When authors are asked not to send any more manuscripts

Books from the Blanche de Gallimard Collection exhibited at the 2019 Book Fair © JOEL SAGET / AFP

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3 min

It appeared on the Gallimard editions site a few days ago.

Authors are urged not to send their manuscripts, temporarily, to the overwhelmed publishing house in this time of crisis.

An attitude that arouses various reactions in the literary world, even incomprehension.

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“ 

In view of the exceptional circumstances, we ask you to stop sending the manuscripts.

Take care of yourself always and good reads.

 This is the message that the famous publishing house is currently posting on its website.

Before the health crisis, Gallimard received around thirty manuscripts per day.

But since March 2020 and successive confinements, this figure has risen to 50 per working day.

The publishing house, which wants to give equal attention to everyone, is overwhelmed by demands and can no longer do its job.

Hence this advice to authors to stop sending them for the moment.

But this policy is far from being followed by the other houses.

Since January, I have received a lot,"

explains

Laure Belloeuvre, director of the manuscripts department at Seuil.

I manage to look at all the manuscripts that reach me, so I don't intend to ask the authors to stop sending me manuscripts.

I did it once, during the [first] lockdown.

It was something special that I didn't like to do.

 "

A record year?

It remains to ensure the work for the editors.

Le Seuil, for example, which usually receives 3,500 manuscripts per year, has received 1,200 manuscripts in three months since January.

If the pace continues, 2021 will be a banner year.

At the same time, the closing of bookstores twice in 2020, in the spring and in the fall, resulted in publication postponements, causing a traffic jam in 2021. In addition, for ten years, the French have read less and less.

And confinement did not help matters.

According to a report published by the National Book Center at the end of March, “ 

the year 2020 is marked by an overall decline in reading

 ”.

Among young people between 15 and 24 years old, only 80% today consider themselves to be readers, a drop of 12 points compared to the 2019 survey.

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