The fight of the French-speaking publishers
Reading romand means supporting local publishers and authors, but not only. Of course, everyone is entitled to the crisis and, if some consider literature to be a dispensable thing, it should all the same be remembered that it fully participates in the economy. Indeed, under the label “NOT ESSENTIAL” hides a very down-to-earth reality. Literature is not just a bunch of writers staring at each other, lining up words on paper. It is anchored in a very real part of the economy: bookstores and booksellers, printing houses and printers, publishers, carriers, distributors, representatives, sales staff, offices, furniture, accountants, storage rooms and others for sales, computer equipment, lawyers, journalists, graphic designers, proofreaders, apprentices in several trades and so on. In the current debacle, as in the restoration, it is the smallest the most affected. Especially those who have just started their business. Marilyn Stellini, founder of editions Kadaline in 2019, underlines “The bookstores have reopened, but traffic jams on the shelves largely disadvantage small structures. Reason for which Kadaline suspended all the publications of the first semester, postponed later. Not to mention the lack of literary fairs which can represent a contribution to turnover. From the start of the pandemic, bookstores warned publishers that they could not pay what they owed them. Some have had to use the aid received as a salary to pay the current bills of their publishing house (premises, heating, electricity, etc.). Result: some have been without pay for several months while, even in “normal” times, the French-speaking edition hardly allows to fill a woolen stocking. Another snowball effect: currently French-speaking Swiss publishers are crumbling under returns from bookstores. The closures imposed on so-called “non-essential” businesses did not allow them to sell the books that appeared during the two confinements. Andonia Dimitrijevic, director of L’Âge d’Homme editions specifies: “Publishers live on sales. Without selling it becomes hardcore. In addition, for those who also have stocks and part of our business in France, it is very complicated. We can no longer go to Paris or move around as we should for our business to function normally. Bookstores are once again making excellent sales, but bookstores alone do not represent the world of books. Selling a book or producing it is not the same thing at all. For French-speaking publishers the situation remains blocked. Right now we are running out of money for everything. Especially to hire the staff we would need to relaunch our businesses or to publish new authors. In the Age of Man, these next few months we will not be able to publish all the books that we had planned and no first work. We will only work with authors whose booksellers and readers already know the work. A rather ironic situation whereas most of the editors are submerged under the first novels, the confinement having inspired new vocations of writers. The genres that have inspired those who have embarked on literature: science fiction and anticipation novels. However, these newcomers will have to arm themselves with patience before seeing their novels published. If however one day they are published. Currently, the majority of publishers are mostly postponing the releases they had planned for 2021, while anticipating that there will be a plethora of publications in the coming months. Already, they expect that many of them will fall by the wayside due to lack of space on the shelves of bookstores. It is expected that there will be a shortfall and that they will have to manage this data. These realities, the French-speaking Swiss publishers, small or barely larger, have been facing them since the start of the pandemic. A situation that is likely to continue for months to come in the face of the giants of French publishing which, without taking any risks, will invade the shelves of bookstores with personal development books and authors. bankables.
French-speaking books presented in 2020
Last week I published part of the list of French-speaking Swiss authors whose books I presented in 2020. Here is the second and last part. Reading local is not only allowing Swiss literature to exist. It is to participate in the economy of our cantons.
At the dawn of the flies, poetry, Arthur Billerey, ed. of the area : a collection of poems by one of the founders of the Romandie literary review The fifth season. Passionate about written words, Arthur Billerey also created the channel Youtube Trousp, entirely devoted to the book.
Imaginary flowers , poetry, Corinne Reymond, ed. Torticollis and Brothers : with empathy and tenderness, Corinne Reymond pays tribute to people caught up in age or illness. Her long career as a home care nurse, in EMS, in hospital or in psychiatric hospital, led her to write down her experiences with patients. In her job, more than care, what she seeks is relationships, contact with people, appreciating who they are, feeling their moods, looking at the story of their life. “The older you get, the richer it gets,” she said. A wealth that she did not want to let lose.
New balls, novel, Olivier Chapuis, éd. BSN Press : Despite the love of his wife, his daughter and his son, Axel Chang feels a growing jealousy and hatred towards Roger Federer who succeeds in everything. An obsession that drives him adrift. An unconventional story, Axel Chang being the character of a typescript imagined by an author in need of recognition, annoyed by the success of the elite athlete in front of whom all the doors open while him languishes. Advised and coached by a world famous writer, the creator of Axel Chang will push his story to its extreme limits.
Last concert in Pripyat, novel, Bernadette Richard, ed. The Age of Man : on the night of April 25-26, 1986, the most devastating atomic accident in history took place in the former Soviet Union, in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. A massacre that claimed the lives of thousands of people and damaged the lives of so many survivors. Passionate about the nuclear issue, the journalist and novelist Bernadette richard takes us to the Forbidden Zone of Pripyat. The book tells the story of three young boys who flee from their homes in the company of an old lady on the night of the disaster. A few years later, the three companions become stalkers. Defying the dangers of contamination, they will regularly enter The area forbidden, not only to explore it, but also to restore it to its nobility through music. During their expeditions, they will meet all the reprobates and idlers of the Soviet system.
Novel of stations, novel, Jean-Pierre Rochat, ed. On the other hand : Dèdè is forced to abandon his farm in the Bernese Jura after fifty years of labor. In the middle of winter, he goes on the roads accompanied by a young donkey. With his crew, he hopes to descend, on foot, in the south of France, stopping from farm to farm to find food and lodgings there according to the custom of day laborers in the past. Imbued with tradition and benevolent memories, Dèdè imagines that the peasants will open their doors to him as he himself opened his when he had his own home. He must be disillusioned. Luckily, two exceptional women will cross his path.
Evening sighs, novel, Jean-Michel Borcard, ed. Torticollis and Brothers : in a cinematographic style, the adventures of two former pest controlers: the alcoholic, rather on the right, Carl Meinhof and the antifa Joseph Miceli, a sawmill worker. Despite their differences, the two men cultivate a friendship that does not dissolve in no liquid. If we didn’t recognize Bubble and its region, one would imagine the atmospheres described in the Maine or in a small town in Montana. The novel exudes rural and alternative environments, the sweat of manual labor, the freshly cut wood from which the sweet flutes and sometimes the coffins are made, the vapors of gasoline, the blood of slaughterhouses and even the scent of love.
Hell, novel, Patrick Dujany, ed. Torticollis and Brothers : not far from a village with a sweet Luciferian name, during one of these famous torrées as we do only on the ridges and sides of the Jura massif, four members of Burning Plane, a death-metal-core band, decorate their sausages with hallucinogenic mushrooms. To improve the taste of the forest kitchen, they sprinkle it with too much alcohol. It is in the midst of this culinary debauchery that appears Satan. To the four gastronomes, he offers to become a world famous rock group, on condition that they sell their souls to him.
Inflatable things, novel, Miguel Angel Morales, Torticolis et Frères editions : Miguel Angel Morales distinguished himself by founding the collective Plonk & Replonk. But not only. For a long time he held the rock chronicles of the daily fire L’Impartial and hosted shows for RTN. Inflatable Things cannot be summed up. They read. The story takes place, at the start, in a strange world that looks like a parody of ours. A place where Rednecks and Beaux live. Then, little by little, we change plan as if the characters were wandering from universe to universe, in parallel worlds which overlap.
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