A conservative Catholic billionaire and media owner is facing an independent bookshop rebellion in France over his influence in the publishing world, reports The Guardian.
Dozens of independent booksellers are trying to counter the growing influence of Vincent Bolloré, whose vast cultural empire includes television, radio, the Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche, and also, since 2023, the biggest book publishing and distribution conglomerate in France, Hachette Livre.
“Books matter,” said Thibaut Willems, owner of Le Pied à Terre independent bookshop in Paris’s 18th arrondissement and one of the booksellers taking a stand by limiting their orders of Hachette Livre books and placing them on lower shelves.
Bolloré is best known in France for his group’s ownership of CNews, the most-watched news channel on TV, which figures on the left have attacked for giving a platform to reactionary voices they say have aided the rise of the far right. He was once described by the former education minister Pap Ndiaye as “very close to the most radical far right”. Bolloré, in a senate hearing in 2022, denied political or ideological interventionism, saying his interest in acquiring media was purely financial and his cultural empire was about promoting French soft power. He said his group was so vast, it contained all views.
But some independent booksellers say it is dangerous for democracy for one conglomerate to have such a huge influence on cultural output. Hachette Livre, which was part of the Lagardère group bought by Bolloré’s Vivendi in 2023, is the No 1 publisher and book distributor in France. It owns scores of publishing houses, producing the bestselling Asterix comic books, literary fiction, thrillers, political titles, Manga comics and school textbooks. The group also owns the Relay bookstores at French train stations. Hachette has more than 200 publishing imprints worldwide. It is the second biggest publishing conglomerate in the UK, where it owns Hodder & Stoughton, and is the third biggest in the US.
Read more of this report from The Guardian.