Paris (AFP)

Will Guillaume Musso, Joël Dicker, Bernard Minier, John le Carré and Elena Ferrante save the publishing world? This is the gamble made by publishers who bet on a handful of bestsellers to revive a sector on the verge of suffocation after two months of confinement.

The reopening of bookstores since Monday has finally struck the hour of joyful reunion between books and their readers but does not erase the deep crisis in which the publishing world is plunged.

The coronavirus epidemic has affected the entire book chain. The booksellers had to lower their iron curtain on March 17, but publishers and distributors also suspended their activities and the recovery is taking place drop by drop.

To give oxygen to booksellers, many of whom are facing a debt wall, the publishers have all decided to reduce their production.

For years, the issue of editorial overproduction has been a sea serpent. In 2018, according to figures from the legal deposit of the National Library of France (BnF) more than 82,000 titles, or 225 books per day, were published!

For the months of March to June alone, a total of 5,300 new releases and new editions were on the publishers' program.

The coronavirus epidemic has stopped this avalanche.

- Weight loss treatment -

The publishers' programs for May and June underwent a severe weight loss.

On the flip side, the first victims of this diet are the novelists and the so-called "demanding" works.

The publishing house Delcourt has announced "le coeur tight" that its new collection of French literature dubbed "Les avrils" will finally be launched in January 2021. The first two titles of this collection whose launch was initially scheduled for April 8, then June 3 were first novels.

At Gallimard, the first outings will take place on May 28 and, initially, Antoine Gallimard's house intends to put up for sale works promised to be successful but which suffered from being published just before confinement. Thus, we can find on the tables of booksellers the latest novel by Leïla Slimani, "The house of others" or the last story of the Nobel Prize winner JMG Le Clézio, "Breton song".

The publisher relies heavily on the last book of Italian Elena Ferrante, "The lying life of adults", in bookstores on June 9, to make up for some of the considerable losses in its turnover.

- Heavy goods vehicles to the rescue -

For post-containment, the heavyweights are called upon to rescue the main publishing houses.

The house of XO publishes the new thriller by Bernard Minier, "The valley" on May 20, Calmann-Levy launches on May 26 (400,000 copies!) "La vie est un roman" by Guillaume Musso, on May 27 readers will find the new book by the Swiss Joël Dicker, "The enigma of the room 622" (editions of Fallois) also printed in 400,000 copies and on May 28, place John the Square with "Return of service" (Seuil).

Many publishers have so-called "general public" books in their bags. Thus, on June 3, Actes Sud will publish "Women without mercy", the new title of the Swedish crime queen Camilla Läckberg while on June 17, Flammarion will propose "The torch of the Caspian", a new investigation by Aurel the consul , the character created by Jean-Christophe Rufin.

Small and medium-sized publishers are worried about this tendency to favor "best-selling" and the race for novelty.

We must "slow down the race for novelty, which sees a considerable number of texts starting with the pestle without having had time to reach readers," said in a column published on April 28 in Humanity several dozen houses. independent edition.

In an "appeal to the readers" launched this week, 113 independent houses warned against "an overproduction, harmful for the environment and which floods the bookstores, drowns a quality editorial production, more daring but less visible, shortens more and more the life of books, intensifies returns and the shelling of unsold books. "

"Publishing less" means accepting the fact of "having more bestsellers", an essential condition for keeping a big publishing house afloat, replied Olivier Nora, boss of Grasset, in an interview published in Le World dated Friday.

"There are still too many rapidly obsolete books. This is where we should prioritize our efforts to be less lavish in the future," he conceded.

© 2020 AFP