Literary predators

Like someone watching an animal documentary, I have observed with interest three things that have happened in recent months in the French literary market, a traditionally protectionist market that has managed to defend itself, in part, from Anglo-Saxon cultural colonizations and which, for this reason, I furiously envy.The first noteworthy news is that at the beginning of March this year it was announced that Amazon would be a "partner" of the Paris Book Fair; by partner they obviously meant that it would put a lot of money into it. For a while now, our neighbors have had a tug-of-war with Amazon: since 2023, a law has imposed a minimum shipping fee of three euros for book shipments (I read that Urtasun recently said they are studying doing something similar in our country). The fact is that Amazon interprets, very conveniently, that if the book is delivered to a locker, this fee does not need to be applied. The discussion is served, of course. That Amazon is a threat to bookstores is nothing new (I agree with what Oriol Soler said recently on this, although thinking that Amazon is our only problem seems reductive and a bit misleading); what is new is that following the announcement of Amazon's sponsorship, the French Booksellers Association decided to stand up and withdraw from the Fair on the grounds that Amazon has predatory and hegemonic aspirations that are a danger to everyone in the sector: authors, publishers, and booksellers. I am pleased to see the fighting spirit of the French and I wonder what would happen if this had taken place in our country. I get the impression that we would have swallowed it whole, because we are always short on audacity and full of fears, and perhaps also because the links in our system are weaker than the French ones. The fact is that following the controversy, Amazon decided to withdraw from the Book Fair. Sometimes, standing up yields results: let's tattoo it on ourselves so we don't forget it.The second noteworthy fact is that this year the Paris Fair has not counted on the main imprints of Hachette, which I would say is the French publisher with the largest market share (similar or higher than that of the Planeta group in Spain, if AI does not deceive me). Not only has it not gone, but it set up a small alternative festival on its own during the month of March. This confirms that we must not only fear the big international groups but also the national ones, as the predatory and hegemonic will affects us all. The controversy at Grasset publishing house

The third event that interested me is what happened with the Grasset imprint, which is precisely one of Hachette's most important. There they publish (they used to publish) authors like Virginie Despentes, Vanessa Springora, Sorj Chalandon, Bernard-Henri Lévy or Pascal Bruckner; they and 110 more authors made public an open letter in Libération announcing that, following the dismissal of Olivier Nora (the historic editor of Grasset for twenty-six years), they would no longer sign with Grasset. 115 authors, oh my god!, and another fifty have since joined the protest. I am almost convinced that the authors from here would have resigned ourselves to it and moved on, although, of course, in private we would have complained to exhaustion: that's how we are, in private we say everything (praise and blame) but in public we keep quiet like no one else. All of Grasset's mess has its trigger in the owner, Vincent Bolloré, a magnate who with his millions dedicates himself to promoting far-right ideas, for example, through Europe 1, the most important private radio in France which – oh, what a coincidence – decided to buy shortly before the French elections. We can already imagine that the billionaire has not ruffled a single hair over the departure of this hundred or so authors who consider Nora's departure an "unacceptable attack on editorial independence and creative freedom" and who refuse to "be hostages of an ideological war that seeks to impose authoritarianism on culture and the media"; Bolloré has not been moved because we can deduce that literature, in fact, doesn't give a damn about it. All of this is, without a doubt, very sad and discouraging news. And what do we do with all this? On the one hand, we should look at it closely and follow it with attention, because as that saying goes about the neighbor's beard, perhaps we should start soaking ours. On the other hand, it would be advisable to become aware that keeping quiet and swallowing is not always the best strategy, that resistance is sometimes not only necessary but also useful, that the collective has a strength that the individual does not have, etcetera. Well, perhaps it would be useless and it would be better to stay on the couch sprawled out watching documentaries, because there are plenty for all tastes: in some the zebra always succumbs to the lion, in others a buffalo charges a predator with a horn thrust, and in some there are even fish that join together forming a swirl to confuse and save themselves from the worst of their predators.