The authors of Éditions Les Malins have received nothing for several years from the income from the reproduction of their works. Unprecedented fact: their publisher, one of the largest in children’s literature in Quebec, pocketed all of the winnings. If this practice was not illegal, it nevertheless aroused the ire in the literary world when it was revealed in broad daylight last year, which led Les Éditions Les Malins to change their way of doing things. .
Reproduction rights apply in particular to the use of extracts from books as part of the school curriculum. It goes without saying that for children’s authors, this often represents a significant income.
The custom in Quebec is that the publisher and the author divide equally the profits from the reproduction of a book. A standard that does not have the force of law, but that all publishers in the world of literature respected, believed Copibec, the company that oversees reproduction rights in Quebec. Copibec’s board of directors was surprised to learn in the spring of 2022 that a publishing house as important as Les Malins departed from this practice.
Éditions Les Malins has published several successful books in recent years, including the series The complicated life of Léa Olivier of the author Catherine Girard-Audet, the sister of the president of the publishing house, also a shareholder in the company. Les Malins also publishes Olivier Bernard, known as the Pharmachien, and the successful children’s authors Daniel Brouillette and Marie Potvin.
Case settled
Some authors had complained last year to Copibec not to receive 50% of their reproduction rights with Éditions Les Malins, as is the case for other publishing houses. The Union of Quebec Writers and Writers (UNEQ), which sits on Copibec’s board of directors, therefore sent a formal notice to the Malins, even if their way of doing things had nothing to do with it.illegal. In the contracts that the authors signed with Les Malins, it was always clearly stipulated that the publisher kept 100% of the income from reproduction.
“Les Malins have always said that they put that money into the marketing of their books. And it’s true that, unlike several publishing houses which are content to publish the books, Les Malins invested a lot in promotion”, tempers Florence Darveau, who worked for this publisher until last December. Also an author represented by Les Malins, she says, however, that she has always had an uneasiness with this way of doing things on an ethical level.
Les Éditions Les Malins finally backtracked last year and are committed to complying with the 50-50 convention in the future. What’s more, the publishing house compensated its authors by paying them what they should have pocketed in the last three years for reproduction rights if the 50-50 standard had applied. This amount is estimated at “a few tens of thousands of dollars”.
The UNEQ now considers that this is a settled file. Note that the new president of the writers’ union, the author Pierre-Yves Villeneuve, did not want to comment directly on the file to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest: it is also published by Les Malins.
Not a mistake
The president of Éditions Les Malins, Marc-André Audet, still assumes today his decision to have kept control of reproduction rights for ten years. “No, it’s true, it’s not orthodox. But we are not an orthodox publishing house either. To do like the others, we would obtain the same results as the others. It’s unorthodox to announce so many TV adaptations for books like we do. It is not orthodox in literature to pay for space on buses for promotion, ”underlines the man who founded Les Éditions Les Malins in 2008.
During the first 12 years, very few authors had complained of not touching 50% on the reproduction rights, affirms Mr. Audet. “It was clearly stated in our contracts. We acted with raised visors. There was nothing illegal,” he recalls. It must be said that reproduction represented very little money at the time. Marc-André Audet reports, for example, having received approximately $16,000 in 2017. It is therefore barely $8,000 that escaped all of the authors of Les Malins.
Things have changed, however, during the pandemic. Income from reproduction literally exploded. Even before the formal notice from the UNEQ, Marc-André Audet indicates that he had taken the initiative to pay his authors 25% of the reproduction rights. In the face of criticism, he indeed ended up folding and he took the example of almost all publishing houses by redistributing 50% of these revenues to authors.
The president of Éditions Les Malins would like to point out that the UNEQ’s warning has nothing to do with this reversal of the situation. He also believes that he was the victim of “intimidation” by the former union leadership.