Second-hand books, new prizes and reading for pleasure were on the agenda at last week’s three-day Paris Book Festival, which closed its doors on Sunday evening (13th April). The festival returned to the Grand Palais near the Champs Elysées after an absence of more than 30 years.
Measures to remunerate authors and publishers from the sale of second-hand books, promised by President Emmanuel Macron a year ago, became top of the agenda.
Culture Minister Rachida Dati did not mention the measures in her inaugural speech at the festival on Thursday evening, but during their visit to the festival the following day Macron and Dati “opened the way to introducing a fair remuneration for authors and publishers on the second-hand book market, based on copyright”, the French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l’édition, SNE) and the Permanent Council of Writers (Conseil Permanent des Ecrivains, CPE) said in a joint statement.
The two organisations “welcome a major advance towards regulating” this market, which was worth an estimated €351bn in 2022 and represented 20% of book sales, according to a study published last year and carried out by the Culture Ministry and the collection agency Société Française des Intérêts des Auteurs de l’écrit (SOFIA).
The two organisations welcomed the ministry’s commitment to continue working on a solution. They also welcomed Dati’s intention to revise the rate for libraries’ public lending rights, which has not changed since 2003.
The initiative does not have unanimous support. The online book website ActuaLitté has published an article on the subject of “hypocritical publishing strategy”. Ten years ago, the now-defunct digital firm Booxup proposed to pay the collection agency SOFIA 6% before tax on book sales between its members, ActuaLitté noted. The aim was to reconcile technological innovation and fairness for authors, but the industry dismissed the idea.
A 2020 report by the former head of the French National Library Bruno Racine reflected its objections. “Resale rights on second-hand books appear legally uncertain, technically complex and unlikely to generate a significant resource,” the report said.
ActuaLitté alleged that the SNE “wants cash from second-hand books, but has been blocking negotiations on author pay,” concluding that a lasting solution needs to be found to the industry’s real problems, “which are that books are selling less well and overproduction has undermined the market”.
Reacting to the article, which he called an op-ed, SNE director Renaud Lefebvre said: “The situation today is nothing like it was 10 years ago. That was before the emergence of online platforms selling second-hand books.” Looking back in time and questioning the legitimacy of the initiative “doesn’t help solve the problem we have now,” he told The Bookseller. “We are talking about a huge growth in second-hand book sales over the last few years and are proposing to pay for copyright, not to impose a tax,” he added. “We have been working on the idea for some time and have taken advice from academics and legal experts.”
Continues…
