It is the symbol par excellence of the French cultural exception, the literary season which sees each year during this period hundreds of new novels surge in bookstores. This year, the start of the school year is sober, 466 new novels including 145 foreign ones. Sobriety due to inflation which also affects the book.
Ten years ago, French publishers put on the tables for the literary season between six and seven hundred new novels. Profusion which is no longer appropriate today. Between the disaffection of part of the public and the cost of paper, it’s time for sobriety.
” For years editors have been saying “we should go out a little less, we should support them better, ”recalls Jacques Bronstein, the editor-in-chief of Weekly Book, the magazine for book professionals. ” Now that economically it’s in their interest, what they’ve wanted to do for years, they’re doing it more and more. There is rather a good news, it is that there was in the edition this idea that there was a psychological price and that beyond twenty euros, the books would not be sold any more. It seems that with inflation, the public is willing to pay a little more for them. On the other hand, we see that part of the public of the novel refers to the [livre de poche] which proves that this increase is not painless. »
Renew public interest
If the paperback, three times cheaper than a large format, is doing well, it does not cannibalize the literary season. Publishers are indeed masters in the art of renewing public interest.
” What generally happens is that on one side you have Amélie Nothomb who releases a novel every year that sells very well. And then you have a second obligatory bestseller, I feel like saying, which “kill the game”, it is often, Virginie Despentes, Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Christine Angot », stresses Jacques Bronstein. ” After [cette année, NDLR], there is no author like that that we are sure and certain will be the big seller. It’s a relatively open back to school, so I can’t tell you “here, it’s already folded, it’s Houellebacq and Nothomb” like some years. »
An Anglo-Saxon market that dominates foreign novels
The other advantage of the French literary season is the place given to foreign novels. They are 145 to come out this year. A place that is tending to shrink, however, and a field that is becoming more uniform, as explained by Sean Rose, literary critic at Weekly book.
” We talk about standardization or uniformization, but it is almost ideological. It is the Anglo-Saxon market that dominates. Even Africans are English-speaking Africans, and even when you have Asians, they are Asian Americans. So in fact, it’s often a similar aesthetic vision, a bit Hollywood for short, and it’s true that the curiosity for languages like Indonesian, Vietnamese and other languages, in fact, we don’t not see on the shelves, and it seems to me that there is less and less curiosity for these languages. »
Still, with 466 new novels on the tables, the public has reason to rejoice. No other country in the world experiences such a phenomenon.