La coup de Grasset: The exodus of authors and the choice of a collective response
Not wanting to drift with their publishing house after Olivier Nora's ouster, 170 authors have announced that they are leaving Grasset. Writer Oscar Coop-Phane reflects on his experience. Bookseller Gwilherm Perthuis denounces an ultra-concentrated publishing industry.
How far can this haemorrhage go, and who will remain at Grasset? Already, 170 authors have announced that they are leaving the famous yellow-covered publishing house, which has been in turmoil since the forced departure of its chairman and CEO, Olivier Nora, due to disagreement with Vincent Bolloré's publishing policy.
In an open letter, the "resigning" authors explain that they refuse " to allow our ideas and our work" to become the property of the ultraconservative billionaire, who has taken control of the Hachette Livre group, Grasset's parent company, in 2023.
Brutally deprived of their historic publisher, whom they describe as a "bulwark" and a "cement" of Grasset's independence, these writers denounce an "ideological war aimed at imposing authoritarianism everywhere in culture and the media".
"We were preparing for it," writer Oscar Coop-Phane, one of the self-purged, told Euronews, while acknowledging that "we believed in Olivier Nora's ability to resist the pressure" from the Bolloré group.
"I thought Olivier would be indestructible", continued the winner of the 2012 Prix de Flore for "Zénith-Hôtel" (Finitude), author of six books with Grasset, including "Rose nuit" and "Un Arabe".
According to him, the publisher had "a very clear line": not to jump ship until something unacceptable was imposed on him.
"I knew that the day Olivier left, I would leave too", he admits.
What attracted Oscar Coop-Phane to Grasset? " The independence and family spirit," he recalls. According to him, in his dealings with publishers, press attachés and during the production stages, "you didn't feel part of a group".
He says he is thinking of the employees, whom he feels are "being held hostage", and stresses how_"lucky I am to have this freedom"._
A collective movement
Oscar Coop-Phane tells us that the mobilisation of the soon-to-be ex-Grasset authors began in a WhatsApp group set up by several women authors. A crisis meeting then took place in a Paris café last Thursday - not at Le Flore, the writer points out, but in "a less iconic bistro".
"We all have different situations, so we wanted to agree on a text for a platform" and evoke "a range of all situations", he explained to Euronews.
At this meeting, attended by lawyers, legal action was envisaged to enable authors to recover all their rights to their past works. A collective lawsuit - an American-style class action - was mentioned.
Oscar Coop-Phane, for whom the writer's life is above all a "solitary existence", nevertheless emphasises this surge of collective solidarity: "all the signatories agreed to withdraw despite differences in their lives". He describes very different profiles - "huge sellers, medium-sized sellers and small sellers", as well as authors working with other publishers or not.
"There are authors whose books come out next week, or at the start of the new academic year in September", he adds, adding that in his case, no date had been set for a forthcoming publication. " I was very late anyway," he jokes.
As for his six novels published by Grasset, the writer says he has "mixed feelings".
"I'd be delighted to take them out of the catalogue, but at the same time they're part of the history of the publishing house, which at the time spoke to me and appealed to me", he says, expressing concern, like his colleagues, about the ideological direction the house might take after the fall of the Nora "bastion".
However, he points out that the start of the 2026 academic year had been "thought out and planned with Olivier". " Should we boycott it?" he wonders, referring to a possible final tribute.
For several days now, debate has been raging over the introduction of a "conscience clause" in publishing contracts, modelled on the existing clause for journalists, in the event of a change of editorial line deemed incompatible with their convictions.
At a time when it is difficult to pass legislation in a fragmented National Assembly, Socialist Senator Sylvie Robert has proposed an "emergency law" along these lines, designed to "protect authors".
The affair that has shaken the publishing world has reached the head of state. During a visit to the Paris Book Festival on Friday, Emmanuel Macron said it was "very important to express" and "defend" editorial "pluralism " in France, adding that his thoughts were with "all these authors and Mr Nora".
A commitment to independence
In France - a country of readers and a single book price - publishing is a cultural exception. Publishers are recognisable to the general public for their catalogues, their ideas and the design of their books - often uncluttered and unmovable, in stark contrast to Anglo-Saxon marketing methods.
Booksellers are an essential link in this chain.
For Gwilherm Perthuis, manager of L'œil cacodylate, a leading independent bookshop in Lyon's 2nd arrondissement, the "authoritarian" management of the big groups, including the Bolloré empire, is jeopardising "the whole ecosystem" of the book trade.
"It's appalling that billionaires should take over old publishing houses, which have a history, pluralist identities and open-mindedness, and turn them into a tool for totally ideological propaganda", he told Euronews of the historic rebellion at Grasset.
"Whether they set up their own publishing house to publish what they like, they are free to do what they like, but what is terrible is to suddenly take over publishing projects that they oppose in order to distort them and make them disappear", he lamented.
The bookseller, which sells over 27,000 titles, hails the mobilisation of authors to defend their rights: "It's a very good thing that they can act and express themselves collectively, and we encourage them to stand firm in this solidarity. It will give them more strength to stand their ground".
Gwilherm Perthuis admits that his bookshop "doesn't place much value on the publishers in the Hachette group", and that the situation will encourage them to be "even more restrictive".
According to the director of L'œil cacodylate, the stranglehold of the big groups is forcing publishers to fall back on "sure things, books that work on their own, bestsellers", in order to make their investments profitable in the short term - to the detriment of many authors "who don't sell quickly, who take time to emerge".
"Now more than ever, booksellers and readers need to pay close attention to the way in which books are designed, distributed, promoted and publicised, so that they are not sold as just another product but as a unique, singular work that meets a specific readership", he stresses.
Gwilherm Perthuis assures us that_"this fine-tuning work takes time",_ adding that in the long term, it should enable us to resist "a few publishing giants who, through their concentration, devour everything and operate in an authoritarian, even fascistic, manner".
Finally, he calls for regulatory legislation to "put small publishing houses back at the centre of the game" and limit these excesses.
