French book site will review whole Rentrée Littéraire

The French books and reading website Babelio, which claims to be the leader in its field by a long shot, aims to post at least one review of all the hundreds of new novels being published during this year’s Rentrée Littéraire between August and mid-October.

The 480,000 people who are signed up to Babelio are asked to name the book they wish to review and have until 6th November when the winner of the leading Goncourt prize is announced, to help reach the target. Last year, the site posted more than 8,000 reviews of the 2016 rentrée novels, which it says is equivalent to two and half years’ worth of the the book reviews published by Le Monde’s weekly supplement Le Monde des Livres. The 8,000-plus reviews covered 80% of the new titles.

The number of titles being published at this rentrée between August and mid-October is rising again to 581, according to the trade publication Livres Hebdo, or to 577 by Babelio’s count. This follows declines to 589 in 2015 and 560 in 2016 from 607 in 2014, but is still way down from the record 727 published in 2007.