Eric Zemmour claims 3 million euros from his former publisher Albin Michel

In a trial held on Wednesday, May 31, Eric Zemmour claimed three million euros in damages from his former publisher Albin Michel, for wrongful breach of contract. The publishing house had given up publishing the polemicist’s sixth book, “France has not said its last word”, after editing five others. She invoked as a reason for her decision the intention of the author of “to become a politician” and of “make his next book a key element of his candidacy” in the presidential election.

“Albin Michel makes a unilateral termination” of a publishing contract signed in 2015, and this “termination is illegal”, accused the lawyer of Eric Zemmour, absent at the trial. He denounces “political censorship”which would have deprived the far-right polemicist of a publisher and would have forced him to “invent yourself as a publisher”. Eric Zemmour’s book was finally published by his own publishing house Rubempré, created for the occasion.

A manuscript delay

The publishing house Albin Michel defended itself by invoking the non-respect of contractual deadlines by Eric Zemmour. The submission of a manuscript was scheduled for 2019, but in the spring of 2021, no early manuscript had been sent to the publisher. In addition, Albin Michel’s lawyer points out that “Suddenly Monsieur Zemmour told us: it’s going to be a campaign book”, gold “Mr. Zemmour cannot impose this on his publisher, when the contractual deadline for delivery has expired”added the lawyer in his argument.

For Albin Michel’s lawyer, “all of this was controlled”, by Eric Zemmour who preferred to self-publish for financial reasons. The book actually sold 272,000 copies in 2021. Albin Michel estimates that the author has pocketed “roughly” the double by publishing his book in his own publishing house Rubempré.