The traditional literary season is coming, and 490 new novels will be published by mid-October in France. This is 30 less than last year and 150 less than ten years ago. A relative moderation therefore, but with many sure values, expected and recognized authors who should boost sales. After two years of the Covid-19 pandemic during which the French, confined, had returned to reading, the time is again for concern.
The literary season is always a feverish period. This year 2022, the first half of sales has been bad. We read fewer novels in a presidential year, but above all, the attack on Ukraine by Russia on February 24 emptied bookstores. The return of inflation has also darkened the horizon.
Of the 490 titles to be released, 145 are translated works by foreign authors and 90 are first novels. 90 first novels is rather good news, notes Fabrice Piault, editor-in-chief of the magazine Weekly Books : “ This shows that despite the difficulties, the desire for discovery remains strong among publishers, who have nevertheless guaranteed themselves with a certain number of heavyweights. »
The return of the intimate
We will obviously find Amelie Nothomb, which publishes one novel a year. His 31st, The sisters book, comes out at Albin-Michel. Grasset publishes Virginie Despentes and her Dear asshole, which benefits from a “steamroller” output. The other headliners are Guillaume Musso with Angelic (Calmann-Levy) or even Alain Mabanckou with The elongated trade (Threshold)Laurent Gaudé with Dog 51 (Actes Sud), Franck Bouysse with The populated man (Albin Michel), Yasmina Khadra with The virtuous (Mialet Barrault) or Olivier Adam with Under the roses (Flammarion)…
The 2021 literary season was quite open to the world. The authors, in a context of confinement, had endeavored to rethink the world. ” This year, we are witnessing the return of intimate literature, many themes linked to the family and interpersonal relationships, as if, at a time when we were greatly shaken by the war in Ukraine, by the various crises, we needed to find ourselves with ourselves and our fundamentals », explains Fabrice Piaul.
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Editors more passionate than ever
Marie-Pierre Gracedieu is the co-founder of the very young publishing house The noise of the world, in Marseille. She publishes, in the French school year, the third novel by a Comorian author, Touhfat Mouhtare, middle fireand in the foreign re-entry, the fourth novel by the English writer Anna Hope, The white rock. ” We are feverish like all our colleagues, but it is always a joy, a celebration. We’ve been working on the subject for months, we made sure to be ready in May to share the texts with booksellers, journalists… We did a big tour of bookstores and we’re starting to get feedback of reading that nourish us. It’s a complicated time in bookstores and in general. The news is anxiety-provoking, but we hope the books will be a window for readers “, she confides.
” We must be delighted with the richness of the French editorial proposal. In many countries, supply is contracting. We owe this diversity to the number of independent booksellers in France, but nevertheless, we publishers must be more honest with ourselves. We no longer have the right to publish just because we want to have a number of books, we have to fight for texts that are worth it “, continues Marie-Pierre Gracedieu.
Edith de Cornulier is an independent self-distributed publisher, the Malo Quirvane house specializes in short fiction texts. His books will come out later, once the wave of the literary season has passed, where they risk being drowned. ” I remember, once in a book fair, where I criticized French overproduction, next to me, there was a publisher from a small African country. He answered me ” Well us, we have four books this year ”. So 490 novels is a very big chance, but it’s not viable at all. Many of these books will end up in the pestle and not have a chance. “, she says.
In bookstores, dozens of boxes are unpacked every day. Bandrine Babu runs the L’Instant bookstore in Paris, in the 15th arrondissement: ” The big names, I don’t read them right away, I save them for later. I know they don’t need me and they’re going to sell out. I try to get interested in lesser-known authors. That’s why I do this job, for discovery, advice, I never tire of it. Sandrine Babu has even decided to create a bookstore prize highlighting books that have gone unfairly unnoticed.
Behind the literary re-entry, it is the race for the autumn awards that is being played out. A prize – Grand Prix de l’académie française, Goncourt, Renaudot, Fémina… – boosts end-of-year sales and there are bound to be books under the Christmas tree. A new novel is easily worth twenty euros. A fairly stable price despite a record rise in the cost of paper, and still a nice gift.