French bookshops in Paris

Are you looking for new or used books?

If it is the latter, there is a number of really nice used book stores in Paris, but they generally shun away from tourist-y locations. Since every store has a different atmosphere and specialization, it is impossible to pick a "winner" to everyone's liking, and your best bet may be simply typing "librarie" or "libres" into Google Maps and going to the nearest ones blindly — chances are you will be for a nice surprise! Or look for local business listings such as Yellow Pages.

Most likely though none of that will be needed and it will be them that will find you first as soon as you go off the beaten path in any older neighborhood. All it takes is to have your eyes peeled and catch the opportunity by its hardcover as soon as you see it!

The "bouquinistes" selling things for tourists near the Seine seem to have relatively few interesting items and are severely overpriced, on the other hand, so I would suggest to exercise caution with them.

If you are looking for new books, FNAC (as mentioned by other users) may be your best bet among large and modern retail stores. They sell everything from treaties on philosophy and university textbooks to drones to clown costumes.

(Disclaimer: I'm neither Parisian nor French, but I speak the language to a certain extent, and have been on a book hunt in there on several occasions)

Your best bet to get classics without "wasting" time is to go to the big box stores like FNAC.

You will also get the classics from university libraries near the Sorbonne University, like Librarie de Cluny or Librairie Compagnie.

It can also be fun to browse the different smaller old books (Livres Ancients) stores, you will find the classics in older editions, and might even get a good price (all things considered) on them.

If you feel like it, there are also the Bouquinistes stalls along the river (the green stalls) you still can find the classics there, but you will have to ask or you will spend hours browsing regular stuff.

Over the last few decades, many bookshops have disappeared due to changing trends in the way people buy books (or whether they buy books at all).

Bookshop owners have long complained about the larger stores like Fnac, and then the hypermarkets, which has led to the introduction of the unique price for books (the same edition of a given book must be sold at the same price everywhere). Then Amazon arrived, and again they complained about the free shipping. In the meantime, many have closed or reduced their size a lot. There are still a lot more than in some US cities for instance.

The larger bookshops are probably some of the Fnac stores, like the one in Forum des Halles or that at Montparnasse. The top floor of the Fnac des Ternes has a nice decor, but the part dedicated to books is relatively small.

You also have the large Gibert Joseph and Gibert Jeune on boulevard Saint Michel, though given their position they have a tendency to focus on academic books (and I believe they have reduced in size quite drastically over the years).

Not sure if any of those would qualify for "having an atmosphere".

You can search for "librairie" on Google maps to find more (in French, "librairie" is a bookshop, not a library, which would be a "bibliothèque").

I love bookshops and will walk in at many just to look around even when I can not speak/read the language.

In Paris, as in France in general, you will find many bookshops.
They all sell classics, often in two different categories of bindings, cheap and classy.

Bookshops mostly mirror the other shops in the area, so in upmarket shopping streets you will find the more fancy, the more expensive, in the areas with the bargain shops you will find the bargain bookshops.
With bookshops you have an extra category. In areas where good books are bought, good bookshops stay alive and give good options. That is near universities and in areas where there are a lot of traditional shops, also very small ones.

While books have fixed prices, the selection a bookshop has in the shop does make a difference. The more expensive shops have many expensive editions and very few of the cheaper ones. While the cheaper shops often exclusively have the pocket editions of the classics as well as reprints which are much cheaper than the first editions have been. The middle selection ones have the whole of the range.

To get the best results on an internet search you will likely need to search in French. You can use an online translating service for reading what you ask as well as the results. But searching in English will get you the results most English speakers want, specially if you are still at home.