Feature Guest of Honour
Brexit plays a part in this, Boin adds: “The French- German partnership is probably even more important for the European Union now that the UK is about to leave.”
New wave A total of 190 of the 282 French publishers exhibiting at the fair will have space on the BIEF stand, 40 more than usual, which means the size of the stand has had to be increased from the usual 600 sq m to 650 sq m. “Many of the extra exhibitors are publishers from the provinces,” explains Boin. In addition, 30 Francophone sub-Saharan houses have taken space at Frankfurt for the first time.
French authors will total 180, 130 of them making up the official delegation. These will include world-famous names such as Michel Houellebecq and Yasmina Reza, and new young talent, such as Alice Zeniter, whose L’Art de perdre was a huge critical hit of this year’s “rentrée” autumn publishing schedule in France. Gilles Haeri, chairman and c.e.o. of Flammarion, says: “Germany is the most successful foreign country for Houellebecq [who is published by Flammarion].” Even without being the Guest of Honour, France has been one of the biggest exhibitors at Frankfurt for years, and usually holds around 100 B2B meetings to negotiate rights sales, says Boin. Aside English, France is the most popular language to translate texts from in Germany, which strikes some 12,000–13,000 rights and co-publishing contracts a year with French publishers, as well as deals for some 40 languages, and about the same number for translation rights acquisitions. Those are positive statistics, and some believe that the Guest of Honour programme has already proved its worth, and more than paid for itself. Vincent Monadé, president of the National Book Centre (Centre National du Livre, CNL), says: “The economic objectives [of France participating in the programme] have already been achieved.” Monadé, whose organisation reports to the culture ministry and provides subsidies and other financial support to all players in the book indus- try, told The Bookseller Daily that in the three years since former prime minister Manuel Valls officially accepted the invitation for France to be Guest of Honour, sales of French book rights to Germany have risen by 30%–50% when compared to the previous three years’ figures. He says: “And prices have risen too, but by vari- able amounts according to the title.” The results are much beter than
expected, says Monadé, adding that he could not give more precise figures because they were confidential. On the whole, book professionals were reluctant to accept the invitation initially because they wondered whether the investment of time and money would be worthwhile. “I was neutral in the
24 11th October 2017
France’s culture minister Françoise Nyssen has publishing previous: she is a director of esteemed French list Actes Sud
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