The figures of 2022 are declining significantly compared to 2021. But they remain much higher than those of 2019 – before the COVVID. The actors of the sector keep confidence.
by Nicole Vulser and Denis Cosnard
It is a thick, expensive work on very serious and fairly technical subjects: energy, climate. And yet… MO12345 LEMBLEMONDE (DARGAUD), this comic strip in which engineer Jean-Marc Jancovici and designer Christophe Blain explain why we will not avoid decrease, was the best-selling book in France in 2022, outlined Largely the novels of Guillaume Musso or Michel Houellebecq. Some 514,000 copies were sold in one year, according to the GFK-Livres Hebdo barometer. “And, with the sales made in 2021, there are more than 750,000 pounds out of warehouse,” said Claude de Saint-Vincent, director general of the Media-Participations group, owner, among others, of Dargaud. “To say that in the fall of 2021 we had hesitated to set up 45,000 … But the book met with a real concern of society.” The success of this album was such that before the holidays, activists ‘Targeted. Presenting themselves as sent by Dargaud, they deposited with numerous booksellers of errata to slip into the pages. False, aimed at denouncing the “intoxication” in favor of nuclear power that Jean-Marc Jancovici is accused of spreading. The publisher filed a complaint. The publisher filed a complaint.
Can we escape decrease? The subject of the endless world is also the one who taps book professionals. Because the unexpected success of this clever album, in which the polytechnician Jancovici crosses Clint Eastwood and Maître Yoda, should not hide reality: after an exceptional increase in 2021, book sales found in 2022 their downward trend. Around 335 million copies were sold in one year, 5 % less than in 2021, according to the GFK analysis company. In value, the market has packed 3 %, at 4 billion euros. “Elections, war in Ukraine, purchasing power problems, the year has seen the negative factors accumulate, and the market turned out to be very difficult,” notes Michèle Benbunan, of Editis, French number two behind Hachette . The bookstores were less frequented, online sales fell by around 20 %, that in large food areas of 11 %. 2> “The book market has resisted”
Is this the resumption of an inexorable decline? Not so sure. In 2020 and 2021, the world of publishing had benefited from a surprise embellished linked to the pandemic of Covid-19. Prohibited trips, theaters, cinemas and closed museums: the French had withdrew to the book, one of the few cultural goods that remained available. This is how the anomaly, of Hervé Le Tellier (Gallimard, 2020), broke all the records of the Goncourt prices, and exceeded one million copies. The competition having returned to the cultural world, it was logical that the book market is slightly.
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