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Just 4% of French authors have signed digital contracts for their most recent books and a third say relations with publishers have deteriorated over the past five years, yet advances are marginally on the rise.
Those were some of the highlights of the fifth annual survey of over 1,000 French authors, compiled by the French multimedia authors society (Société Civile des Auteurs Multimedia, SCAM) and the French authors society (Société des Gens de Lettres, SGDL), released ahead of Salon du Livre, the Paris book fair which kicks off on 22nd March.
The vast majority (73%) of French authors consider that relations with most or all their publishers are satisfactory or excellent, while 28% feel relations are unsatisfactory or conflicted.
But 33% of respondents said relations with their publishers have deteriorated in the past five years, while nearly 60% said they have remained the same and only 9% said they have improved.
Conflicts over contracts seem to be the sticking point for unhappy authors. Only 51% of authors received accounts regularly from all or most of their publishers, and 15% received none regularly from any of their publishers.
Accounts were never clear and complete for 25% of respondents, with the result that the long-standing idea of creating an outside body to register all publishers’ accounts was endorsed by 89% of them.
Just 4% said they had signed digital contracts for their most recent books, 43% of which were for a limited period.
Strangely, in view of the current economic difficulties, the number of contracts including an advance averaging €2,500 rose to 70% from 61% last year. But 59% of authors received less than 10% of the retail price in royalties, while 31% receive 10%, and “more worrying” was the fact that 15% were paid less than 5%, the report said.
Many of the authors’ complaints should be resolved by a new agreement on print and electronic book contracts that will be signed on Thursday (21st March), although the impact will not be felt until 2015, once parliament has amended the Intellectual Property Code and authors have been paid under the new rules, SGDL president Jean Claude Bologne said.