France was slow to adopt print, but once the presses settled in the kingdom, the country became one of the most vibrant centres of print culture in Europe. Between 1470 and the start of the 17th century, the French book market went through a series of identifiable stages, evolving to meet the needs of a local and international readership. In contrast to traditional scholarship, this article refutes the idea of a broadly seamless progression of the printed book. Instead, it characterises and seeks to explain each moment in the development of the French book world as it responded to the changing commercial world that surrounded it. It looks at how an increasingly sophisticated network of booksellers and the rise of the wholesale book merchant affected printing and access to printed books. It shows the transformative effect of wider phenomena such as the stages of the French wars of religion on the economy as a whole and what this meant for the book industry as well as taking into account the impact of the developing international trade. The analysis is based on a thorough examination of bibliographic and archival sources of printing, publishing and bookselling in Paris and provincial France. By providing a clearly identified series of stages in the development of the French book market, the article shows the strategic importance of four factors: the economy of production, distribution, changes in the form of the book and the impact of wider economic, political and religious circumstances.