Inside the Cultural Network # 2 Berlin Book Department

Elisabeth Beyer has been running the Berlin Book Department in the French Embassy on Pariser Platz since 2012. She is always friendly, energetic and sensitive, and talks in precise, truthful terms. Here, she shares with us her enthusiasm and all the efforts that have been made to support French books in Germany, and discusses the oh-so-crucial participation of France as guest of honour at the 2017 Frankfurt Book Fair, and the reorganisation of the médiathèques (multimedia libraries) throughout the German network (one of the densest in the world), and the reception of comics and graphic novels and literature for children and young adults outside of France. Welcome to this quick tour of all the activities carried out by the Book Department and the Institut français to stimulate a lively German Francophilia, and vice versa.

There is a big event coming up: France will be the guest of honour at the 2017 Frankfurt Book Fair… Elisabeth Beyer. Yes, this will be a major event: the last invitation of this kind was issued in 1989, and of course since then one generation has replaced the other and, with the arrival of the digital world, the market has been redefined… Together with the BIEF, the Bureau international de l’édition française, and the Institut français, we are currently organising meetings between French and German publishers, in anticipation of this event and with a view to increasing copyright transfers. In early July, in Berlin, these meetings will revolve around literature for children and young adults, and comics and graphic novels. In September, we will be dealing with art books and high quality illustrated books, and then in early 2016, most probably in Berlin and Munich, we will be inviting over generalist literary publishers, before moving onto the humanities in February (although in this case German publishers will be travelling to Paris to visit prestigious institutions such as the Collège de France, for example, and meet intellectuals etc.). In addition, we have started preparing the programme for Frankfurt 2015. Heinrich Riethmüller, the President of the Börsenverein (the Federation of German publishing professionals, which brings together both the publishers’ and the booksellers’ unions, and represents a turnover of around 9 billion euros – “a heavy industry”, as Jacques Toubon used to put it), is considering entering into a collaboration with us, following a calendar that would intensify right through to Frankfurt 2017. We are thus planning a conference on “interoperability”: the major American operators work within closed circuits, so that if a reader, for example, buys a Kindle, they are then forced to buy their books

from Amazon. This is a real problem, since this principle channels (and cannibalises) sales – it is equivalent to consumers being taken hostage, in a way. France and Germany are supporting the idea of interoperability, and want it to be defined within a European legal framework. This major issue will therefore be discussed in Frankfurt, where we will try to have the French Minister of Culture, Fleur Pellerin, give a statement. In this context, the French are in fact interested in Tolino, the digital reader developed by German booksellers in cooperation with Deutsche Telekom: this device has been very successful here, since it offers an open system that gives readers access to all catalogues, and it has already been exported to Italy and to the Netherlands. We therefore have an alternative solution to Amazon here, which is firmly rooted in a European context. As we do every year, we will be welcoming the two winners of the Prix Franz Hessel (the Franco- German prize for contemporary literature) to Frankfurt: Christine Montalbetti and Esther Kinsky.

What are the upcoming highlights of the French cultural programme in Berlin? Together with Peter Engelmann, an editor from the Austrian publisher Passagen Verlag, which has published most of the great French thinkers of the 2nd half of the 20th century, from Jean Baudrillard through Jacques Derrida to Jacques Rancière, we organised a series of events recently in HAU, a prestigious Berlin theatre, which took the form of discussions between a publisher and their author. All of these were sold out and attracted a very young audience, comparable to the one that attended the “Nuit de la philosophie” (“Night of Philosophy”) that we organised in Berlin in 2014. Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière and Hélène Cixous in particular took part in these events – and last week, it was Jean-Luc Nancy’s turn. We would like to continue this collaboration in 2015-2016 with a younger generation of thinkers, now that this format has been established. In addition, the Institut français is currently hosting a wonderful exhibition presenting the work of the French author and illustrator Serge Block, who also works for the German press. Maylis de Kerangal came over on 20 May to present the German translation of her novel Réparer les vivants (Mend the Living), which was published by Suhrkamp. In June, there will be an event with Bernd- Jürgen Fischer who is retranslating Proust into German, with the philosopher Vincent Descombes, a discussion between Jean-Philippe Toussaint and Julia Franck, Christian Prigent, within the framework of the Poetry Festival, and an evening with Pierre Gras on German cinema after Fassbinder. Several authors have also been invited to the Berlin International Literature Festival in September, including Riad Sattouf, Joann Sfar, and David Foenkinos. But the other big event this autumn will be taking place in Leipzig, that great city of culture which will be celebrating the 1000th anniversary of its first recorded mention (NB: the first book fair in the world took place in Leipzig). The deputy mayor in charge of culture, who is a great Francophile,

wanted to give a special place to French literature. We are therefore going to launch “Leipzig Livre”, as part of a festival that already exists (the “Leipziger Literarischer Herbst”, which will take place from 20 to 24 October), and to which we have invited in particular Jacques Rancière, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Marie NDiaye, Christophe Blain, Boualem Sansal and Alain Finkielkraut. We would also like to organise another “Nuit de la philosophie” next year. This was a huge popular success in 2014, with 5,000 people attending throughout the night, and a great intellectual success: 60 philosophers from 12 different European countries, 20 partners (with a long preparation period of 5 months…). It would be good to repeat the experience, perhaps extending it to include the digital arts and working in coordination with the specialist departments of the IFA (Institut français d’Allemagne, the German branch of the Institut français). These big events make our activities more visible and draw a spotlight onto our Institut français in Berlin (which is now a designated historic building, remember!). The evening in honour of Patrick Modiano last February was a great success, as was the one we organised in March around Jérôme Ferrari, which had an original format, since the French and German editions of his new novel, Le Principe, were being published simultaneously (by Actes Sud in France, and by Secession in Germany – an excellent, very principled publisher, which has published Hélène Bessette and Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam in particular).

What are the other areas of activity of the Book Department? Our local translation grants, for which we have a budget of 20,000 euros, are important, as are the copyright transfer grants offered by the IF Paris. And then there is all the work we do around the médiathèques, our multimedia libraries. We have 10 médiathèques within our Instituts (there are 11 Instituts across all of Germany, of which only one, in Frankfurt, does not have a médiathèque), and over 10 Franco-German centres (which in reality are former Instituts français, which are now over 80% financed by Germany, from Kiel to Freiburg), which all house a médiathèque. We overhauled everything three years ago (the médiathèque in Mainz, for example, had not yet been computerised), redesigned the homogeneity of the network, standardised our rates, and successfully launched Culturethèque, the IF’s digital library. Béatrice Monvoisin, who is responsible for coordinating the network, has done a lot of work on this. In the Instituts, the médiathèques were often the weakest link, and they would therefore often suffer under any budgetary reductions because they were used as the variable that could be adjusted. We have now ring-fenced a budget within the IFA, which is therefore managed at the federal level – for the purchase of newly-published books, for example, or of the comics and graphic novels that have won prizes at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, we place an order with the Zadig bookshop in Berlin, which then sends all of the books to the different Instituts (which also allows us to support

local French bookshops). In addition, Béatrice Monvoisin makes consultancy trips, she visits each Institut to make recommendations ranging from how to improve their signage systems to their general organisation or their choice of collections etc. What model should we use to rethink things? There are several options: the generalist option, which suggests you present the whole range of the publishing spectrum, if you have the budget and the audience for it. Or you make choices (according to the progressive model) by giving up for example on the humanities and social sciences and on travel writing, and focussing on extremely contemporary literature, on writing for children and young adults, and on comics and graphic novels. This is a possibility, when you can’t cover everything. And this type of approach is very useful to reframe things and “weed out” some elements as a result. In Berlin, the médiathèque has thus been completely reorganised. We took out some books that had not been consulted for a long time, and made room for readings to be carried out in the middle of all the books, in a more intimate setting. We have set ourselves the deadline of next year to rethink, reconsider, and reorganise everything within our network, including by systematising our librarians’ training.

Are comics and graphic novels still doing as well as they used to? Comics, graphic novels, and children’s and young adult literature account for over 50% of copyright transfers outside of France. That’s huge! In Germany, we are lucky enough to have some very talented publishers who are doing excellent work, and make ideal partners. Surprisingly for a country that has such a great graphic culture (just think of the Bauhaus movement), graphic novels are taking some time to establish themselves here. There are bookshops specialised in comics and graphic novels, but traditional bookshops still tend not to have a dedicated space for them. Franco-Belgian comics and graphic novels are widely available in translation. For example, we will be supporting the launch of the next Asterix, which will have a considerable impact here. Germany is the non-French- speaking country where Asterix is the most successful, with a sales volume of 1.5 million on average. In addition, L’Arabe du futur (The Arab of the Future), by Riad Sattouf, which has been very successful everywhere, was published in Germany by Knaus. If we are talking about bestsellers, we should of course mention Soumission (Submission) by Michel Houellebecq. The surprising thing, as Frédéric Lemaître, the Berlin correspondent of Le Monde newspaper, pointed out, is that the Germans take this political fiction novel at face value, and view Houellebecq as a visionary and an analyst.

But the relationship between Houellebecq and Germany goes back a long way already… Yes. The Germans are firmly convinced that they are the ones who discovered Houellebecq. After Les Particules élémentaires (Atomised) was published, some Germans, including academics and

literary critics, claimed that the French had not taken him seriously enough, viewing him as a polemicist, while supposedly they had immediately recognised his literary power. At any rate, the media coverage for Soumission was incredible, and it sold 250,000 copies in the space of three weeks… Another interesting phenomenon, which is the polar opposite of this, is what is known in Germany as “Eiffelturmliteratur” (“Eiffel Tower literature”), which refers to supposedly French or typically Parisian romances, which describe a supposedly French-style art de vivre… These are books that do very well, and are often written by Germans themselves (under a French-sounding pseudonym). In this case, the Germans directly produce what they expect from France. I have even seen some of these books be translated into French for our own market, which is quite amusing, don’t you think? But German readers are very interested in what is known as “Immigrationsliteratur”, all of this literature that has arisen out of immigration (we might mention Atiq Rahimi or Azouz Begag, for example), or the diversity of modes of expression throughout the francophone world, including in particular Lyonel Trouillot or Assia Djebar and Boualem Sansal, both winners of the highly prestigious Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. And finally, THE major bestseller of the year was Capital by Thomas Piketty. His arrival here in Berlin was triumphant. It was like that of a pop star. We couldn’t fit everyone in the amphitheatre anymore.

The Books Department also plays a major political role… Yes, one of the most important functions of the Books Department is one of monitoring. We are regularly asked for memos regarding royalties, the tax system, free shipping, the range of offers for eBooks, developments in the market – for ministries, for the books and reading department of the Culture Ministry. We very regularly issue them with reports. The position has become much more politicised. The European context means that things are changing. We organised a major forum on the future of the book in 2013, which was a strong moment of political convergence, with a common declaration signed by various professional organisations, publishers, booksellers and authors, and by the French and German culture ministries, which had a real impact. So yes, this political role is very important. Ultimately, the book markets in both our countries are very similar: we share a same philosophy, with a great commitment to the single price for books, to the defence of authors’ rights, to the battle against piracy – even if the turnover of the publishing industry is more or less doubled when you move from France to Germany, our two visions are very similar. All publishing industry professionals, in France and Germany, want a reduced VAT on eBooks

for example, and are fighting for a revision of the transatlantic trade agreements (TTIP), because they are worried about the single price. The only difficulty in Germany is that the Ministry of Culture is not a completely independent ministry: for historical reasons, it is directly subordinate to the Chancellery. Its authority is not distributed in the same way. For example, the Ministry of Justice is responsible for royalties. The Ministry of Finance deals with the taxation of cultural goods. This makes things somewhat complicated. The political weight of culture is not the same as in France, since the authority regarding specific issues is distributed according to a different model. The Berlin Books Department is also there to provide a bridge, to act as an intermediary (even if, of course, the SNE, the Syndicat National de l’Édition – the French Publishers’ union – has direct links to the Börsenverein). It really is a fascinating job! There are thousands of things to do. And there is a real Francophilia in German publishing that you could even describe as structural… No doubt about it, these are almost perfect partners!

Interview conducted by Pierre Ducrozet.