Australia and France by the book: a comparison

Two flagship modern issues: the proposed Google monopolisation of digitisation, and the e-books situation, have both been tackled in this way, and some very interesting and imaginative approaches adopted (more on which below).

For background, it may be useful to first have a quick overview of the modern French publishing scene (figures are from the Centre National du Livre, France's sort of equivalent to the Australia Council Literature Board but which has only been going since 2003 and is funded by a 3 percent tax levied on photocopiers, scanners and offset printers, and fees from publishers):

Despite the GFC, there was a very slight rise (+0.1 percent) in publishing in France in 2009-10, following on a more substantial rise in the two years before that (+5.30 percent and +4.6 percent respectively). The book industry is one of the top leisure industries in France, ahead of the video, music or games industries.

The average print run of a book is 9, 340. Fifty-four percent of French people bought at least one book this year, with 11.5 percent buying 12 or more. However as you might expect, young people read a lot more, with 77 percent of high school students reporting they'd read at least one non-school-enforced book in the last 3 months, with 36 percent reading more than 1, and 23 percent reading more than 4. (I might also add that French literary education is still very much alive, with a good deal more fiction, poetry and plays read at school than in Australia.)

Some interesting figures regarding types of books sold. Fiction accounts for 25 percent of books sold, with youth at 17 percent, "livres de poche" (a very particular French way of publishing, small-format paperbacks at a very good price, which can be either fiction or non-fiction) at 28.5 percent, "practical" trade nonfiction at 11 percent, Bandes Dessinees (French comics and graphic novels) at 7 percent, and foreign manga or other comics at 2 percent. (Bandes Dessinees or BD, have traditionally been a strong force in French literature for decades and this is continuing to grow; Japanese manga and American comics are also growing in popularity.)

It is also a very self-sufficient market: only 14.3 percent of books sold in France are translations from other languages, with translations from English accounting for 61 percent of that.

There is a huge choice of places to buy books, from a bewildering and rich myriad of independent bookshops, to big chains like the FNAC, department stores like Galeries Lafayette and Monoprix, and supermarkets like Leclerc and Carrefour. Internet sales of books, on Amazon.fr or others, account for 9.6 percent of the market.

The healthy bookshop scene in France is very noticeable, and is directly attributable to the fact that there is a fixed price for books in France, and only 5 percent discounting is allowed, so that whether you buy a book in a small bookshop, big chain store, supermarket or the internet, it is basically the same price. This has been the case since the mid-80's, when the so-called "Lang law" (after the then Minister of Culture, Jack Lang) on the fixing of book prices and the outlawing of big discounts, was introduced.

It also means a very big publishing scene, with publishers ranging from the one of the world's biggest (Hachette) to medium-size family firms, to small regional-interest and tiny one-man-band companies. On my visit to the Salon du Livre , the Paris Book Fair, in March 2010, I saw at first hand the extraordinary richness that this produces, and saw too the enormous interest it generates among readers. Unlike most other book fairs, this is not just trade (though many deals are made there) but also general interest, and the crush of readers around the publishing stands was quite extraordinary.

The Salon was in fact like a combination of writer's festival, complete with talks and panels, and book fair, in an exciting mix that I think might usefully be considered here! Incidentally the audiences were very much more mixed than they are at similar events in Australia, with male readers as visible as female, and with a remarkable number of young people who had come of their own will (it was the weekend) and not through school or uni at all, to meet their idols, buy books and have a good time.

The situation for authors

Royalties are usually set at 8 percent, rising to 10 percent if the book sells above 10,000 copies and to 12 percent after 20,000; but for "livres de poche", authors get only 5 percent. Some authors in the past have however earned up to 20 percent royalties, even as long ago as the 1950's, while some publishers will pay only 7 percent for a first novel.

Advances are generally not large, with most authors (especially those for young people) getting around the 2,000-5,000 euro mark - but there are some stellar advances of course, with enfant terrible novelist Michel Houellebecq earning 1.3 million euros advance (and 15 percent royalties) for his Possibilite d'une ile (Possibility of an island)