Edition

Print media, books

The book market is a massive and resilient one. Thanks to regulatory tools such as copyright, fixed book price, and reduced VAT rate, the publishing sector has been able to develop, innovate, and maintain a strong position in the cultural goods market in France.

The French publishing world and its dynamism cause envy all over the world. This ecosystem, which goes from author to reader, also includes players such as publishers, printers, broadcasters, distributors, and also booksellers, librarians, etc. A whole world in which to bring out French creativity and innovation.

Key figures

The French bought 351 million new printed books in 2023, making books the second largest market for cultural goods behind video games.
€4,4 billion in turnover in 2023, of which 22% is attributed to the literature segment, 17% to comics and 13% to youth.
Copyright royalties represent on average 10,7% of the turnover of publishing houses.
25 book sales outlets, including 000 independent bookstores, and 3 libraries in France. Nearly one in two books is purchased in an independent bookstore.
French press titles distributed 2,7 billion copies in 2023, or 7,5 million per day.
Subscription (print or digital) represents 46% of paid distribution.
Online press titles received 27,2 billion visits in 2023, 85% of which were on mobile.

Industry trends

Literary publishing is an extremely concentrated sector: the top 5 publishers account for 60% of the market. Hachette and Editis, French publishing flagships, are among the ten world leaders in the sector.
Despite weak momentum, writing still represents a major share of cultural consumption: books account for a quarter of all cultural spending, a proportion which reaches 60% when including written media.
A highly segmented market with variable dynamics: growing segments such as comics, webtoons, manga, children's literature, and extracurricular activities... and other segments that are suffering, such as tourism, dictionaries and encyclopedias.
France has one of the densest networks of bookstores in the world, and libraries are the primary local cultural facility. The physical network of points of sale remains essential: only 15% of sales are made online.
The share of digital books is relatively low compared to other cultural sectors (around 10% of the market), and is growing slowly.
Numerous challenges of digitalization (aggregation of sales data, commercial forecasts, distribution), transversality and intellectual property developments (declination of universes and characters on other media), and impact, in particular that of paper production (second-hand books, more sustainable papers - PEFC, FSC, recycled).