In my encounters, whether at a party or a business trip, it sometimes happens that people have a bohemian vision of my condition as an artist, a projection often going hand in hand with the famous question "And you make a living from it?" They quickly realize that they have just pronounced the password that opens Mary Poppins' bag, from which the biggest elephants can emerge. The kind of elephants that occupy a room in the Ministry of Culture, where people ignore not seeing them. "What do you mean, you have no status, no minimum wage? Are your hours counted either? No paid vacation? No right to unemployment? And your sick leave...? The AI that steals your productions with complete impunity and replaces you in your jobs?"
“So you make a living from it, but HOW do you manage?”
Wait, darling, Mary Poppins isn't finished.
There is another elephant – a particularly large and established one – whose presence in the cultural and media world is beginning to be discussed at length, and which I mentioned in my newsletter of September 15. I believe that if this domino moves, all the others could fall.
This elephant is the Bolloré empire.
We know that the Bolloré empire is a reactionary, ultra-conservative, and avowedly far-right political project.(1). And when a billionaire has such projects, it is expected that he will seek to spread his ideas and manipulate information on a large scale, thus occupying and transforming the media, cultural and literary fields in his own image.
Bolloré took over the Hachette firm in 2023. Hachette had a turnover of over 2.8 billion euros in the same year(2). Same in 2024(3). Almost 6 billion euros to fuel his far-right project in just two years. And although we have all the information clear (the guy doesn't hide it, you just have to see what's happening at Fayard(4), we have been witnessing a form of generalized cognitive dissonance for two years: authors continue to publish within the Hachette/Bolloré group, readers who say they are against fascism continue to spend their money there, publishers continue to work there, and cultural festivals, although targeted by austerity measures and forms of censorship/pressure, continue to invite all these people.
In this context, this year the feminist-queer-decolonial community began to ask a legitimate question by tapping its watch: what the fuck?!
These commotions reached the general press, notably via the article When you are a left-wing author, is publishing with Bolloré cheating?(5) by Simon Blin and Adrin Frauque, in the newspaper Libération on September 20. A sensationalist title, and an article that lifts a corner of the carpet but which in my opinion does not show everything that lies beneath, far from it, preferring instead to question the methods of the collective Désarmer Bolloré by opposing it with testimonies from notable authors (and I myself am against any form of dogpilling).
Mary Poppins therefore proposes to get to the bottom of the bag. Let us remember that the French-speaking literary world is an industry. And the cogs of this industry, subject to the laws of the market and business models, don't rely ONLY on authors, or even very little. The literary market relies mainly on personalities to remain lucrative: politicians, influencers, YouTubers, "stars" in their field, etc. The first cog here isn't the author, it's money. And therefore, the person who spends it and fuels this machine: the readership. The article could have been titled "When you are a left-wing reader, is buying from Bolloré a cheat?" or more generally "When you are left-wing, is giving your money to Bolloré a cheat?"
(Of course, shareholders have their part in this story, but the phrase "left-wing shareholders" would have little credibility here.)
In my previous article, I recalled the living and working conditions of artist-authors in France, and their distress.(6). I also recalled the number of oppressions that a queer or feminist artist can suffer: precariousness, the inconsistency of laws against them, the invisibility of political minorities, and even violence. Even more so if they are non-white and/or disabled. And I asked: What about collective responsibility towards artists?
In this continuity, the author Pauline Harmange asks the question from where everything else stems, in the article of September 20 in Libération:
"As things stand, the majority of books you read are written by people who don't earn a net minimum wage per year to write them. I'm a big advocate of independent publishing, but where's the money? It's not great at the big groups, but not at all at the small houses."
The money is in the pockets of those who buy our books and who greatly shape this market! Fayard is an excellent example of this: 28% loss in turnover compared to the previous year(7). One million euros less, which readers spent elsewhere.
What non-reactionary publishing houses (independent or not) can offer authors financially and contractually will depend on their profits, and the subsidies received from organizations (the CNL, Sofia, CNAP, etc.). This is why it is crucial that French-speaking readers understand the importance of boycotting all Hachette/Bolloré publications, and in return supporting publishing houses that do not participate in fueling the far-right machine. For each book sold, the Bolloré group receives more than double that of its authors.(8). Readership CAN and MUST reverse the economy at stake, and star authors can help too. Another testimony in Libération suggests that it would be unthinkable for Hachette workers (editors, authors, etc.) to "leave overnight", to « desert ». It is not about deserting publishing, but rather the economy that fuels the extreme right and fascism. In the same way that non-reactionary media and guarantors of the sanitary cordon were set up in the media environment(9) when the ultra-rich took over the major French channels (Blast, Basta!, Ballast, Le Diplo, Médiapart, Alternatives Economiques, la Déferlante, Histoires Crépues, the list is long).
I see the cognitive dissonance of some people since Bolloré's acquisition of Hachette as an attempt to negotiate with the frog in hot water. Everyone sees before our eyes the ultra-rich of the far-right gradually taking over the media, cultural, and literary fields. This is not an "overnight" phenomenon. The books bans(10) in the USA are the next step if the far right wins here. And having published with Hachette will not protect any author.
The initiative of the novelist Alexandre Galien is to be welcomed. Author of a bestseller published by Fayard in 2019, he decided this month to donate all future royalties from the book to MRAP, the movement against racism and for friendship between peoples.(11).
Even when we are bound by contract, there are ways to fight.
In 2016, when the Panama Papers were revealed, I discovered with disgust that my publisher Jacques Glénat was one of the tax evaders exposed. My third book with this publishing house was due to be released a few months later… Although he had closed his offshore company in the Seychelles two years earlier, "according to the PNF, this fraud allowed the concealment of 9.9 million euros, the "illegal" collection of 4 million euros in dividends, which notably allowed Mr. Glénat to acquire, under the cover of these companies, more than 3.5 million euros worth of works of art."(12) This is also what the success of my book Blue Is The Warmest Color contributed to between 2011 and 2014, and I feel deeply sullied by it. If I have been trying for a while to set up a refuge in the countryside near Lyon for transfeminist artists, it is also for these kinds of reasons, and with the funds that this same book brought me.
The boycott remains a tool that works, what we do with our money is the only language they understand, it's the first cog. Disney, Starbucks, McDonald's and Zara are giving in to boycotts in the USA(13). Fayard sees the wind turning.
Independent bookstores have also called for a boycott of Hachette, refusing to sell its publications in their stores.(14)
The shared responsibility for the rise of the Bolloré empire involves everyone, from those who publish to those who buy, including festivals and organizations that award literary prizes.
If you readers continue to buy books published by the Bolloré empire, the decision-makers in the literary world will continue to negotiate. Until they realize, as Capital newspaper did this week, that no one will be spared in this project.(15). French publishing, whether it publishes French-speaking talent or translates foreign works, is full of publishing houses and authors' cooperatives that not only have no plan to destroy our human diversity, but also have author contract clauses that are more respectful of creators. Just read the charter of the Syndicat des Editeurs Alternatifs, for example.(16). And in my case, my last signed contract stipulated that I was transferring my rights to the publishing house for two years, renewable or not, not "until 70 years after the author's death."
The media and artistic world needs the same great citizen movement as the other economic and political fields of our lives. But placing everything on the shoulders of the authors is a fantasy of bohemian or bourgeois autonomy for the artist, far from our reality. Help artist-authors obtain a continuous income. Ask your elected officials about this! The bill will finally be discussed in parliament.
You hold enormous power in the way you buy books and support the artists who create them. Help us escape poverty.
Mary Poppins doesn't find much at the bottom of the bag right now. That's already a lot of elephants in the room.
"So you live off it, but HOW do you live off it?" I live badly, with a lot of anxiety and a lot of hope at the same time. I would like thousands of people tomorrow to turn away from all Bolloré media and cultural products.(17), to actively support the rights demanded by artists and independent cultural initiatives. That we buy books that do not finance the extreme right, that the economy of this industry is reversed so that artists can live without the "big groups", with social rights as a key, and no longer survive. It is also about the survival of the stories you love to read, in their great diversity and in the range of possibilities they open up.
N.B.: In the community, we do not all agree on the methods of fighting against Bollorisation (several can complement each other, however, without hierarchical organization). Our reflections must be able to be articulated without pointing out scapegoats in our community. This is what the initiative Déborder Bolloré is trying to do(free reading in French) "Overcoming Bolloré is the result of a discussion between all these actors who believe it is necessary to find a form of intervention commensurate with the threat posed by Vincent Bolloré and his ilk. So that the competition that is the general system of government is replaced by something in the order of mutual aid, trust and connections. Ultimately, perhaps this is what "being independent" is all about: giving ourselves the ability to choose the dependencies that make us exist and to fight those that kill us."
