After twenty years working in publishing in Paris (at Flammarion and then at Albin Michel), Anne-Céline Drach, 49, moved to Burgundy seven years ago. Since 2018, she has been in charge of communications and events. at the Athénaeum, a large bookstore in Beaune (Côte-d’Or), responsible for organizing visits by authors and signings around current literary events. But this great reader admits to having suffered a bit of a culture shock when leaving the center of Paris to go to a region with “more conservative”.
“When Eric Zemmour publishes a book, some customers ask us if he will come to sign it in the bookstore. But our policy is not to invite politicians. If we did, our regular customers and certain publishers would blacklist us.” At the dawn of a new literary season, independent booksellers are more than ever at the centre of the cyclone of political and ideological divisions sweeping the country, and in the front row to observe how readers react to the reactionary wave shaking the publishing world.
In November 2023, after several months of negotiations, Vincent Bolloré’s Vivendi group took over Hachette and its flagship houses (Stock, Grasset, Calmann-Lévy, Fayard, JC Lattès), but also its powerful distribution network (the first in France in terms of volume). Print and audiovisual press (CNews, C8, Europe 1, The Sunday newspaper), cinema (via StudioCanal), books and newspapers (Vincent Bolloré owns the Relay chain and also bought, a year ago, L’Ecume des Pages, an emblematic bookstore in Saint-Germain-des-Prés)…
As the Breton industrialist’s influence in the world of culture has grown, his ideological programme, increasingly inspired by the far right, has become clearer. But with the exception of the appointment in June of Lise Boëll, Eric Zemmour’s long-time editor, to head Éditions Fayard, the impact of the Hachette acquisition will not be felt a priori on the publishing programmes of this comeback.
3,700 independents
There are between 20,000 and 25,000 bookshops in France. Of these, 3,700 are independent bookshops, which account for 22% of the books sold (according to figures from the French Bookshops’ Union). In June, following the very good score obtained by the National Rally (31.37%) in the European elections, several of them were attacked, both virtually and physically, for having set up shop windows openly hostile to the far right.
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