eBooks would be Culturethèque and eBooks Gratuits.

Cavesa has mentioned a french retailer before Decitre.fr. Could you buy from them? If you limit yourself to eBooks you wouldn't have to faff about with shipping times. The European Bookshop in London is another option.

Abebooks doesn't seem to have a language option in their search, but you could certainly search by known titles/authors. I'm sure the results would bring up USA booksellers who carry french language stock.

[arthaey]

I've had surprisingly good luck at my local thrift store (Goodwill in my case), and supplementing with Amazon.com and Amazon.fr when there's a specific title I want.

[emk]

Any idea how to get French novels in the U.S.?

The cheapest solution with the best selection is to buy in bulk from Amazon.fr. Just log in with your regular Amazon.com username and password, and all your payment and shipping details will already be there.

The last time I tried, there was both a per-package and a per-book shipping fee. The per-package shipping fee was relatively high, and the per-book fee was low. If you buy $100 worth of books all once, you'll pay less than you would pay retail in Montreal. Shipping is usually less than two weeks.

If you can make it to Boston and you don't mind paying $$$, Shoenhof's Cambridge store has a generous selection of French books, and there's an older man who often works evenings who can make very good recommendations. Montreal's excellent if you're ever there, of course—it generally costs less than Shoenhof's, but more than bulk orders from Amazon.fr, and there are some giant used bookstores. In particular, there's a large concentration of bookstores near Rue St-Denis, including Planète BD (graphic novels), Librairie Michel Fortin (language learning books), a giant Renaud-Bray and at least two used bookstores all within a 20 minute walk or so. Highly recommended if you're in the neighborhood.

[Speakeasy]

For AbeBooks, type "French" as a KEYWORD in their SEARCH feature. You can SORT the results (I tend to SORT the results by title (A-Z)) ...
(a) If you find an interesting item and wish to determine if the particular vendor has other items, click on the Seller's Name, click on "List this Seller's Books", and refine your search by typing "French" for this seller's selection (again, I tend to SORT the results by title (A-Z)).
(b) You can locate French instructional books, readers, et cetera in AbeBooks by entering "French" as a TITLE and "intermediate" as a KEYWORD. Combinations of "français" and "intermédiare" work as well.

For Alibris, select "French Language" from the list of SUBJECTS OR KEYWORDS. Alibris, too, has expanded Search facilities and much of what I wrote about AbeBooks is also possible within Alibris.

Amazon.com seems to have the most limited SEARCH facilities. You can try entering "French" in their Search window and limiting the search to BOOKS.

If you're looking for French language bookstores in Canada, the largest selection will be found in the Province of Québec. Here is a Google search "librairies au Quebec":
https://www.google.ca/search?q=librairies+%C3%A0+montr%C3%A9al&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-CA:IE-Address&ie=&oe=&gfe_rd=cr&ei=ELisWPaxO--y8weXoLDACw#q=librairies+au+quebec

You might also try "french language bookstores in the USA":
https://www.google.ca/search?q=french+language+bookstores+in+the+USA&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-CA:IE-Address&ie=&oe=&gfe_rd=cr&ei=6bisWN7MN87z8wfRzYqABg


Bonne chance et bon courage!

[Carmody]

I live outside NYC, NY and about 2 months ago I went into Albertine on Fifth Avenue near the Met. Mus. of Art.

http://www.albertine.com/
http://www.albertine.com/books/french/

They tell me they are the largest French bookstore in the country but they happen to be a some what small store. I wish it were bigger.

Now then, they are connected to a new French book website that has been set up and is in Beta release.

https://www.bookwitty.com/

I think you will find their prices to be really good.

If you have questions, just let me know.

[Finny]

I've bought close to 50 books in French since last fall, and will probably buy another 1-2 dozen more this year; most are kids' books, but the principles are the same. Pretty much every book has come from Amazon.com or Amazon.fr. Here are my tactics for getting what I want while saving some money:

As emk notes, buying in bulk is the way to go with Amazon.fr (which is where most of my books have come from). However, you don't have to buy them all at once; the first book will cost about $10 to ship no matter what, but every book afterward effectively only costs around $1 to ship, so as long as you buy at least 2 books at once, you significantly cut your shipping "tax." The thing to keep in mind is that this rule only applies when buying books new from Amazon.fr. If you buy anything used or 3rd party, you'll get hit with that $10 fee for every single book you buy that way. This means that it's much cheaper to buy new than to buy used if using Amazon.fr.

With Amazon.com, I use them when I'm only interested in individual orders or when the book is popular enough to have a healthy used selection, because you can get a book for as little as $4 shipped ($.01 book, $3.99 shipping) from Amazon.com that would cost much more no matter how much bulk ordering you did in Amazon.fr. I also will check the ISBN of books I find on Amazon.fr in Amazon.com, because they sometimes show up and, again, result in significant savings.

So to sum it up, buy new and in bulk from Amazon.fr, and buy used from Amazon.com. Be prepared for Amazon.fr to omit certain books in your order; I had to contact them about that for multiple orders I made last year. I'm currently waiting for another order to arrive and hoping they'll have everything in there...

[A Callidryas]

If you aren't looking for a specific title or author, you can browse on abebooks. At any given time there are well over a thousand French books for 3.48 US dollars.

To browse, type the name of a publisher (le livre de poche, albin michel, hachette, robert laffont, folio junior, etc.) in the space for 'keyword'.

If you want to start with books for teens and preteens, type 'jeunesse'.

If you like reading series, you can try typing in 'tome'.

If you aren't sure whether a book will appeal to you, you can go to amazon.fr for reviews.

[Jbean]

Go to your Amazon settings, give yourself a second address in France -- pick a hotel or something.
Go to "manage your content and devices" and click on the "settings" tab on the right.
Set your country to France.
Buy all the Kindle ebooks you want.
Go back to "manage your content and devices" and set your country back to your real address and country.
Read your new French ebooks on your Kindle app.

[Ani]

I buy oodles of books on Amazon.com. Never even thought there was an issue finding French books in the U.S. To save money, I add anything that looks interesting to a wish list and then come back to it over time to watch for price drops. Sometimes translations of popular novels are expensive (over $30) but the kindle version might be more reasonable. There are tons of kindle books in French, and many on Audible too (including all the Fred Vargas).

Sometimes Thriftbooks is good too.