“In order to ensure the long-term viability of the creative process, which is the lifeblood of French publishing, it seems essential that authors and publishers, its architects, receive, directly or indirectly, compensation from the sale of used books,” the association said.

Renaud Lefebvre, the managing director of the SNE, told Publishing Perspectives that French book sales have been declining since 2023. While second-hand sales are not the sole cause behind this negative trend, it is impossible not to draw a certain connection between the two, the managing director said.

“According to figures published by the [French] Ministry of Culture, the share of secondhand books in purchases increased from 12.7 percent in 2011 to 20.1 percent in 2024, with a very sharp acceleration since 2022. This change in scale corresponds to the massive arrival of online platforms on the market. At the current rate of growth, secondhand books could represent nearly 40 percent of the volume purchased within five years,” according to Lefebvre.

The trend has the potential to disrupt the overall economics of a sector whose equilibrium relies on fixed book prices, which obviously do not apply to secondhand books, he said.

“Furthermore, and this is the crucial point, the creative actors, so authors and publishers who made these books possible, are completely excluded from the value chain. They receive no direct or indirect compensation. This will soon become unsustainable,” according to the managing director.

In the SNE’s view, the most coherent solution would be to establish copyright fees for used books through mandatory collective management, similarly to how it was done in the past for photocopies, then library lending, and finally digital private copying, Lefebvre said, adding that the existing mechanisms are well-established in the French market, as are the organizations that are tasked with collecting these fees.

At the end of 2023, the SNE launched its own working group to develop several concrete solution scenarios.

“The publishing industry took stock of the situation with the publication in 2023 of the in-depth study conducted by [France’s organization for the collective management of book authors’ and publishers] SOFIA and the Ministry of Culture. The industry organized itself under the impetus of the SNE which established a task force to develop proposals, closely involving authors’ organizations,” he said. “This work, based on thorough legal analysis, enabled us to develop the copyright remuneration scenario we are proposing.”

Established in 1999 by French authors, in 2023, the SOFIA collected some €12.6 worth of fees that were distributed to a total of 66,000 authors and 2,600 publishers, as indicated by the latest available figures.

Lefebvre said that the SNE maintains, and its position is supported by the recent opinion of the French Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court, that such a system would not contravene either French constitutional principles nor the rules of the European Union of which France is a member.