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).