Filéas, a company with a mission, aims to improve the transparency of sales figures for printed and digital books for authors and to optimize the economic and environmental efficiency of the book chain. A mission committee, made up of representatives of authors, publishers, booksellers and institutional partners, supervises its actions to guarantee its interprofessional character and of general interest.
Its main objective is to create a sales monitoring tool accessible via a dedicated portal, in collaboration with players in the profession. This project is part of the digital transformation of the sector, by promoting the federation of stakeholders and generalized access to data.
The Filéas platform aims to provide precise sales data to players in the book chain. It will allow authors to consult the sales of their works free of charge and will offer, for a subscription adapted to the size of the structures, access to publishers, broadcasters and distributors.
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Filéas will rely on existing tools such as the Electre Authors database and the FEL (Exhaustive Book File) to constitute its bibliographic base. The site will offer two sales indicators: a weekly indicator available from the opening, based on GfK data, and, subsequently, a daily indicator powered by data from players in the sector, in particular those from more than 700 partner bookstores in startup.
Eight major players in the book industry came together on December 20, 2024 to create the company Filéas (Fils d'information booksellers, publishers, authors): the National Publishing Union (SNE), the Cercle de la Librairie, Dilicom , the Association for the Development of Creative Bookstores (ADELC), the French Librairie Union (SLF), the Association of Computerized Bookstores and Users of electronic networks (ALIRE), the Permanent Council of Writers (CPE) and the Society of Gens de Lettres (SGDL).
Now we have to work
During the constituent general assembly, Vincent Montagne, president of the National Publishing Union declared “ This project finds an outcome induced in the author-publisher agreement of 2013. This seems very important to us. It is also a wonderful sign of solidarity for the sector. ».
A message supported by Renaud Lefebvre, general director of the SNE, emphasizing to ActuaLitté “an important step forward. It is both the culmination of numerous discussions and an important starting point for all the book professions which will benefit from it.“. The official launch will take place during the 2025 Book Festival (from April 11 to 13), with “the presentation of a test version».
Severine Weiss, president of the CPE, contacted by telephone specifies that “the deployment will be gradual from the spring. Authors and publishers will have a first weekly solution with data provided by GfK», one of the panelists who sell sales estimates for the industry. Of course, this information will be simpler than that currently sold to customers.
To ensure that information about this access circulates among authors, the media, authors' organizations, as well as La Sofia will be involved. “I also have no doubt that the authors will gradually spread the word“, she assures.
For several years now, the Hachette group has provided its authors with a similar solution for access to sales figures with My Author Space opened in 2021. After a year of experimentation, some 1,000 writers from the group were connected to it. In October 2021, it was Editis' turn to develop the same solution, with legal, administrative and commercial information. Formerly Booktracking, now Fileas, the interprofessional tool would in no way compete with these services – perhaps it will even be used to verify and compare the elements communicated?
Raising boxes
For now, the partners are working on the platform and its interface, approaches “which raise complex questions regarding security or confidentiality for all“. The second stage, more innovative, will therefore involve sales feedback at checkout, with the assistance of 700 bookstores (via the SLF), including Mollat in Bordeaux, known for not sharing its data.
It will then remain to convince the brands and specialized supermarkets to take part in Filéas, to complete the quality of the data – Fnac and others have refused to enter capitalistically into the project. While allowing access to the metrics (via GfK), with the reservation of being able to remove them if the tool is not suitable. If Filéas as such is a major step forward for the inter-professional sector, it is still far from having convinced all operators to date.
The challenge for small editorial structures, detailed many times, will lie in the control of reprints: by ceasing to navigate by sight, it is above all the treasury of the houses which will be protected from unnecessary expenses. By benefiting from a better vision of sales, houses will manage their production more efficiently — with the ecological implications that we can imagine.
Consequence for distributors: avoid overstock. For some, as we have seen, it has proven more profitable to remove partner houses from their catalog, rather than investing in order to grow and welcome more partner houses. Moreover, increases in logistics costs, transport or even on boxes, are leading distribution to rethink its strategy, reducing volumes overall.
Filés will perhaps not circumnavigate the Earth in 80 days, but could, in its small way, contribute to changing the world?
Photo credits: ActuaLitté, CC BY SA 2.0
By Nicolas Gary
Contact : [email protected]
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