French publishers have read too much Voltaire and what he said about Canada’s few acres of snow. This year, the great disappointment of the Montreal Book Fair was the extreme poverty of the French publishers’ kiosks. Tables with a hundred copies of the same book do nothing to inform us about what was published in France. There may be snow in Quebec and Canada, but there are also more than nine million potential readers.
We can also wonder why books published in France take so long to arrive here. There is often a wait of months if they ever become available. Let’s not talk about the prices which are generally outrageous and which do everything to convince us to read in English.
Quebec is currently broadcasting an advertisement urging everyone to fight against the decline of French. Our government could perhaps invite the members of our Delegation in Paris to solicit these publishing houses, the Gallimards, Grassets, Babelios of this world, and to invite them to defend French and reading a little better. We must put an end to the contempt.
To watch on video