Isabelle Saporta in Paris, November 19, 2019 (AFP/Archives/JOEL SAGET)
The CEO of Éditions Fayard Isabelle Saporta, who disagrees with the recovery of the brand in favor of a very right-wing publisher, has been summoned to a dismissal interview by the management of Hachette Livre, we learned on Friday from from an internal source at Fayard.
A subsidiary of Lagardère, of which the Vivendi group of billionaire Vincent Bolloré took control in November, Hachette Livre (parent company of Fayard editions) wants the brand to be shared with Mazarine editions, entrusted to Lise Boëll.
Fayard and Hachette Livre have been in conflict for several weeks over the Fayard brand, one of the oldest in publishing in France, of which Isabelle Saporta has been CEO since June 2022.
She has been an author there since 2011, then external editor and literary director before taking charge.
Isabelle Saporta was received on Friday by Stéphanie Ferran, deputy general manager of Hachette Livre, to initial a licensing agreement, even though she had proposed alternative solutions, said the internal source. She was therefore called to a dismissal interview on March 20.
The management of Fayard believes that the political line of authors that Mazarine intends to bring in, thanks to its new leader Lise Boëll, marked on the right, will harm its image.
According to L’Obs, one of these authors is the president of the National Rally Jordan Bardella.
Fayard employees, in the ongoing conflict, took up the cause of their management, in a letter addressed Thursday to Hachette Livre CEO Arnaud Lagardère and Stéphanie Ferran.
“The uncertainties about the future of the Fayard and Mazarine brands and that of our CEO are already having very concrete effects on our daily lives in the company and on our relationships with our external partners, in particular the authors,” they wrote. in this letter of which AFP obtained a copy.
The employees are demanding “the complete separation of the Fayard and Mazarine brands”. The association of the two is “damaging to the identity of Fayard and blurs its perception by our customers (booksellers and readers) and our authors”, they believe.
The letter to Mr. Lagardère and Ms. Ferran was “signed by the majority” of the company’s 42 employees, according to another internal source.
© 2024 AFP
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