Publisher Pierre Lespérance, a publishing monument in Quebec, has died. Its publishing empire included, at its pinnacle, several publishing houses, including Éditions de l’Homme, as well as a powerful distribution network, a printing press and bookstores. He was 84 years old.
“Experience may explain something”, said this man who was not very talkative, when explaining his successes.
The Éditions de l’Homme, the house to which he was most attached, publish several great editorial successes, but also essays that provoke debate, including The Insolences of Brother So-and-so by Jean-Paul Desbiens, as well asQuebec Option by René Lévesque and the Memoirs by Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
His popular books often deal with health, sexuality, food, paranormal phenomena, the world of sport and culture in the broad sense. How many cookbooks, animal guides, psycho pop books has he published over the decades?
A sequel to success
The practical guides on photography signed by Antoine Desilets, just like the guides to Quebec antiquities by Michel Lessard, Pierre Lespérance ensure them an important influence. One of his biggest sales successes was the Car Guide, piloted for a long time by Jacques Duval. Its authors are often doubled by outstanding communicators, for example Jacques Salomé and Guy Corneau.
Pierre Lespérance is the first Quebec publisher to develop large-scale partnerships and a solid foundation for the distribution of Quebec books in Europe. “Our books traveled by plane for next to nothing because they wrote ‘Our books travel with Sabena’, the defunct Belgian airline. In 1972 alone, for his debut, he exported more than 150,000 Quebec books to Europe.
Its houses also publish literary works. Agaguk by Yves Thériault was first published by Éditions de l’Homme. Pierre Lespérance will later buy various literary signs. He gets his hands on the fund of the Fifteen publishers, on VLB publisher, as well as on the Éditions de l’Hexagone.
An heir
His grandfather and father had printed the courthouse newspaper. He knew he was an heir. “I know in any case that it is not a gift. But it’s true that I have an understanding of what people like… And since I was also a printer, we could take care to improve our books as well as possible, to follow them well, one at a time. »
Near his vast office, located on the top floor of a building that looked like a labyrinth, he kept in a case a rare copy of The Brotherhood of the Good Deaththe first book published in French in Montreal in 1776.
Alain Stanké will begin at Éditions de l’Homme, where he replaces Jacques Hébert. “There were launches every week. People came to drink cocktails, eat, see what’s new. It was daring to publish a book every week in season. At the same time, Pierre Lespérance was very far-sighted. He counted. »
The beginnings
His father also published, he explained, “little 32-page booklets like the IXE-13THE Guy Vercheres, Diana the beautiful adventurerthe police featuring Albert Brien, the Adventures of Cowboys and more. […] We were in grocery stores, pharmacies, not really in bookstores. But we had the means to distribute. The company will rely on a powerful distribution machine, the People’s Distribution Agency (ADP).
ADP will distribute more than 110 publishers. “If we hadn’t extended our distribution to the whole territory, the book would have remained a luxury product, accessible only to the elite. Thanks to us, people in the Gaspé have been able to buy a book from Éditions de l’Homme in a tobacco shop,” said Pierre Lespérance.
In addition, he buys from the Garneau bookstore chain, later grouped under the Renaud-Bray banner.
A manager
A graduate in commerce from the private college Mont Saint-Louis, he took over the helm of his father’s publishing house when he was still in his early twenties. “At 25, because of the premature death of my father, my head was immersed in publishing,” he said. His father’s various businesses are grouped together under the umbrella of a company called Sogides. In the lobby of the company’s main building, a large color portrait of Edgar Lespérance will remain in place until the company is sold to Quebecor in 2005.
In terms of management, Pierre Lespérance was not meant to laugh so much, always very straddling the monitoring of costs. He rarely interfered with the choices of his publishers, but did not hesitate to slap on the fingers of those who went over budget.
To the writer Jean-Yves Soucy, who was one of his literary editors, he reproached one day the costs of a book whose production difficulties had multiplied. “It doesn’t make sense! We will lose more than a dollar every time we sell one! exasperated Pierre Lespérance pointed out to him. Deadpan, Jean-Yves Soucy replied tit for tat, before being crucified with a look: “In that case, I hope we won’t sell too many! »
A large part of the book world in Quebec was formed, directly or indirectly, within one or another of the publishing companies headed by Pierre Lespérance. Pierre Bourdon, publisher of the Hugo&Cie brand, former director of the ADP and ex-main publisher of Éditions de l’Homme affirms that in Quebec, in the world of books, “there were of course giants, in publishing, distribution, bookstores. And there was Pierre Lespérance. »
Always dressed in a suit, Pierre Lespérance had a second home in Cannes. In 1999, the French Republic crowned him Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.
He died near his family, at the Saint-Jérôme regional hospital, after obtaining medical assistance in dying.