In bookstores, it’s impossible to miss the hundreds of banners designed to catch the eye of readers. A marketing strategy almost as old as the publishing world and whose effectiveness remains uncertain.
The reader no longer knows where to turn in the bookstore Le Livre et la tortoise in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine). On the new releases table at the beginning of October, 73 books sport a banner out of the 157 on display. Even for less recent books, a quarter of the 600 titles in the French literature section are adorned with this paper ribbon. In the polar section, count 40% of more or less draped books. “Publishers even put the ‘new’ banner on a pocketsighs bookseller Olivier Beugin. When it goes on the shelves and a customer takes it out three years later, he’s still wearing it.”
On the occasion of the literary season, book professionals agree on a figure: one in two books is covered with the famous banner. Yellows, blacks, blues and even reds, inspired by the Grail, the scarlet ribbon of Goncourt, awarded Monday November 4. The assurance, for the chosen one, of six-figure sales. “We can’t get fancy about that,” in terms of color or font, we already warn at Flammarion. “We know it works no matter what.”
To trace the history of bandeau literary, we must go back to the moment when the book became a market, and no longer a hobby of scholars surrounded by dusty libraries. Or the turning point from the 19th to the 20th century. “Just before, the publishers hired sandwich men to promote books on the street.laughs Jean-Yves Mollier, author ofAnother story of French publishing. Then comes the Prix Goncourt and men of letters not dissatisfied with small advertising happenings, Bernard Grasset and Gaston Gallimard in the lead. Initially, the objective was to highlight literary prizes, which quickly became authoritative among the public. This is evidenced by the 1919 Goncourt incident.
In the specifications of what is not yet the most prestigious distinction in French literature: rewarding a young author, who writes in the spirit of the times. Roland Dorgelès, who returned from the trenches and who wrote Wooden crosses on the Great War, ticks all the boxes. However, it is to Marcel Proust, who did not put a toe on his forehead and who wrote about good society sheltered from shrapnel, that the reward goes. Furious, Dorgelès’ publisher puts a blindfold on his foal’s work: “Prix Goncourt, by four votes out of nine”. The case ended up in court, but this marketing process entered the pantheon of French literature at the same time asIn the shade of young girls in bloom.
“At the beginning, the headband was seen as a Legion of Honor. Today, it’s more like the Label Rouge that we stick on chicken trays.”
Sylvie Lucas, specialist in the literary worldat franceinfo
“If you walked into a bookstore in the 1980s, you only had color on your pockets”illustrates Alix Penent, literary director at Flammarion. Today, a chromatic explosion guaranteed.
Some banners indicate the awarding of a prize (there are 2,000 in France, including around twenty known to the general public) or highlight a number of sales of indefinite scope. Others extract a quote from the book, display the author’s reel or the poster for the film adaptation. “My pockets are full!” plague Hélène Pérenditis, bookseller in a major Parisian cultural brand, who pulls out ten of them from her pants. The “spoils” of a day’s work aligning the new products on the shelves. “It gets damaged, it gets stuck in the boxes, I spend my days removing them.”
Some rays still resist the invader… Particularly among teenagers and young adults. “Younger readers have not yet integrated these marketing codes. Prices don’t mean much to them”supports Marie Mérieu, youth specialist of the Book and the Turtle. Comics have tried it too. After the first Angoulême Festival in 1974, Dupuis editions closed the last Gaston Lagaffe with a bright yellow headband: “André Franquin, Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême for all of his work”. “A way to ‘grow’ comics” at the time when the ninth art was chasing its letters of nobility, confirms the Belgian bookseller Philippe Capart, memory of comics. An experience with no tomorrow. Today, comic book publishers favor stickers affixed to the top of the cover to attract the reader’s eye.
Are we to believe that the headband only works on adults? “We have not done an impact study”recognizes Alix Penent from Flammarion, where all the works stamped “literary return” carry an XXL. At Grasset, we allow covering with a paper ribbon “50% of production”, “a consequence of our yellow model sometimes considered a little austere”advances with chosen words Jean-Marc Levent, commercial director of the house.
“The goal is for the reader to turn the book over to read the back cover.”
Jean-Marc Levent, sales director at Grassetat franceinfo
But it is difficult to know if a banner, charged a few cents to the printer and a few dozen cents to the reader, has the effect sought by publishers.
A study carried out in 2019 by the Babelio site among its community of readers, however, establishes that a banner “attracts attention” of 51% of respondents, but 34% consider this process to be attractive, while 85% are especially attached to the fact of being able to remove it. Still. The only time a Goncourt was not hooded, it did not have the expected success. Julien Gracq and his The banks of the Syrtes attracted only 110,000 readers in 1951.
“It’s panurgism”storm Olivier Gallmeister, boss of the eponymous publishing house, specializing in foreign thrillers. “Of the 80 books we released this year, we must not have published more than 10. The fewer we do, the more impact it has.” With targeted messages each time. The Silence of the king of Boston thriller Dennis Lehane was thus barred from “By the author of Mystic River et Shutter Island“. Piergiorgio Pulixi,“that we want to install”in the words of its publisher, was awarded a “The new master of Italian crime fiction”. On EvasionPierre Lemaitre guarantees readers of the American Benjamin Whitmer to find “the quintessence of black” inside the pages.
In literary jargon, we call it a “blurb”, a short sentence, a catchy slogan, signed by an experienced writer, intended to shine the spotlight on an emerging author. One of the specialists in the genre is Stephen King, with more than 150 “blurbs” under his belt. “It’s a better way to direct people to good books than a 2,500 word review”defended the author of Carrie in the magazine Entertainment Weekly. Her French-speaking equivalent, Amélie Nothomb, is a self-confessed “serial blurbeuse”. The lady in the hat of French-speaking literature receives dozens of novels each year in the hope that they will inspire her with a sentence. bankable.
“I wouldn’t have stopped at the book The Dead Moms Club if it hadn’t been for Amélie’s little note: ‘I’ve never read such a grunge novel'”illustrates Stéphanie Joribon, collector of novels by Amélie Nothomb. And a fetishist for strips of paper. In her personal mausoleum, this unconditional fan has seven versions of Stupor and tremorsall wearing a different headband. Even a killer review can become a marketing argument: “None of this would matter if [Ingrid Lapraille] had a style, but I didn’t find one for him.” thus ended up as a banner on the cover ofOkran.
Did you say absurd and excessive? This is nothing compared to the crazy initiative of the authors of a Best-selling novel printed on recycled paper (yes, that’s the title of this openly parodic work). Clean model, cream color incorporating the codes of Gallimard, Albin Michel and Flammarion, and a red banner, full of self-deprecation, in large letters: “Already 4 sales”. “We had thought of two additional slogans. ‘A book that deserves to be known’ and ‘We are not saying that the books next to it are less good, but that ours is better'”laugh Simon Drouard and Vianney Louvet. They report enthusiastic feedback from tired booksellers “exaggerated superlatives” and extravagant sales figures rarely sourced. “We often get messages from readers who cross out the 4 and write 5 instead. This speaks to people who like us to divert the codes of the book object.” More still a little short to win the next Goncourt.
