Guillaume Allary: “The challenge is the mid-ranking titles which can change”

It’s a building that exudes artistic industry, a few steps from the Grand Rex in Paris. Here, post-production studios, there the office of the Oscar-winning director Michel Hazanavicius and on the first, the Allary editions, installed for almost ten years at this address. It was precisely for this anniversary that we met the eternal young editor Guillaume Allary, 51 years of which nearly 25, or perhaps 30 – he no longer knows exactly himself – spent as an editor at Flammarion, Hachette Littérature or Nil before founding the editions which bear his name, distributed and distributed by Interforum. Ten years later, 126 titles in the catalog including 20 with more than 100,000 copies sold (read below) and 25 awards in France and internationally (read below), the team, the line and the professions have not changed. And at the same time, everything changed. This is what we talked about with Guillaume Allary.

Weekly Books : What is your relationship with booksellers and how has it evolved over ten years?

Guillaume Allary : She began with a tour of France’s bookstores in 2014 with the first book published by the house, a first novel, Loyaltiesof Diane Brasseur. The essence of this job is to take risks, I wanted to start with a first novel. The booksellers believed in it, this first book was our first success, I am deeply grateful to them. And then there was this whole period of identification: Allary, house of literature? tests? comics? Now, we are identified by booksellers as a demanding general public house, and this relationship with them is the basis of everything. All the challenges of the book chain lie with the bookstore and the independent bookstore. I also regret that there are fewer and fewer independent publishing houses capable of competing with those of the big groups. Editorial concentration is not good news for booksellers and authors. The German edition, to name just one, is more diversified and therefore healthier.

You are attached to your independence. What is she holding on to?

Ten years is an opportunity to look back and look at how far we have come. I reread what I had written when creating the house to define the project and convince relatives to lend me money and, it surprised me, what I had written was is realised ! I wanted to publish books that tell the story of the world with aesthetic and intellectual standards, reference books, which last, which build a foundation. But I also wanted these books to have the ability to speak to the general public. This is the line of the house, from which we have never deviated, and which we decline in all genres. Mixing requirements and accessibility means, for each title, several levels of reading, several ways of entering the work, so that those who know nothing about the subject, like the enlightened amateur, find interest in it. I think I had identified that an independent house with high added editorial value could be essential.

“Success also depends on the ability to say no to a project”

What makes you succeed where many fail?

I started from the observation that we were in editorial overproduction. And ultimately, this has not changed: for ten years, we have been at a plateau – between 60,000 and 70,000 new titles per year. When I started in publishing, 25 years ago, this volume was much smaller, so I would have had more difficulty differentiating myself. Today, we publish a dozen titles per year, with seven collaborators. We have the resources to support each of these titles over time, unlike other large group houses, the majority of whose titles are chased by others. And then we stuck to our ambition of never publishing a book that didn’t resemble us. I refused several texts whose commercial potential I saw but which did not correspond to the requirements or the humanist values ​​defended by the house. Success also depends on the ability to say no to a project. I don’t like doing it but it’s what I do all day. Where I failed was to have a regular production of 15 to 20 titles per year. This is a goal I have had since the beginning and I hope to achieve it in the future.

The situation is still delicate today, with the increase in the costs of raw materials, which weakens small structures. You announced 8 million euros in turnover in 2018, and you achieved 6.9 million euros in 2023. Things are going bad, right?

6.9 million turnover with 7 employees, I hope things will continue to go badly like this for a long time! (Laughs). We are not in the same economy as the big houses which publish a lot of titles. For them, the increase in the price of paper has a big impact because the cost of a book is mainly a variable cost (manufacturing and the author’s credit), their fixed costs being amortized over a large number of works. It is the opposite at Allary Editions where fixed costs are absorbed by very few titles. The increase in the cost of paper is certainly significant, but most of the cost comes from the fact that our press officer, Elisabeth Trétiack-Franckwill be dedicated to the book for several weeks, that there is an editor or two who will work on the text, that I myself spend a lot of time on it or even that Laurence d’Aboville, the assistant director responsible for bookseller relations, takes care of organizing tours and tailor-made meetings. Each of our books costs a lot of money.

“Yes, it’s more complicated today than it was before! »

But the situation of general literature in France and elsewhere is worrying. What allows you to believe that the future can continue to be written independently?

Independence is first and foremost a choice, but I can’t tell you that it isn’t more complicated today than it was before! When I started in publishing, at the beginning of 2000, a first novel sold 3 or 4,000 copies without much difficulty. If we released a social essay that got one or two good papers, we sold 4 or 5,000 copies. Today, these are not the same figures and there is a polarization of sales. The challenge is to manage to have “middle” titles which, at one point, make the switch. For example, Make Family of Sophie Galabru which is a discovery of our editor Pauline Miel recently arrived in the house. Sophie’s first attempt, which was not with Allary Editions, sold less than 4,000 copies. Thanks to an investment by the house in editorial, distribution and promotion, its second attempt, Make Family, crosses 20,000 copies. Same method for the neuroscientist Albert Moukheiberunknown at the time of the release of his first essay in 2019, Your brain is playing tricks on you, which sold 15,000 copies, notably thanks to a clever cover and a lot of work to make the subject accessible. Result: a documentary adaptation by Arte and 12 transfers of foreign rights. Translations have been, from the beginning, an essential lever. In ten years, we have signed 325 transfer contracts for only 126 titles published.

In ten years, the impact of social networks has greatly increased on communication around releases, while the consumption of books has decreased. How have you evolved on these subjects?

Houses like mine, like all demanding houses, rely on what we call avid readers, that is to say those who buy more than ten books per year. This core is diminishing because they are quite old people. However, young people devour series. The challenge is to show them the pleasure they can have in reading quality books, including in other genres. We need to seek out these young readers, often very active on the networks, to make them great readers. It is in this spirit that we have decided to launch next year, with Hugo Decrypts, a collection of encyclopedias of a new genre, each time with a major theme told, deciphered in comics. What appealed to us was Hugo’s ability to speak to young people and his quest for high standards, and he and his team came to seek our editorial know-how. Of the 126 titles we have published in ten years, 59 have exceeded 10,000 copies sold. This figure reassured me about the capacity of a quality book to stand out and it gives me hope and energy to continue.

You are also releasing your latest volume of Cahiers d’Esther. No nostalgia to end one of your greatest successes?

This series began when Esther was 10 years old, and Riad (Sattouf, editor’s note) and I had planned from the beginning that it would end the year she turned 18, when she came of age. This last volume closes a wonderful adventure, so there is a form of nostalgia of course, but this announced ending is part of the charm and strength of this series. And I’m more excited about the challenges ahead than celebrating past successes.