Analysis
The International Alliance of Independent Publishers, a fully-fledged publishing research centre, designs and circulates a series of key notions: from "fair publishing" to "bibliodiversity", not forgetting " solidarity-driven co-publishing", begetting a whole new business terminology, shaped by the experience and practices of the publishers belonging to the Alliance.
Predation
Full container-loads of books inundating the market, books produced in another cultural setting given away free to readers or public libraries, the setup of local branches by publishing groups from abroad aiming to achieve monopoly conditions… Drawing on some examples of practices with damaging consequences to the publishing market in developing countries, Étienne Galliand (International Alliance of Independent Publishers) draws up an overview of the predation to which emerging markets are subjected directly or indirectly. An edifying panorama.
Bibliodiversity
What is bibliodiversity, this idea which has enjoyed huge popularity in the past 10 years, mainly spread by the International Alliance of Independent Publishers? Here’s a working definition.
The term bibliodiversity is used to describe cultural diversity applied to the world of publishing. As an echo of the term biodiversity, it refers to the necessary diversity of the editorial output made available to readers. While major publishing groups participate, by way of their massive editorial output, to a certain publishing offer, bibliodiversity is nevertheless closely linked to the editorial output of independent publishers. Given the freedom of expression they exercise, independent publishers guarantee the multiplicity and circulation of ideas, and as such are the real players and defenders of this cultural diversity within publishing. Bibliodiversity appears today to be threatened by an editorial glut and financial concentration in the world of publishing, which paves the way to the supremacy of a handful of major publishing groups and the quest for high productivity. The coining of the term bibliodiversity may be attributed to Chilean publishers setting up the Editores independientes de Chile umbrella organisation in the late 1990s. The Alliance of Independent Publishers has greatly contributed to the propagation and promotion of this term in several languages, for example in the Declarations made in Dakar (2003), Guadalajara (2005) and Paris (2007).
See the article "Bibliodiversity" on Wikipedia. The article also exists in French, Spanish and Portuguese.
The "Fair Trade Book"
The label "The Fair Trade Book" is attributed by the Independent Alliance of International Publishers to works published in the context of international publishing agreements who respect each other particularities: solidarity co publishing. These solidarity copublishings enable the sharing of costs linked to intellectual and physical production of books and therefore implies an economy of scale; an exchange of professional know-how and a common experience, while respecting the publishers’ cultural context and identity; distributing works on a broader scale by adjusting prices for each geographic zone or by homogenising prices within a unique trading zone. The label “The Fair Trade Book” is a symbol of this solidarity amongst publishers – solidarity which also indirectly mobilises readers: because a book is sold 20 Euros in France it can be bought at half this price in West Africa, for instance.
"The Fair Trade Book", a solidarity label
Independent creation publisher: a tentative definition