Key players gathered in Paris on December 20, 2024, to formalize the Filéas program. Image: SNE
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘Finally Possible To See the Light of Day’
You may recall that in June of last year, we mentioned briefly news from the French publishers’ association—the Syndicat national de l’édition (SNE)—a plan to open what’s called the Filéas project, described as an information feed for bookstores, publishers, and authors.
During our winter break, we had word that on December 20, representatives of eight major entities in the French publishing industry gathered to formalize the service, the name of which refers to Fils d’informations libraires, éditeurs, auteurs—news feeds from booksellers, publishers, authors.
The eight organizations represented are:
The National Publishing Union (SNE)- The Bookstore Circle
- Dilicom
- The Association for the Development of Creative Bookstores (ADELC)
- The French Booksellers’ Union (SLF)
- Association of Computerized Libraries and Users of Electronic Networks (ALIRE)
- The Permanent Council of Writers (CPE)
- The Society of Men of Letters (SGDL)
As expressed following the December 20 event, the rationale for the creation of the new system is to “ensure better visibility on the sales figures of printed and digital books for authors and contributing to improving the economic and environmental efficiency of the book chain.” In short, Filéas is designed to capture, parse, and monitor industry data.
More specifically, SNE’s media messaging tells us, an intention of the project is to create a sales-tracking tool through the use of a dedicated portal and in collaboration with industry players. Organizers are pointing out that this is a matter of both answering and leveraging the digital transformation of book publishing.
“In order to signify the general-interest dimension of this project and guarantee its profoundly inter-professional nature,” SNE’s commentary says, “the special status of a mission-driven company was adopted for this new structure.
A ‘Mission Committee’
“A ‘mission committee,’ composed of equal representatives of the colleges of authors, publishers, booksellers and institutional partners … will thus be the guarantor of compliance and the proper conduct of its missions.”
Vincent Montagne
Vincent Montagne, president of the SNE, is quoted in the announcement from the 20th, saying that the new project reflects an agreement formulated in a 2013 agreement between publishers and authors.
“This seems very important to us,” he says. “It is also a wonderful sign of solidarity from the sector.”
Filéas is to be directed by Harriet Seegmuller, and its chair is Alban Cerisier.
Alban Cerisier
“Intense consultation between the players in the sector,” Cerisier says, “has allowed us to create Filéas. This tool has been long-awaited, and it will allow each of its beneficiaries to have a better understanding of the sales of their titles.
“Filéas will also be a formidable management and decision-making tool in the future, which should make it possible to respond to significant environmental and economic problems to better calibrate reprints, in particular.
“Filéas is an innovative and general-interest sector project based on the powerful link that unites booksellers, authors, and publishers and on the technical and functional base that the organization has already developed. Thank you to everyone for having finally made it possible to see the light of day. Together, we we’ll bring it about.”
Related article: ‘Paris’ Festival du Livre Returns to the Grand Palais in April.’ Image – Getty: Poiremolle
It’s expected that the first stage of a Filéas release will be out at the time of the Festival du Livre de Paris, which, as our readers know, is scheduled for April 11 to 13.
In essence, the Filéas platform is intended to serve authors, “who will be able to consult the service free of charge,” collecting its sales data for their own books,” and “all players in the book chain—publishers, distributors and distributors—who will be able to consult their sales figures after taking a subscription adapted to the sizes of their operations.”
In creating a bibliographic database, organizers say, Filéas “will rely on existing tools in the sector by integrating the Electre Authors database and data from the FEL (Exhaustive Book File) on the other.”
Apparently not as yet active, the new site is expected to produce two regularly released sale indicators:
A weekly report “constructed from data collected by GfK, Filéas’ preferred partner,” and in a later stage, “a daily indicator built from the sales data of any player in the sector who agrees to provide” its own numbers.
As the immediate past president of the International International Publishers Association (IPA), Karine Pansa of Brazil, pointed out many times during her two-year term—she now has handed over to Gvantsa Jobava of Georgia—the world industry has yet to develop a way to capture and analyze coherent publishing data that can be compared and contrasted between international book markets.
The work led by the French industry on the Filéas may offer eventual insights in to potential gains by other markets.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the French market is here, more on industry statistics is here, and more on data issues in publishing is here.
Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.
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