In September, while Kevin Lambert was multiplying the selections for prestigious literary prizes in France for his novel May our joy remainits Quebec publishing house, Héliotrope, announced that its books would be distributed in Europe next January.
Until now, the Montreal house did business with an overseas agency which managed the transfer of rights with publishers interested in publishing books from its catalog on European territory (such as Le Nouvel Attila, for the three novels by Kevin Lambert ).
“Going into distribution is an ambitious challenge that must be carefully measured. This is the reason, moreover, why we took time,” explains Florence Noyer, general director of Héliotrope.
After seeing many of its authors published by French publishers, the Montreal house decided that the model of transfer of rights no longer suited it. “The major disadvantage of the transfer of rights, in my opinion,” continues Florence Noyer, “is that we cannot defend all the titles in our catalog. »
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Florence Noyer, general director of Héliotrope editions
Publishers may be interested in an author’s title, but not necessarily in all of their work. And our approach is to have an author policy; all our authors are with us from book to book and we are building a line with that. With the transfer of rights, we no longer see this line at all, and it seemed important to us to be consistent with what we do here in Quebec.
Florence Noyer, general director of Héliotrope
Indeed, in the case of a transfer of rights, the publisher (European, for example) buys from a Quebec house the publication rights for a book to republish it on its territory, with another cover and under the colors from his house ; it then assumes the costs of production, printing, logistics and promotion. On the other hand, to see its own books in European bookstores, the Quebec publisher must partner with a European distributor-distributor who takes care of the entire logistical part of the process and takes care of opening the doors to the market.
Take the plunge
10 years ago, Quebec fiction publishers were quite rare to distribute their books directly in Europe. We found them in children’s books, in comics and in essays, especially. But curiosity for Quebec literature was present, according to Dominique Janelle. At the book fairs in Paris, Brussels and even Geneva (where Quebec was the guest of honor in 2017), she saw people leaving with piles of books. “I went to bookstores and asked them why there were no Quebec books when they were so popular at the Salon,” remembers the woman who has been responsible for international development at Québec Édition since 2009, a committee of the National Association of Book Publishers (ANEL) which is dedicated to promoting Quebec and Franco-Canadian publishing abroad.
It was in this context that she co-founded the Tulitu bookstore in Brussels, in 2015, which was the only one in Europe at the time, with the Librairie du Québec in Paris, where one could stock up on Quebec literature. .
Little by little, logistical barriers were overcome by publishers who dared to launch into distribution. La Peuplade and Mémoire d’encrier were among the first in fiction to distribute 100% of their catalog in Europe, in 2018. For Simon Philippe Turcot, general director and co-founder of La Peuplade, “you had to be everywhere” to be able to achieve a more general public, he confides.
Five years later, the two publishers consider that they have succeeded in their bet. At La Peuplade, the copies intended for the European market (identical to those sold here) are now printed directly in France to arrive in bookstores the day after publication in Quebec. And the house’s turnover is now greater in Europe than in Canada. For example, the novel by Dominique Scali, Sailors don’t know how to swim, sold nearly 17,000 copies in Europe compared to 10,000 in Canada. The Chicoutimi house also saw two of its books selected for prizes this fall in France: the novel by Louis-Daniel Godin The account is good for the Wepler Prize – Fondation La Poste, and To my brothertranslation by the Finnish EL Karhu, in the first selection of the foreign Medici.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Simon Philippe Turcot, general director and co-founder of the publishing house La Peuplade
This is development that was not easy to do. You must be present on site. At the beginning, I went to France every five weeks.
Simon Philippe Turcot, general director and co-founder of La Peuplade
Since then, La Peuplade has had a sales director, Julien Delorme, who carries out ongoing local work with booksellers, the media and festivals. Mémoire d’encrier also has an office in Europe to be able to manage its press relations, in addition to the trips made regularly by the members of its Montreal team to meet players in the sector. “It’s very precious, these meetings, because we have forgotten that literature is about human experiences,” insists Rodney Saint-Éloi, founder of the house.
Different strategies
Although the list of Quebec publishers who are distributed in Europe continues to grow – La Peuplade, Le Quartanier, Les 400 coups, Mémoire d’encrier, Écosociété, La Montagne secrete, La Pastèque, Lux Éditeur, QuébecAmérique since l Last fall and now Heliotrope – some still don’t intend to make the jump, like Alto. “I have already had approaches, but the French temptation is still not there,” testifies Antoine Tanguay, president and publishing director.
We made the choice, as a team, to collaborate with an agency that has always worked very well with us. We said to ourselves: we are going to concentrate on our market and leave it to French publishers, who know the market much better than us, to defend our authors.
Antoine Tanguay, president and publishing director at Alto
Antoine Tanguay adds that he would never have been able to compete with the promotional work of the publisher Philippe Rey, who published in Europe the novel by Éric Chacour, What I know about you. “Philippe organized meetings with Éric in more than 600 bookstores. You have to ensure a physical presence on site and I can’t do that. »
The Quebec publisher nevertheless benefits from this, since the transfer of rights allowed him to negotiate a percentage of approximately 10% which is separated between the author and the publisher, after the payment of a share to the agent. “Every sale of the book benefits everyone, that’s for sure. And the morning of the Renaudot announcement [lorsque Ce que je sais de toi s’est retrouvé dans la première sélection du prix]I had orders by the hundreds,” he maintains.
Élodie Comtois, who is an editor at Écosociété and president of Québec Édition, points out that each publisher has different strategies with regard to its export. “These are investments, as a publisher, to choose to distribute. Écosociété has been distributed in France since 2005, but we changed distributor to Harmonia Mundi in 2018, which gave even more weight to our representation. »
Distribution also involves reviewing certain ways of doing things, she adds. At La Peuplade, for example, we ensure that the books are ready much further in advance; on the Écosociété side, we focus more on the titles. “We are going to be careful of big misinterpretations; We’re not going to purposely use a word that French speakers won’t understand from the first second, because that can really be harmful. But there is no longer at all this issue, this desire to police that we saw at a certain time,” emphasizes Élodie Comtois.