Publisher Sophie de Closets, who left the management of Fayard in March, has been appointed president and CEO of Flammarion editions, the Madrigall group announced on Monday July 11. “As of today, Sophie de Closets leads the organizations and all of the editorial developments of Editions Flammarion”wrote in a press release the leader of the group, Antoine Gallimard.
“I am happy to join a house and a group that have upheld, for so long, the values of freedom, independence, creativity and the requirement that are essential to our professions”says M.me de Closets, cited in the press release.
Flammarion, which publishes Michel Houellebecq and Christine Angot, had interim management since the departure, at the end of December, of Anna Pavlowitch, hired by a competitor, Albin Michel.
Eighteen years at Fayard
Sophie de Closets, 44, had left Fayard in difficult conditions, after eighteen years in this house, including eight years at the helm. She was the first figure of a major Hachette house to leave when the proposed takeover bid by Vivendi, Vincent Bolloré’s group, on Lagardère, for the merger of Editis and Hachette, was filed with the Authority. financial markets.
“Sophie de Closets did not leave Fayard of her own free will”, affirmed in June to Agence France-Presse one of the authors it published, the essayist and novelist Jacques Attali. She was in serious conflict with one of the administrators of the Lagardère parent company, who is none other than Nicolas Sarkozy. The former President of the Republic accuses him of having protected against winds and tides two journalists from the newspaper The worldGérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, having published books implicating him, including Hate: the Sarko yearsin 2019.
In addition to Mr. Attali, who said he was determined to follow Mr.me by Closets “wherever she goes”, and Messrs. Davet and Lhomme, several authors unhappy with the change of direction at Fayard left this publisher, and should be tempted to join Flammarion.
The number two in book sales in France in 2021, the novelist Virginie Grimaldi, is thus without a publisher, as is the sociologist Didier Eribon, or the journalist author of a shock investigation into the nursing homes of the Orpea group, Victor Castanet.