Grandstand. The start of the mandate of the Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, had opened up promising prospects. The authors had been alerting the authorities to their impoverishment for more than ten years. A study, carried out in 2015 by the Ministry of Culture, had documented the constant deterioration for twenty years of their remuneration.
Faced with this alarming observation and faced with the mobilization of authors (recall the States General of the Book organized in 2018 and 2019 by the Permanent Council of Writers), the ministry called Bruno Racine to the rescue so that he could, from a broad and precise observation, recommendations that remedy the dramatic situation of the authors.
In the dynamics of Root report and of all that had preceded it, the Minister of Culture, freshly appointed, presented a few months later [en avril 2021] a ” Author plan 2021-2022 in fifteen points which was to guide the action of his ministry during the second part of Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term.
Remuneration, an essential subject
Measure No. 9 of this plan committed the ministry to “ support the negotiations sui generis on the balance of the contractual relationship between authors and publishers (…) in the book sector “. And as the departments of the ministry did not wish to get directly involved in a more than thorny file, Professor Pierre Sirinelli was called upon to play the role of mediator.
After nine months of discussions, an agreement was reached a few weeks ago between the authors’ organizations and the National Publishing Union (SNE). Agreement comprising five measures likely to improve transparency (in a sector where areas of darkness persist) and to improve information for authors on the life and end of life of their works.
Unfortunately, there was no time for the dense and lively discussions to deal with the essential subject, the one which, let us remember, had presided over the launch of this mission: the remuneration of authors. But the parties undertook, once this first agreement was recorded, to continue as a matter of priority and without delay their exchanges on this subject which brings together the entire community of authors and all the organizations that represent them.
The agreement was to be signed in the presence of the Minister of Culture on March 16. But a few hours before the event, the SNE played the dodge. However, he wants to be reassuring: it is only a matter of hours, days or weeks. He will sign this agreement, of course, in the drafting of which he fully participated. And far from him the idea to scroll on the subject “remuneration”. Hasn’t he, in recent months, publicly announced on several occasions that the question of the fair remuneration of authors was a priority?
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