INTERVIEW
In June 2018, along with other writers, Joann Sfar signed an open letter to the government published in Le Parisien . The signatories worried about their social and fiscal system, while the figures concerning comic strip activity are indeed alarming. According to a 2016 survey, 53% of comic book writers earn less than the Smic equivalent and 36% are under the poverty line. More than a year after this rostrum, the Rabbi Cat's cartoonist comes back to this situation.
"It publishes 5,000 albums a year"
"It has never been easy to live comics, but the difficulties are changing," said Joann Sfar. The author, he published his first comic in 1994, at 23 years. "When I started, it was very difficult to get published, but there were only 300 comics a year, so when you were published, you could think that you were professional," recalls he. Today, things are very different. "It publishes 5,000 albums a year, which means that an author who publishes, even for a long time, does not necessarily succeed in living there.There was a lot of protection for the world of the book of implementations in recent years but no protection for the authors, "laments Joann Sfar.
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"It's a very complex subject"
From this platform, and with the creation of the League of Authors in September 2018, the draftsman hopes that things will change. The objectives are simple: to improve the conditions of creation ("social protection, remuneration, copyright, supervision by the labor code, rebalancing the author / publisher relationship", can we read on the site of the collective). "Has anyone been heard Yes, but it's a very complex subject," he concedes. For Joann Sfar, "we must protect this profession". "If we believe the authorities, it's underway," he concludes.