A united trio to attack Vivendi’s takeover bid for Lagardère announced by Vincent Bolloré, and its corollary, the merger between Hachette Livre and Editis – the numbers one and two in French publishing. The senatorial commission of inquiry into media concentration in France has extended its field of investigation to publishing.
Auditioned on Wednesday February 16, Antoine Gallimard, CEO of the Madrigall group (Gallimard, Flammarion, etc.), who spoke on behalf of the National Publishing Union (SNE), Guillaume Husson, General Delegate of the French Bookstore Union (SLF ) and Christophe Hardy, president of the Société des gens de lettres (SGDL) denounced the deleterious effect of such a merger, which should still, to obtain the approval of the European Commission, result in multiple sales of houses publishing, especially in the school, the extracurricular or the pocket book.
“Such a merger is unthinkable”, estimated Antoine Gallimard, because in terms of competition “an entity bringing together Hachette and Editis would represent 33% of sales in number of copies, 50% of circulation and 60% of distribution [logistique] books “. Under oath, before the senators, while Madrigall is number three in the edition, he also specified: “I’m not looking to be a number two. (…) What interests me are the catalogues, I don’t want to become an empire, far from it. » “It is desirable that number one and number two do not merge”he insisted.
” Steamroller “
With the current configuration of the market and regulation by the single book price, the “situation [française] is still relatively valuable compared to abroad”. “A huge mass shouldn’t come and break it all up”, added the CEO of Madrigall. As for the possibility of recovering certain assets, if the merger materializes, he did not hide his interest in educational publishing. He unveiled “to have been interested at one time in Hatier, which had then been acquired by Hachette” and granted: “I’ll go look” if the possibility of transfer in the school edition presented itself.
For Christophe Hardy, Vivendi’s justification – considering that it is only a dwarf next to Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft – does not convince, since the latter are not publishers. “The dwarf is the authors”, he pointed out, stating that “the already unbalanced relationship between authors and publishers” would be even more so, since they would weaken “any ability to bargain collectively or individually” with this juggernaut.
You have 41.36% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.