|
Non Fiction
Jan 2007 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dear all,
January 1, 2007, marks the 25th anniversary of the "loi Lang" on the uniform price of books. This French law – named after the Minister of Culture at the time, Jack Lang – seeks to protect small bookshops and small publishers against large chains by guaranteeing a uniform price for any given book. For the occasion, we would like to present you with a selection of recent publications dedicated to the field of books in France.
In French publishing – a flourishing industry, which for the past twenty years has been very open to translations of foreign literature – it actually seems to be a good time for reconsideration. Long dominated by family businesses, the industry was shaken by the arrival of conglomerates in the middle of the 1950s. The acceleration of this movement at the beginning of the 1980s resulted in changes that, according to many industry players, marked the end of a golden age, the end of a privileged relationship between author and publisher, publisher and reader, and the end of high-quality works. Never have we seen so many works about books, publishing and reading: essays, documents, memoirs, biographies of publishers… How would the French model, heir to the great publishing houses of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, react to a globalization that infers profitability, formatting, bidding wars for advances, author replacements and unlimited power for distributors?
First, we selected two economic and political analyses of the general state of French publishing. Through interviews with renowned French editors, L’Edition littéraire aujourd’hui explores the stakes involved in publishing literature; it also takes us behind the scenes of the French publishing industry and unveils time-honored rituals at Gallimard and Le Seuil. Le Contrôle de la Parole, by the author of The Business of Books, André Schiffrin, strives to show that the processes that can be observed in Anglo-Saxon countries – mergers and acquisitions and their noxious effects – are at work in France today, even if some counter-measures seem possible.
But these significant changes in the industry seem to have provoked some more general questions at the core. Leaning heavily on anecdotes, La Condition littéraire and Un Couple infernal: l’écrivain et son éditeur explore the evolution of the writer’s status. The former gives us a broad sociological view by focusing on writers, part of a larger group, who did not receive sustained attention or recognition by the public and needed to pursue a second career for economic reasons. The latter, using sharp metaphor, evokes the hazards of a mythic couple: the writer and his publisher. The question of audience is also posed. Littératures de jeunesse, incertaines frontières, takes on the task of defining a literary genre by its audience: young readers.
Finally, on a lighter note, we draw your attention to a book that takes up all these problems and little secrets to produce a whodunit of the publishing world. The heroes of Avec une poignée de sable... are a publisher and a writer, intent on creating a best seller.
We truly hope you will enjoy these books as much as we did, and we would be very happy to hear your reactions and discuss this selection.
Bonne lecture!
Fabrice Rozié
Anne-Sophie Hermil
Anne-Sophie Simenel
Maud Lourau
Special thanks to: ADPF, Xavier Isle de Beauchaine, Rachel Spiegel, Paula Cianci.