In France, public cultural policies remain trapped in a Manichean reading of cultural practices and actors. They thus tend to leave aside, or even deliberately dismiss, the tremendous potential offered by the Internet. They then deprive themselves of an effective lever to make culture accessible throughout the territory, and France stands out on this point from other countries in Europe which are capitalizing on digital technology to bring culture closer to the audiences who are interested in it. the most distant.
It is all the more regrettable since culture finds itself at the crossroads of geographical and social inequalities which divide the “French archipelago”. Let’s take the example of printed books: more than 90% of the 35,000 French municipalities do not have a bookstore when Paris alone has almost 20% of French bookstores for only 3% of the population. We understand why almost half of the books sold by Amazon in France are shipped to small towns and rural areas.
The Internet allows many French people to overcome territorial inequalities to access a vast selection of goods, services and cultural content that correspond to them – whether they live in a village or in the heart of the Latin Quarter. Despite its undeniable advantages, digital technology remains sidelined from public cultural policies in France, like Culture Pass, which today is largely open to in-store offers, and much less to online and digital offers. By having the wrong objective and denying the complementarity of physical and digital offerings, public cultural policies can prove counterproductive and widen the cultural divides that they nevertheless wish to combat.
Ifop study
In an inflationary context which undermines the cultural purchasing power of the French, the proposal to tax second-hand books raises questions. The same applies to compulsory shipping costs on the delivery of books, implemented with the stated objective of supporting physical bookstores. Six months after their entry into force, an Ifop study reveals that more than 6 out of 10 readers say that these new mandatory fees have had an impact on their purchasing power, and that 4 out of 10 book buyers say they have reduced their purchases and so read less. All this for the benefit of booksellers? Not really. The vast majority of book buyers who go to physical points of sale more often due to the increase in shipping costs prefer hypermarkets and supermarkets, large cultural brands and press houses (71%), and only 26% go in independent bookstores, especially in the Paris metropolitan area.
We must encourage reading. Supporting bookstores is one way to achieve this, encouraging online offerings is another, particularly for populations residing in rural and peri-urban areas, especially since 75% of rural French people who buy books online do so. due to the distance from physical points of sale. While the government has just unveiled a plan intended to support reading, it is time to fully integrate digital technology into public cultural policies, for the benefit of the French, the dissemination of culture and the influence of French creation. Culture must be accessible everywhere, not just in the heart of cities, and I do not believe that the solution is to ask the French to take their car to make their cultural purchases. Let us instead rely on the advantages of digital technology to bring the French people, wherever they are, the books, films, music and cultural goods that correspond to them.
The Spring of Rurality, the national consultation initiated by the Minister of Culture, is in this context a strong opportunity to finally achieve this ambition that we share: to strengthen and guarantee access to culture everywhere in the territory, and in particular in rural environment. Simple measures are within reach, such as extending the Culture Pass to online services and sales, or revising mandatory shipping costs on books. Alternative measures to support bookstores exist, which would penalize neither reading nor the purchasing power of the French: for example the establishment of a dedicated postal rate, which already exists for shipments of books abroad: sending a 500 gram book to London costs 1.67 euros, while sending it to an address in France costs four times more, namely 6.30 euros.
* Frédéric Duval is general director ofAmazon.com