In Depth
Monsieur Livre
20.08.08 Barbara Casassus
The French public's appetite for reading will be the next major issue to be tackled by the book department of the Ministry of Culture after previously addressing the problems faced by small bookshops and the threats of digitisation. The man leading the bookish evolution is Benoît Yvert, who is head of books at the culture ministry and director of the government-financed National Book Centre (Centre National du Livre; CNL) that enacts some of its edicts.
Explaining the strategy, Yvert told The Bookseller: "First we had to take urgent action for bookshops, which are extremely fragile, and to make sure that we are not caught unawares by a sudden surge in digitisation, as the music and film sectors were." These were all part of the Book 2010 project, which was launched in 2006 and involved 50 hours of debate.
Yvert, who was appointed to his two current posts in 2005, defends his dual mission. He describes it as having his head in the stars and his feet on the ground. "When we come up with an idea at the ministry, the CNL can put it into practice." Yvert points to a number of successes. Despite a resistance to change in some quarters of the book business, he said: "We have achieved a lot in the last three years, and I believe that more unites the different players in the book chain now than divides them. We have increased the CNL budget from €20m (£15.8m) to €36m (£28m) in three years, created a label for booksellers, initiated a digitisation policy and concluded a unique agreement between a library and publishers for digitising copyrighted works."
Measures adopted or on their way for booksellers include the bookshop quality label that comes with tax breaks for qualifying independent bookshops, and a fund to finance shop takeovers as "baby boomer" booksellers retire. A recent agreement between publishers, the French Booksellers Association (Syndicat de la Librairie Française; SLF) and the new association for cultural product store chains (Syndicat des Distributeurs de Loisirs Culturels; SDLC) defining quality criteria for discounts under the 1981 fixed book price Lang Law ended many years of stand-off.
As for digitisation, recommendations were presented by Le Monde's Bruno Patino to culture minister Christine Albanel earlier this month and will be discussed later in the year by the Book Council. A roundtable discussion on book digitisation organised by the French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l'Edition; SNE) on 8th July attracted an audience of some 400 people. The Gallica 2 project of the French National Libriary (Bibliothèque Nationale Française; BNF) is the only one of its kind for the moment, Yvert says. About 100 publishers, whom he describes as professionals who retain the soul of an amateur, have signed up and hopes are that many more will follow rapidly.
The task of encouraging the general public to read more is huge. It will include a series of conferences around the country on different themes, starting at the end of 2009 and continuing throughout 2010. It will mirror the Book 2010 project in bringing together book professionals of all kinds—cultural associations, researchers, journalists and the half-dozen relevant ministries—and will culminate in a conference that should crystallise the debates into proposals for action.
The reading project will focus largely on libraries, both their target audience and their regional spread, according to Yvert. Since the French government accelerated devolution in the early 1980s, libraries and more recently "mediatheques" have sprung up all over the country, and books remain the item in greatest demand on the internet. But in rural areas, libraries are becoming more and more sparse, and although free book loans were aimed at low-income readers, most borrowers are middle class, he said. The decline in reading by children and adolescents is generally considered another problem, even though sales of books for these age groups rose by 18.5% last year, Yvert points out.
Yvert will also launch a number of studies on "who does what, and how to improve practices". These will be conducted through a working group that was set up by the Book Council and is headed by Yvert. The studies, which will be displayed on the CNL website, will be co-ordinated to ensure coherence among them and no duplication, he added.
Books have always taken centre stage in the discreet yet rapid-talking Yvert's life. A historian, he taught in three universities—the Sorbonne, the Institut Catholique and the Institute of Political Science (Sciences Po)—worked as an editor of history and political essays for Plon-Perrin, ran an antiquarian bookshop in central Paris for seven years and has written four published books.
He also worked as prospective analysis advisor to Dominique de Villepin, when the latter was first minister of foreign affairs, then interior minister and finally prime minister. Yvert would go back to selling books without hesitation. Having held on to a stock of 1,000 volumes, "I could open a bookshop within a week", he said. That is a fortnight less than the three weeks it took him to wind up his shop in 2002, when he entered the corridors of power alongside de Villepin.
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