English

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”.

Thierry Quinqueton has long experience in the publishing world and of intercultural dialogue. He was Literary Director at the Desclée de Brouwer publishing house (France) from 1991 to 1999, and then Director of the French Cultural Center in Khartoum from 2000 to 2004. After spending four years at the French Department of Foreign Affairs (department of written documents and libraries), he was responsible from May 2009 to July 2013 for the libraries network in the Châtellerault area; from 2013 to 2017, he was in charge of the Book Office at the French Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Thierry Quinqueton also pursues his research on the links between market economies, public policies, and non-monetary aspects within the book economy (Law and Development of Social and Solidarity Economy - University of Poitiers). Author of “Que ferait Saul Alinsky?” (DDB, 2011), he was Chairman of the International Alliance of Independent Publishers from 2006 to 2013.

Mariette Robbes is specialized in network facilitation, public relations and project management in the associative and cultural sectors. She has worked at Katha publishing (India), at the International Association of Francophone Booksellers and the International Youth Library (Germany).
Her growing passion for “third places” and innovative ways of working and creating (fablabs, coworking, shared workshops, etc.) led her to explore new horizons. She is now working as a Network Development & Animation Manager at myCowork, in Paris.
Passionate about publishing for youth in India, she is also an associate member of the academic project DELI (Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Literatures of India). In addition, Mariette works as a freelancer (support for fundraising, graphic design and layout).

Jérôme Chevrier has been working for 20 years in the book and reading sector. As a librarian, he has worked at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Ministry of Culture, the Centre national du livre and the French Institute of South Africa.
He was in charge of cultural mediation at the Centre Pompidou public information library. He is currently cultural attaché in charge of the Book Department at the French Embassy in London.
He joined the Alliance Board in July 2021.

A committed journalist with a special interest in international solidarity, sustainable development and human rights, David Eloy founded Altermondes in 2005, a media focusing on civil society’s actors, where he was editor-in-chief until 2016. He previously held positions in several international NGOs, including the Centre de recherche et d’information pour le développement (CRID), Peuples Solidaires – Action Aid France and the Association internationale de techniciens, experts et chercheurs (Aitec).

As an English professor with a degree in languages and comparative literature, Marielle Morin’s professional career has revolved around books, languages and research.
She has worked in the International Rights Department at the University of Chicago Press, and as a librarian at the Centre for Indian and South Asian Studies (CEIAS-EHESS). She has translated Indian literature from English (Khushwant Singh, Anita Naïr, Amruta Patil) and Bengali (Mahasweta Devi) and then went on to manage the media libraries and the book office of the French Embassy/ Institute in New Delhi first, then in Cairo, for eight years until 2014.

She is now back at the CEIAS, where she is in charge of international research projects within the research focus areas of Asia, Middle East and Muslim Worlds and African Studies.

She continues to be interested in languages, Indian literature, translation, and book history, and is an associate member of the DELI academic project (Encyclopedic Dictionary of Indian Literature).

Georges Lory was cultural advisor in South Africa from 1990 to 1994, and participated to the country’s democratic transition. Between 1998 and 2008, as Director of International Affairs of Radio France Internationale, he increased the number of its FM relays in the world from 76 to 169. From 2009 to 2013, he led the general delegation of the Alliance Française in Southern Africa.
He has written three volumes of poetry (including one in Afrikaans), edited a book published by Autrement on South Africa, translated poets including Breyten Breytenbach, Antjie Krog and Lebo Mashile, novels and short stories by Nadine Gordimer, 1991 Nobel Laureate, texts by JM Coetzee, André Brink and Kopano Matlwa, as well as the Dutch writer Adriaan van Dis. He is the author of four books, mainly on South Africa.

Hélène Kloeckner is the founder of Beau travail, which helps organisations improve their working conditions. She is the author of a survey on textbooks in Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa, published in the Africultures journal in 2003. She has worked for more than twelve years in publishing, and collaborated with Nouvelles éditions africaines in Senegal, Dakar. As a volunteer at the Alliance since 2004, she has been particularly interested in the pan-African collection “Terres Solidaires” . She was the president of the Alliance between 2013 and 2020.

Treasurer of the Alliance, Annie Gogat works for the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation as Accounting Manager. Passionnate about integration issues and involved in her neighborhood’s school life, she finds herself naturally acting as a mediator in many situations. After spending years in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, she now lives in Bouffémont (Paris region). She was the treasurer of the Alliance between 2002 and 2020.

Born in 1946, after obtaining a degree from the Centre de Formation des Journalistes and a postgraduate qualification in political sociology, Gérard Aimé started his career as a journalist and photo-reporter in Canada. The co-founder of Alternatives publishing and co-author of its first publications, he ran the publishing house for 35 years until its takeover by Gallimard. Today he works as a consultant for various publishing houses. Gérard Aimé was a member of the Board of the Alliance between 2011 and 2016.

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 13^th 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.

Read more here...

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:

• Tools and resources for professionals
• 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.

Read here the pre-print version uploaded on Academia.edu 21 May 2019

Final version, to be published in two parts, in Logos: Journal of the World Publishing Community (https://brill.com/view/journals/logo/logo-overview.xml)

Part I: Volume 30 (2019): Issue 3, Part II: Volume 30 (2019): Issue 4

Reprinted with permission of the author.
Copyright © Hans Zell Publishing Consultants 2019

Abstract:

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.

Read the article here (in French).

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.

Read the pre-print version here.

To be published in The African Book Publishing Record, Volume 44, Issue 2, (May 2019)

Reprinted with permission of the author.
Copyright © Hans Zell Publishing Consultants 2019

African Book Industry Data & the State of African National Bibliographies:
Read the Pre-print version here.

Published in The African Book Publishing Record, Volume 44, Issue 4 (Dec 2018): 363-389.

Reprinted with permission of the author.
Copyright © Hans Zell Publishing Consultants 2018

Read here the article “Au Maghreb, il y a urgence à structurer le secteur du livre”, by Kenza Sefrioui (En toutes lettres, Marocco), published by Le Monde Afrique (8 February, 2019)

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

A study published by African Studies Association (ASA) and African Studies Association of the UK (ASAUK), to read here!