Representatives from 6 European collectives (Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Russia and Switzerland) will meet in Paris, at the invitation of the International Committee of independent publishers (ICIP). The main objectives of this meeting are to share knowledge, discuss business issues, plan partnerships, and build the foundations for future exchanges. This is only the first step towards strengthening an independent publishing open to the world, and guaranteeing bibliodiversity.
A part of this meeting will focus on the governance of the Alliance, as well as an assessment of the Bibliodiversity Observatory, some few months after its creation in July 2016.
Bibliodiversity… it is the daily life of independent publishers, what drives them. Why make it a special day, then? To celebrate Spring Day in the Southern Hemisphere, for books to occupy public spaces, to share, connect, exchange, discuss, and have fun… Because diversity of ideas is essential to the construction of democratic societies, because independent publishers are its actors, together with authors, translators, illustrators, booksellers, librarians…
This year, some planned festivities and activities include:
• In Quebec, Mémoire d’encrier publishers, in partnership with the Maison de la Syrie (‘the House of Syria’), facilitate a Quebec-Syria literary meeting
• In Syria, Atlas Publishing convene booksellers and publishers in the heart of Damas
• In Chile, EDIN collective will distribute a list of independent publishers’ works in the country’s main libraries; filmed activities will be held throughout the day
• In Colombia, public spaces (parks, public places) will be animated by publishers from the REIC collective…
• In Italy, the independent publishers members of the FIDARE get themself heard through a call
• In Spain, the ministry of Culture is launching a campaign in favor of bibliodiversity
• In Peru, the collective of independent publishers EIP is organizing an Independent Book Fair, from 23 to 25 September, to follow on facebook
• In Argentina, the collective of independent publisers EDINAR is planning bookcrossing, literary meetings...
Follow all the activities on the Alliance website and social media.
Created in 2007, the “Terres solidaires” collection is a collective experience. It proposes literary texts from African authors, published by a collective of publishers in Francophone Africa, Through the principle of solidarity co-publishing, texts circulate, are available and accessible for African readers: the local book ecosystem is protected and strengthened.
The “Terres solidaires” collection is supported by the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF).
Author(s) : Susan Hawthorne ; Agnès El Kaïm (trad.)
Publishing countries : Cameroon, France, Mali, Switzerland
Language(s) :
French
Price : 9 € ; 10 CHF ; 3000 FCFA
In a globalised world, megacorp publishing is all about numbers, about sameness, about following a formula based on the latest megasuccess. Each book is expected to pay for itself and all the externalities of publishing such as offices and CEO salaries. It means that books which take off slowly but have long lives, the books that change social norms, are less likely to be published.
Independent publishers are seeking another way. A way of engagement with society and methods that reflect something important about the locale or the niche they inhabit. Independent and small publishers are like rare plants that pop up among the larger growth but add something different, perhaps they feed the soil, bring colour or scent into the world.
Bibliodiversity is a term invented by Chilean publishers in the 1990s as a way of envisioning a different kind of publishing. In this manifesto, Susan Hawthorne provides a scathing critique of the global publishing industry set against a visionary proposal for organic publishing. She looks at free speech and fair speech, at the environmental costs of mainstream publishing and at the promises and challenges of the move to digital.
A translation from English into French followed by a co-publishing between 5 publishers in France (éditions Charles Léopold Mayer), Switzerland (éditions d’en bas), Mali (Jamana) and Cameroon (Presses universitaires d’Afrique).
From October, 19th to 23rd, meet the independent publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair: more than 25 publishing houses from all around the world will be there!
You can find the publishers’ contact on the attached document. Do not wait to make an appointment!
The International Alliance of independent publishers demands that Turkish authorities immediately release publishers, authors and journalists currently detained. It is necessary to guarantee freedom of speech and publishing in Turkey. The Alliance joins the Turkish Publishers Association’s condemnation of the summary closure of publishing houses and media as a clear human rights violation, and urges the Turkish authorities to rescind those summary closures.
Through the support of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and the partnership established with the Ivorian publishers association (Assedi), the Alliance’s Digital Lab will convene 18 publishers from Sub-Saharan Africa from 23 to 27 May, to a workshop focusing on:
* the production and marketing of digital books (session facilitated by Gilles Colleu, Vents d’ailleurs, France);
* management of the Alliance Press web template developed by the Alliance for publishers who do not have websites (session facilitated by Mouhammed Diop, Senegalese developer and designer of Alliance Press).
The workshop follows on the series of meetings/training workshops designed and implemented by the Alliance since 2010, and is aimed at publishers in particular from French-speaking Africa. In order to share knowledge and encourage ownership, all workshops and meetings of the Alliance are complemented by factsheets published on the Digital Lab website, and personalised online tutorials.
The workshop will be held at the occasion of the Abidjan Book Fair (26-28 May, Palais de la Culture), and will provide the opportunity for publishers to share the collective stand of the Afrilivres association. The Afrilivres Prize will be awarded on that occasion, in the presence of the recipient of the 2015 prize: Valesse publishers from Ivory Coast.
After studying political sciences, Laura Aufrère was for 5 years coordinator of the French confederation gathering not-for-profit cultural professional initiatives from a variety of disciplines (music, theater, outdoor and circus, visual arts, etc.), rooted in the solidarity economy movement (UFISC). She is now a PHD student in management, looking specifically into critical approaches in the organisation theory and the digital humanities fields. She studies commons and social and solidarity economy initiatives, focusing specifically on work and labour organisation, cooperation and governance issues, and social protection. She joins the Alliance Board in 2016 and is now its President.
Vice-President of the Board of the Alliance since the General Assembly of June 20, 2011, Luc Pinhas is a former student of the École normale supérieure in Saint-Cloud. He holds a PhD in Communication Studies and teaches at Paris 13-Villetaneuse University, where he is currently in charge of a master’s degree on “Book Marketing”.
The “Terres solidaires” collection was created in 2007, to strengthen the circulation of African literature in the Francophone space. Publishing houses that contribute to the collection are based in sub-Saharan Africa and in North Africa. Initially created to republish books written by African writers published in France and make them accessible to an African readership through the solidarity co-publishing process, it is now republishing books originally appearing on African publishers’ lists. Such is the case with Munyal, les larmes de la patience, by Djaïli Amadou Amal, the 13th title of the collection, originally published in 2017 by Proximité publishing, based in Yaoundé, Cameroun.
Publishers select texts and work in close collaboration throughout the editorial process. The principle of a selling price adapted to the buying power of the readership (on average 3 500 FCFA, or 5 Euros) remains one of its pillars.
The Digital Lab was created by the International Alliance of Independent Publishers to support independent publishers in their activities, reflections and digital practices. As a space of reflection, exchanges and discussions on digital bibliodiversity in both the Northern and Southern hemisphere, the Lab also offers digital tools adapted to the needs of independent publishers while respecting local ecosystems.
The Alliance Lab is built around four focus areas:
Reflections and discussions on digital publishing, including innovative initiatives in the countries of the South (surveys and analyses);
In situ workshops (capacity building and peer exchanges on digital matters);
A personalised tutorial offered to member publishers of the Alliance.
The Lab is updated and facilitated by independent publishers, the team of the Alliance and also through partnerships with independent professional organisations and collectives from various continents.
In terms of languages, markets and labels, African publishing represents a field of constant discourse. It also continually questions not just the way we look at books, but also our relationship with them and with the international publishing industry. The time has long passed when the leading discourse on publishing in Africa was devoted primarily to a “book famine” related to the African economic crisis of the 1980s. Over the past three decades, the African book market has done nothing but grow on the continent, diversifying its increasingly dense and transnational production through the circulation of books and of publishing information. Nonetheless, quite often African publishing is presented in terms of the difficulties faced by its stakeholders, rather than those stakeholders’ agency, their capacity to develop their markets. Indeed, history has shown that the African publishing industry is a mirror of the globalisation of publishing and of its economic flux. That being the case, the economic challenges that one can observe in the African industry is thus a reflection of the imbalances, alternatives – also margins – of a world of books that is increasingly concentrated. In this sense, African publishing invites a two-fold interrogation: in Africa it must advocate a cultural and economic legitimacy within evolving socio-political situations and an outward-looking educational market. Internationally, it must position itself in terms of non-African publishing of literature and non-fiction that makes up the majority of African intellectual production in the world. By examining the discourse around African books, African publishers’ discourse, and the evolution of African books in French since the 1980’s, this article aims to question the relationship between the book industry in Africa and the globalisation of books phenomenon in order to bring to light a network of exchanges, tensions, and influences that turns the African book market into a veritable “glocal” space.
Thierry, R. (2019). Les éditeurs d’Afrique francophone sur l’échiquier du « glocal »
(1980-2019). Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture, 10 (2). https://doi.org/10.7202/1060972ar
Contact the Alliance team to get a free digital version of this issue dedicated to public book policies.
Publication: June 2019
The Bibliodiversity Journal is copublished by Double ponctuation and the International Alliance of independent publishers.
See other issues of Bibliodiversity Journal here: “Self-publishing”; “Committed publishing”…
Overview of the issue:
From censorship to safeguarding, public initiatives in the book sector are varied.
This issue proposes academic articles, professional’ views and two previously unpublished regional analyses (sub-Saharan Africa and Spanish-speaking Latin America), taking us from Russia to Switzerland, via Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Quebec, France and Argentina.
All contributions seek an answer to this question: does the intervention of public authorities support editorial diversity?
Contents of the ‘Public book policies issue’:
“Introduction: action taken by public authorities to support books”, by Étienne Galliand, Editor-in-Chief of Bibliodiversity Journal
“Federalism and cohesion – New book policies in Switzerland”, by Carine Corajoud, historian (Switzerland)
“A relative autonomy – A comparative analysis of the room for manoeuvre
in public publishing in France”, by Hélène Seiler-Juilleret, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Higher School of Social Sciences, France)
“Negotiating control, promoting reading – Independent publishers and the Russian State in the 2010s”, by Bella Ostromooukhova, Paris Sorbonne University (France and Russia)
“Morocco: escheated books – The shortcomings in state involvement in the books and written word sector”, by Anouk Cohen, CNRS (France and Morocco) and Kenza Sefrioui, Ph.D. in comparative literature, literary critic and publisher (Morocco)
“Government policy on books in Tunisia” – A publisher’s view, by Nouri Abid, Med Ali publishers (Tunisia)
“Government policy on books in Syria” – A publisher’s view, by Samar Haddad, Atlas Publishing (Syria)
“Government policy on books in Lebanon” – A bookseller’s view, by Michel Choueiri, bookseller (France and the United Arab Emirates)
“Government policy on books in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar. A cross-sectional analysis of data collected in 12 countries”, by Luc Pinhas, University of Paris 13 Villetaneuse (France)
“Publishing and public authorities: the Quebec case – Or the influence of public action on editorial independence?”, by Pascal Genêt, Sherbrooke University (Quebec-Canada)
“Laws, public policies, institutions and measures to support books and reading
in Latin America – An analysis of data gathered in 10 countries”, by Andrés E. Fernández Vergara (University of Chile)
“From culture towards business – An analysis of a state support programme
for local publishing in Buenos Aires: Opción Libros”, by José de Souza Muniz Jr., Federal Centre for Technological Education, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
Publishing & the Book in Africa: A Literature Review for 2018
The fourth in a series of annual reviews of select new literature in English that has appeared on the topic of publishing and the book sector in sub-Saharan Africa.
Abstract of the issue:
Self-publishing is less and less perceived as an egocentric, narcissistic act – perhaps even spiteful. Bypassing the selective function of a third party (the publisher) in favour of a direct relationship with the potential reader - whether by choice or by necessity, when one has been rejected by those “in the know”- seems on the contrary perfectly in tune with the signs of our times, which advocates for transversal relations, fewer intermediaries and direct relationships between producers and consumers, quicker channels, wariness towards experts, elites and comitology.
If self-publishing is uninhibited, it is vibrant in its digital format, where entry requirements are now minor. However, is self-publishing a vector of bibliodiversity?
The notion of “independence” is also questioned by this development in terms of production. Indeed, the United States has often spoken of “indie” authors or ebooks, this figure of the independent author being now also assimilated and claimed in the French context. But what kind of independence are we talking about?
Contents of “Self-publishing”:
Self-publishing: a vector of bibliodiversity? / By Sylvie Bosser, University of Paris 8
Self-publishing in French literature. A historical overview of a multidimensional publishing practice / By Olivier Bessard-Banquy, University of Bordeaux-Montaigne
Self-published authors on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. Motivations, identities, practices and expectations / By Stéphanie Parmentier, University of Bordeaux-Montaigne
Self-publishing of comics. A specific route into publishing / By Kevin Le Bruchec, University of Paris 13
The (in)visible third party. Mentoring emerging writers: a process that encourages self-publishing / By Marie Caffari and Johanne Mohs, Berne University of the Arts
Self-publishing: a unique phenomenon by its nature, scope and actors. Analysis of self-publishing in Latin America and beyond / By Daniel Benchimol, for the CERLALC
Literary self-publishing in Morocco. Conditions, challenges and social significations of an growing cultural practice / By Kaoutar Harchi, Centre for Research on Social Links
Self-publishing in Iran. A story of a dilemma against a backdrop of audacity / Case study of Azadeh Parsapour, publisher
Les Éditions du Net. An interview with Henri Mojon / By Sylvie Bosser, University of Paris 8
