A section of the Grand Palais roofing. The glass was the first element of the three-year renovation of the building to which the Festival du Livre de Paris will return in April. Image – Getty: Poiremolle
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
As you’ll remember, the Syndicat national de l’édition (SNE) announced in early 2022 that its newly renamed Festival du Livre de Paris would be staged in April of that year on the Champ-de-Mars between the Eiffel Tower and the École Militaire in a temporary exhibition structure, the Grand Palais Ephémère.
Previously known as the Salon du Livre Paris, the Festival du Livre de Paris is primarily a public-facing event with some professional programming.
It’s a project of the SNE, the French publishers’ association, and the Grand Palais Ephémère temporary setting was created during renovations of the Grand Palais itself, reportedly costing US$500 million, for the 2024 Olympics.
Pierre-Yves Bérenguer
Next year’s dates for the festival, according to general director Pierre-Yves Bérenguer in a message today (December 11), are April 11 through 13, 2025.
The show will return to its first (1981) home at the Grand Palais, which built in 1900 for the Paris Universal Exhibition and renovated by the studio Chatillon Architectes over the last three years. According to reports, sheer accessibility was a major interest in the renovation, which began with the building’s glass roofing.
Information from the publishers has it that the full renovation won’t be completed until just before the opening in April of the book festival. The Grand Palais “half-opened its doors” for the Olympics, as they put it, looking forward to the book festival as a moment to fully open those doors.
According to the SNE, 45 percent of Festival du Livre goers are under the age of 25—a coveted age demographic in any publishing market—and organizers say the show will emphasize the book business’ youth sector, comics, manga, and young adult titles “while consolidating the place of the novel, essays, and poetry.” For kids, a special “children’s village” is being designed in the facility with activities and creative workshops.
The program expects to host as many as 1,200 authors and 350 exhibiting publishing houses. This will be the fourth iteration of the event since the name change from “salon” to “festival.”
In other sectors, a Grande Galerie de l’adaptation will focus on books-to-screen in partnership with SCELF, the Société Civile des Editeurs de Langue Française, a copyright collection and distribution agency developed by literary publishers for editors and producers.
There also are plans for a Galerie de la Mer un Commun, a tie-in to the Year of the Sea celebrations, with the French ministry of the sea and Centre Pompidou.
The original Paris Book Fair was created by SNE in 1981, and was set at the Grand Palais. In the 1990s, the show was set at the Porte de Versailles, then it moved to the temporary structure in 2022, before making its April return to its original 1981 home.
A site is up and running about the upcoming Festival de Livre du Paris here.
Paris’ Grand Palais, the anticipated site of April’s Festival du Livre de Paris. Image – Getty: Ostill
More from Publishing Perspectives on the French market is here, more from us on bookselling is here, and more on book fairs is here.