Australia and France by the book: a comparison

There is also an unusual way of being paid your royalties in France, with some authors opting to be paid by the month as a kind of living wage - the philosopher/writer Michel Onfray gets paid 2,000 euros per month, for example, while another author, Marc-Edouard Nabe gets paid 2,200 euros a month plus his mobile bills paid!

The main difference in the author/publisher relationship in France to that in Australia and indeed most Anglophone countries is that, unlike here, there have traditionally not been any literary agents. Even today there are very few, and they are still viewed with great suspicion not only by a good many French publishers, but French writers too.

I was told that this was because traditionally French publishing has been very much a family-firm concern (and in many cases continues to be, even with big names like Gallimard) and publishers have very much had a paternalistic kind of relationship with their authors (hence for example, that monthly allowance some writers draw on).

They have traditionally also disliked what they rather preciously saw as the "Anglo-Saxon hard-nosed commercial" way of doing things, and especially disliked what they see as the agent's determination to push up advances. However this situation is rapidly changing, due mainly to the fact publishers are becoming less accessible to authors.

Though French protection of authorial copyright (including moral rights) is very strong and of long date (some of it dating from the 19th century), one thing Australia is well ahead on in terms of individual authors' incomes is the longevity of our PLR scheme. France has only introduced such a scheme in the last few years, while Australia's dates from more than twenty-five years ago, supplemented a few years ago by the successful introduction of ELR (focussing on libraries in educational institutions such as schools and universities).

Specific current policy issues

The Google issue

France has directly and successfully challenged Google's attempt to monopolise the digitisation of the world's literary capital, through a test case involving Google's attempt to digitise books in the collection of the municipal Bibliotheque de Lyon, which was defeated. This success resulted in the rapid growth of Gallica, the digital program of the Bibliotheque de France, the national library, which up till then had been proceeding rather slowly.

Gallica has now become a very strong actor on the French scene and totally eliminated any danger of the country's literature being under the sole imprint of Google. So successful in fact has Gallica become that it is being used as a model by many other non-Anglo European countries who do not wish to allow Google to digitise their literary works. This success has also had a direct bearing on the next big issue, that of e-books.

E-books

Although these at present represent a miniscule fraction of the market in France (some estimates put it as low as 0.01 percent) Hachette, France's biggest publisher (and possibly world's) estimates that in 2010, its sales of e-books globally, went from 0.5 to 3 percent of its own sales, and everyone knows that you cannot be too complacent about these things, even if e-books turn out to be only a niche market.

Incidentally, there are only about 40,000 e-readers sold in France yearly - the Kindle is not a popular device in France. The most sold e-reader was Sony's, followed by the (rather nifty) French e-reader, Bookeen. The Ipad had only just been introduced when I was in Paris.

In 2009, the Ministry of Culture commissioned a study to look into the whole issue. What they and the SGDL and the SNE (Societe National d'Edition, the publishers' association) absolutely wanted was to maintain the "prix unique", the fixed price which has made France's literary scene flourish, and to find a way of adapting it for the e-book, as well as protecting the rights of creators, especially copyright and royalty rates etc.

One of the first problems faced is that in French law a print book is classified as "an object", whilst an e-book is classified as "a service", and thus subject to different rates of TVA, or GST. Books incur a 5.5 percent GST; services 19.6 percent! (Obviously if e-books were to be a viable proposition, this would have to change).

It soon became obvious from the study that things couldn't just be adapted from past situations; new means would have to be found to protect authors' rights and the literary heritage of the country, as well as make e-books more accessible. But there were many issues and bones of contention- principally on the whole question of what would be author royalties on e-books.

The SGDL argued for the same royalty rate as on print books while publishers have been diucking and weaving on the issue. To date, there has not yet been an agreement on the matter, let alone fixing a price on e-books, and discussions are ongoing. But on one front there was a big development.

In May 2010, in joint consultation with the SGDL, the SNE and SOFIA (a new author-publisher-government body which administers such things as PLR), the Ministry of Culture decided to intervene directly in the e-book scene through Gallica, by tackling what is known as the "grey zone" - books for which a contract still exists (ie are still in print and rights not reverted) but which are hardly ever reprinted, which did not have any e-book clauses (this usually means prior to 1995), and which have never been digitised. Digital rights for these books will be established by the Government and Gallica will digitise them-with the permission of authors, commercial exploitation can remain with the publishers if they wish, or instead go to Gallica.

This is potentially a very big and important intervention as it could set the model for e-book commercialisation in France, set national formatting standards, and test the waters generally. At the time of speaking to the SGDL, it had not yet been implemented, but was expected to become law by the end of the year. Many other European countries are watching closely to see what the outcome will be.