By Olivia Snaije
There has been much talk about why the e-book market is slow to take off in France. The Guardian recently ran a piece on “Why France is shunning the e-book” and the New York Times proclaims that France’s paper book market and independent bookstores are doing well. The current situation of the market lies somewhere in between. It is true that independent bookstores receive support both from the government and the public. Paper books represent 52% of the French cultural goods market ,and for the moment, e-books make up less than 2% of sales.
However, three heads of major publishing companies are acutely aware of the arrival of the digital age and commented for Publishing Perspectives on today’s book market in France which must take into account a very different set of rules from the US and the UK:
Jean Arcache, CEO, Place des Editeurs
Jean Arcache is CEO of Place des Editeurs, a publishing group owned by Editis, which holds the foreign license for Lonely Planet and also publishes best-selling American authors such as Harlan Coben and Danielle Steel.
“The situation here is very different from the US, which started with discounting. Here, because of fixed price laws, you cannot do that. This raises the average price of an e-book to €15, rather than €9.99. This means we’re starting with little volume but a lot of value. It’s more beneficial because we can invest in social marketing, which is very important, in order to beat Amazon’s loyalty program.
“We are beginning in a controlled environment which means the market will increase through value and not discount. Moving to digital is linked to the availability of reading devices. The Kindle Fire will be out this fall. This may push forward the market for Christmas sales. Kobo’s partnership with FNAC helped everyone to go further. Now that some of the readers are much cheaper than others, this has allowed the market to start. We have an agreement with Google Play, and the major players in the US are now present in the French market.”
Place des Editeurs imprint Belfond has just launched an enhanced e-book available on Apple called Que Viva la musica!, inspired by the late Colombian author Andrés Caicedo.
Louis Delas, CEO, Casterman BD and Jeunesse
Louis Delas is the CEO of Casterman BD and Jeunesse, publisher of Tintin, among others, and also a children’s books publisher. Given that children’s books and comics/graphic novels are two of the most dynamic sectors in French publishing, Casterman, which is part of the Flammarion group, is in a comfortable position.
In 2010 Delas was quoted as saying e-books, for the moment cost money to make and don’t make any money. “This is still the case for e-books. It’s a problem with heavy color pages as compared to black and white [such as with mangas]. The reading device needs to be appropriate, you have to be able to read the cartoon bubbles. Comics authors in the Franco-Belgian tradition always conceive their pages in their entirety and not panel to panel, so there are artistic constraints.”
The irony is that most comic book readers are hooked on e-books and would be buyers. There is a natural “bridge” between paper books and e-books as far as the public for comic and children’s books is concerned, said Delas.
“But the revenue doesn’t make up for it. So e-books will evolve, but progressively, it is inevitable. With children’s books, specific applications work better. But as long as e-readers, such as the iPad remain so expensive, these applications or e-books will be the domain of a certain public. During this economic crisis, the weak link is bookshops. Even if e-books cannibalize only 10-15% of the market, this can send booksellers over the edge. We have to react and anticipate. It’s certainly not a gold rush right now, but it’s not a disaster either. We have to be creative and intelligent while respecting our authors and listening to the needs of the public.”
Claude de Saint Vincent, Deputy CEO, Media Participations
Claude de Saint Vincent is deputy CEO of Media Participations, a conglomerate of book publishing (especially graphic novels and comics), film and television productions and news services. He is also Chairman of Izneo — an online comic book platform created by an alliance of publishers.
“The French market was solid until 2008 when you began to see a decrease. When you look at the turnover it looks like a sound market but when you look at the volume of books sold, then you realize you have fewer paper readers than five years ago.”
As far as the digital market is concerned, “it hasn’t taken off in France for two reasons: the Kindle was launched in 2007 in the US. When you go on Amazon you have access to 1.5 million books. In France the Kindle was launched 11 months ago, and when you look at Amazon.fr there are 65,000 books available. We just don’t have a significant amount of e-book readers and the offer is not wide enough.”
He adds: “Most people think digital publishing is an opportunity, but actually it’s very complicated because there’s no global format. With black and white you can start making money, but in France with such low volume, we are actually losing money.
It’s a strong trend and unavoidable but the offers on the market need to be extensive.”
5 Comments
This is an interesting article summing up what’s happening on the French market. I believe that the French will do as the French often do: from one day to the next e-book reading will take off. Mind you, this may not happen if ebooks are priced at €15.
French publishers say that “in France with such low volume, we are actually losing money”, as said in the article above. Isn’t it what you call investment ?
I am working in Publishing and I saw many crazy strategies from the Big French publishing like, for example, to set the price of ebook more expensive than the same in paper.
They had never anticipate the coming of ebook but they are only waiting for an economical model than they don’t find. They believe that it’s better to earn money immediatly by selling any expensive ebook than to try to find how to define a new book based on new way of reading… at the price than most people want to pay. On the Web people don’t want to paid so much, as we saw for applications, an it’s same for ebook. But they don’t understand this fact ! It’s typically for french businessmen.
As an expat I SAS an early adler of ebooks. I bought a Sony ereader because ePub is the only format used by Swedish publisher. I am reding in English French and Swedish.
At the beginning I could download French books from FNAC. This became almost impossible since they got allied with Kobo! I mailed the FNAC who told me I had to be in France to download. They get paid for books I cannot download! A nice business model.
Now I noticed that I could download in the kobo app of my iPad . The kobo app is the worse reading app I have by the way.
So on my IPad I have kindle app, Bluefire for books from my Swedish library, crappy Kobo, iBooks …
Anyway as I started to download with ADE on my PC the iPad started to download too and thereafter the PC redirected the download via kobo which told me that my user Id was from FNAC and could not be used (moment 22)
I described the problem for Kobo who sent an automatic mail telling I would get an answer within 48 hours. A week later I am still waiting!
What I wonder is: I paid a lot of money for ebooks I want to read preferably on my Sony but also on my IPad.
Why Is it impossible to transfer any ebooks on my IPad to my Sony, taking them on my PC in Calibre for instance?
Why do I need to install an app for each book provider on iPad?
When the ebook providers will begin to provide something doing the ereading easier and the downloading smooth, they could attract more customers.
My dream is an open standard which allow me to read the book I purchased on all my devices.
The providers are trying instead to sell proprietary devices!
I am living on a boat and the point with ebooks was they take no place which failed if I have to buy one device by publisher!
Hello.
While Mr Arcache (as quoted) blames fixed-price laws for high e-book prices and the consequent failure of the French e-book market to take off, he spectacularly fails to point out that those same fixed-price laws mean that book prices are set by the publisher. So the reason e-books cost more than their (mass-market) paperback counterparts is because French publishers are deliberately setting higher prices in order to stump e-book sales in favour of p-book sales.
Not to mention that, to add insult to injury, these overpriced e-books of course come loaded with DRM.
As to the limited availability of French-language e-books mentioned by Mr de Saint Vincent, maybe if publishers were not so busy trying to fight the transition to digital France would not be lagging so far behind.
The upshot is that, although I live in France, I buy e-books mainly from foreign (US) publishers, because there are much more reasonably priced, DRM-free, modern titles available. The only French e-books I buy are from small publishers who treat their customers with respect (again, no DRM, reasonble prices).
LCNR