Vending machines with a bite to read

Parisians craving Homer, Baudelaire, or Maupassant in the middle of the night can get a quick literary fix at one of the French capital’s five newly installed book vending machines.

The machines cover the gamut of literary genres and tastes

“We have customers who know exactly what they want and come at all hours to get it,” said Xavier Chambon, president of Maxi-Livres, a low-cost publisher and book store chain that debuted the vending machines in June.
 
“It’s as if our stores were open 24 hours a day.”

Stocked with 25 of Maxi-Livres’ best-selling titles, the machines cover the gamut of literary genres and tastes.

Classics like The Odyssey by Homer and Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland share the limited shelf space with such practical must-haves as 100 Delicious Couscous and Verb Conjugations.

“Our biggest vending machine sellers are The Wok Cookbook and a French-English dictionary,” said Chambon, who added that poet Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal – The Flowers of Evil – also is very popular.

Regardless of whether they fall into the category of high culture or low, all books cost a modest $2.45.

Mechanical arm

Installed in four busy Metro stops and a chic street corner in central Paris, Maxi-Livres’ distributors were designed to bypass the characteristic vending-machine-drop, which can be punishing for books. 

Publishers say it is as if theirstores are open 24 hours a day
Publishers say it is as if theirstores are open 24 hours a day

Publishers say it is as if their
stores are open 24 hours a day

“We knew that French bibliophiles would be horrified to see their books falling into a trough like candy or soda,” Chambon said.

“So we installed a mechanical arm that grabs the book and delivers it safely.”

Books are but the latest offering in France’s ever-expanding vending machine market, which is responding to off-hour demand for everything from toilet paper to carnations.

Refrigerated supermarket dispensers measuring more than 3 metres across sell some 200 items you would expect to find at the local corner store.

Cat food, TV dinners, razors, and salads can be procured at any time for only slightly higher than average prices.

Paris also has at least two fresh flower distributors offering roses and floral bouquets to the city’s romantics.