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

Judgment was reserved for October 25. 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. She invoked 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

Albin Michel defended himself by invoking non-compliance with 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”.

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