After experiencing remarkable growth in recent years, Quebec publishing is stabilizing and renewing with new challenges. Eco-responsibility, increased fees, accessibility, points of sale, the Numbers and Letters series focuses on several of these challenges that the book industry is preparing to meet. Second text.
“Everyone wants to have a book published and everyone wants to be read. In reality, this is far from what happens, and we know it, in the middle…” admits Romy Snauwaert, the general manager of the Nota bene publishing group. A publisher among those who, in recent years, have reduced the number of books they produce annually. Because can Quebec really read the 6737 titles filed in 2020 for legal deposit (including brochures)?
Are there too many books in Quebec? “I don’t like that question,” said with a sigh Patrick Joly, general manager of the Banque de Titres de Langue Française. According to Gaspard’s report on sales in independent bookstores that his team produces, 4,511 new Quebec titles were sold at least one copy in 2022.
Which reader, which critic, which professors can read, each year, even half of these books? Does Quebec publish too much for its needs? “I don’t like the question, because what it entails is then naming the books that would be ‘excess'”, thinks Mr. Joly. “I never want to have to do that exercise. »
“I can tell you, me, what books are too many! laughs bookseller Éric Simard, president of the Association des libraires du Québec. “Anyone who reads a lot knows that there are a lot of them, books of very average quality”, continues the owner of the Librairie du Square, rue Saint-Denis.
“There are several every year that I don’t even want to recommend to my clients. For years, the bookseller has called for “publishing less, publishing better”. A reflection on the saturation of the market which is now shared. Because the figures are clear, and we must add the 32,049 foreign novelties listed by Gaspard in 2022. With the Quebec novelties, the account for last year rises to 36,060 pounds. To follow this production to the letter, it would have been necessary to read 99 books a day, for a year.
So many works
“I don’t have time to absorb a season when a new one arrives,” says Mr. Simard. It’s just not possible anymore. I become less and less excited with each new school year, when it should be my pleasure as a bookseller to discover new titles to share with my customers. »
“I’m starting to hear from Quebec publishers who are looking to publish less, or who are beginning this reflection,” he says. The figures of the Statistics of the edition in Quebec prove him right. In 2017, there were 8,917 titles printed there; by 2019, the number had dropped to 8,582. By 2020, the number of titles was 6,737 (all of these numbers include pamphlets).
This is the lowest number of publications recorded by these legal deposit statistics since 1998. It is explained by the impact of the pandemic – confinement, printing works and distributors closed for a few weeks. We will have to wait for the 2021 statistics to see if the downward movement has really begun in Quebec publishing. But the sound of the bell collected by The duty suggests yes.
At Nota Bene editions, this movement has been underway since 2019. “It was a rock’n’roll year, we had 75 titles. “It was professional burnout in the team that was the sign that a transition was needed, breathes Mme Snauwaert.
“We pulled the plug. We went to 36 or 37 titles. Then there was the pandemic. In 2022, we made 28 titles. In 2023, we will have 25. We have redesigned everything. The collections, the literary directors, the publication forecasts for the authors, everything has moved, to a smaller scale.
“Publishing better, for us, involves the human factor”, continues the director of the houses Triptyque, Lizard in love and Varia, among others. Take better care of the team, the texts, the authors. Work promoting books more carefully, longer.
At Guy Saint-Jean Éditeur, the director, Jean Paré, has reduced the number of acquisitions, these foreign books that he has translated, from 2020. Translations accounted for 20 to 25% of his annual production. ; they now represent between 10 and 12% of it.
Mr. Paré notes on the other hand that the diversity of his production is necessary for him. “When I look at our sales score, I see that it is made up of Pierre-Yves McSween-style best-selling bombs (The love bill), but also of several different small titles which end up, together, to make a good return. »
“We have made books that never appear in the charts, but that we sell out, that sell their entire first edition and that we are going to reprint. It is for these that we keep an expanded catalog. »
The French giants
In the book sector at Quebecor, production has been greatly reduced… and remains significant. “This year, we have between 220 and 230 new titles,” says Judith Landry, Director General, Publishing, Book Sector at Quebecor. Isn’t that too much for Quebec? “It’s for 18 different publishing houses,” she recalls, including L’Homme, La Semaine, La Bagnole, Libre Expression and L’Hexagone.
“And we don’t come close to the French,” says Mme Landry in comparison. “Houses in France comparable to Éditions de l’Homme release 300 to 400 new releases per year. We are far from the mark. Except that France, with its 68 million inhabitants, has a much larger pool of French-speaking readers-buyers than the 8.8 million Quebecers, right?
Mme Landry hears the argument. ” Yes. Our return rates are good. This is a clue for me. We see that our books are selling, and each of the titles of each of our 18 publishers has been well chosen, well worked out, at the marketing level as well. »
At the Quartanier editions, we have also reduced the pace. Like at Leméac. “The shutdown imposed by the pandemic has slowed down all publishing programs,” explains the director, Pierre Filion. “I had 75 outings a year before the pandemic, I went down to 61 or 62 and we’ll stop there. That’s a 15-20% drop. »
At Front Froid, which does comics, we have rather increased the very small production. “In the last five years, we have produced a little more. We have two in-house collections, we have been more active since 2019. We release 6 to 7 books a year, ”explains publisher Renaud Plante. “We work on each of our titles with a lot of attention, we follow them to bookstores. »
The new pushes the old
One of the reasons for this large production in Quebec editions is what bookseller Éric Simard calls “the tyranny of novelty”. A strange paradox for the book, an object that we imagine to have a long life, an artifact of memory.
“There is historically a whole promotional machine that frames the release of a book, which included the media. The few who still talk about books only linger on novelties. But this movement of research of novelties makes that currently, in Quebec, a release of book leaves with a life expectancy of three months. Because bookstore shelves are not expandable. The new pushes the old there.
“It’s too short, three months, to have a book read and find its buyers,” continues Mr. Simard, “especially when you know the time the author has put into it, and the care given to it by the publisher. . ” What are the solutions ? Publish even less?
Some have whispered to the Duty to limit access to new foreign releases to promote Quebec publishing. Where is the balance between cultural richness, varied imaginations and voices and fair production? The question remains alive. Like its cruel logical consequence: which Quebec books would it have been preferable not to publish?