Outrage in France over €30 public reading fees

French authors, librarians and volunteers are up in arms over libraries and other non-profit venues having to pay a fee of at least €30 to hold public readings in the country.

Authors’ societies including La Charte and the Société des Gens de Lettres (SGDL) wrote to the Société Civile des Editeurs de Langue Française (Scelf) in March questioning the fee and were offered an appointment in the autumn, “leaving libraries the choice of paying or breaking the law,” according to the petition Shéhérazade en Colère (Scherezade is Angry), which was opened on change.org on 18th April and had gathered 1,412 signatures at the time of writing.

Public readings are considered “representation”, which is covered by copyright and subject to the fee even if the venue is non-profit and the event is a story-telling hour.

Collection was transferred from the authors’ society Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD) to the publishers’ agency Scelf in January 2016 with no fanfare, the petition says.

The SACD exempted libraries from the fee, but the Scelf does not guarantee to do the same, the French trade publication Livres Hebdo quoted French Library Association (Association des Bibliothèques de France) president Xavier Galaup as saying. The fee represents a lot of money for a library’s activity budget and could threaten or endanger readings, he added.

Geoffroy Pelletier, SGDL director, told Livres Hebdo he is also concerned that the obligation for books fairs and festivals to pay the fee, including for authors reading their own work, could reduce the latters’ earnings. The Scelf pays public reading rights to the publishers, who pay at least half to the authors a year later, whereas the SACD used to pay the full fee to the authors, Pelletier added.

Scelf director Nathalie Piaskowski said negotiations would begin in September outside the festival period to enable all the players involved to attend, Livres Hebdo reported. Scelf’s letters to the town halls about the fees were “in no way” aimed at libraries, but at staged readings organized by municipal authorities and often performed by theatre troups, Piaskowski told the online book publication ActuaLitté.