Much has been written about censorship and the book trade in seventeenth-century France. The existence of censorship suggests that the book was perceived as influential. Similarly, Ferdinand Brunot and Sylvain Auroux have found that the industry helped define the norms of standard French. Like censorship, these authors portray the book as powerful. Charles Sorel, however, highlights certain limits on the book's impact in his portrait of a bookstore in the Histoire comique de Francion. Here, a group of poets gather to debate the rules of writing literature, which, for them, involve grammatical correctness. The title character reminds them that they do not have the means to enforce these rules. Francion suggests the creation of an academy to promote them instead. A bookstore dedicated to literature emerges as a place of little influence. The episode shows Sorel's interest in examining exactly how, if at all, one might control usage.