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Hachette Livre chief Arnaud Nourry has urged the leading French publishers to join forces in a single digital book distribution platform, and has rejected the idea of including booksellers.
The platform would be created jointly by Numilog for Hachette Livre, Eden-Livres for Flammarion, Gallimard and La Martinière, and e-Plateforme for Editis and Média Participations. They had a "technical meeting" last week, but this "does not prejudge their decision", Nourry said.
The three, which together account for 80% of French language books, would each hold 30% of the capital of the joint venture. It would cost €500,000 (£438,000) to set up, would be open to other publishers wishing to join and could be launched within three months. It would supply online sellers such as Amazon and Google, provided that they respect publishers’ prices.
Speaking to the French newspaper Le Figaro Nourry ruled out linking up through Dilicom, even though Eden-Livres, e-Plateforme and Immatériel are in talks to use the book trade order platform to sell digital books. "Neither Dilicom nor any other existing interprofessional body is capable of undertaking the task nor of going fast enough," Nourry said.
But Dilicom dismissed this argument. "There is some confusion," managing director Vincent Marty told The Bookseller. "It is out of the question for us to handle physical content. Our role is to process orders for digital books in the same way as as do for print versions, including those published by Hachette."
Nourry dismissed booksellers’ call last week for the trade to create a single platform, saying he had never heard of a sector where retailers and suppliers teamed up. "It is up to publishers to digitise their works and make them available to bookshops through a storage and distribution platform," he said. "It is the booksellers’ job to sell them."
He welcomed prospects for Apple to launch a reading device, but stressed that a single digital book distribution hub and reduced VAT in France were vital if the trade was to avoid the same fate as the music business. Apple imposed its price on music "and imperilled a whole profession," he said. Digital book prices should be set by publishers, not reader manufacturers, should be 20%-35% lower than for print, and should be covered by the fixed book price law, he said.
He added that Hachette’s digital book sales in the United States had taken off, and totalled $5m in December, which was more than for the whole of 2008. He said he expected the trend to hit Europe in the next 12-18 months.
"Almost half of the French people do not read books—perhaps electronic devices will appeal to some of them."