"French publishing has changed a lot since the first years of (Bernard Pivot's TV show) Apostrophes. With the advent of the industrialization of distribution and as mass-media was taking off, "the Gutenberg galaxy", still mostly a family craft in the 1970s, dedicated to quality, turns to the wider public just as powerful industrial and financial groups are investing in books. Avant-garde series and prestigious publications are abandoned to make room for 'fast books' that get rave reviews. French literature itself is becoming imperceptibly more informal; authors are starting to produce texts taken from "writing degree zero" that are presented as works worthy of a Nobel prize. Facing the pressure of the standardization of literature, young and not-so-young publishers in small and large companies, resist and try to defend another literature that is not formatted to please the greatest number. All of these years of publication are also years of intense creation, great innovation and audacious, surprising and inventive works. What were the details of this transformation? Who were the actors? How did the NRF fight for its position as leader? What were the tactics and strategies of the old labels of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in order to prevail in the bookstores? In this detailed account of the "the daily life of the book under Bernard Pivot," from the death of Gaston Gallimard to "the marketing of the Houellebecq product," Olivier Bessard-Banquy recounts... thirty years of publishing that are also thirty years of immediate literary history. Packed with anecdotes that shed inside light on the workings of the old publishing companies, The Life of the Contemporary Book offers an agile and sometimes funny chronicle marked by authors' whims, the painful sessions poring over manuscripts and brainstorming the best way of launching the new. Between economy and culture, publishing is unveiled, still just as fascinating, at the intersection of the paper and the electronic."Thursday, July 30, 2009
Olivier Bessard-Banquy
"French publishing has changed a lot since the first years of (Bernard Pivot's TV show) Apostrophes. With the advent of the industrialization of distribution and as mass-media was taking off, "the Gutenberg galaxy", still mostly a family craft in the 1970s, dedicated to quality, turns to the wider public just as powerful industrial and financial groups are investing in books. Avant-garde series and prestigious publications are abandoned to make room for 'fast books' that get rave reviews. French literature itself is becoming imperceptibly more informal; authors are starting to produce texts taken from "writing degree zero" that are presented as works worthy of a Nobel prize. Facing the pressure of the standardization of literature, young and not-so-young publishers in small and large companies, resist and try to defend another literature that is not formatted to please the greatest number. All of these years of publication are also years of intense creation, great innovation and audacious, surprising and inventive works. What were the details of this transformation? Who were the actors? How did the NRF fight for its position as leader? What were the tactics and strategies of the old labels of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in order to prevail in the bookstores? In this detailed account of the "the daily life of the book under Bernard Pivot," from the death of Gaston Gallimard to "the marketing of the Houellebecq product," Olivier Bessard-Banquy recounts... thirty years of publishing that are also thirty years of immediate literary history. Packed with anecdotes that shed inside light on the workings of the old publishing companies, The Life of the Contemporary Book offers an agile and sometimes funny chronicle marked by authors' whims, the painful sessions poring over manuscripts and brainstorming the best way of launching the new. Between economy and culture, publishing is unveiled, still just as fascinating, at the intersection of the paper and the electronic."
