a social plan announced at Actes Sud

2023-04-27 23:21:43

A particularly difficult period for the publishing house Actes Sud. A few days before the sudden death of Jean-Paul Capitani, co-founder of Actes Sud and husband of Françoise Nyssen, in a bicycle accident on April 4, Place de la République in Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône), a job safeguarding plan (PSE), which should concern around thirty positions, had been announced to the employees of the company, according to The letter a et Weekly Books.

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The staff was informed of this decision during a meeting on March 23, but still does not know which positions, which trades and which sites (Arles or Paris) will be most affected. Actes Sud, which won five Goncourts (Nicolas Mathieu for Their children after them in 2018, Eric Vuillard for Agenda in 2017, Mathias Enard for Boussole in 2015, Jérôme Ferrari for his novel The Sermon on the Fall of Rome in 2012, and Laurent Gaudé for The Sun of the Scortas in 2004) has not managed spectacular sales in literature for two years – apart from Connemara, by Nicolas Mathieu, published in February 2022.

The house suffers, like all publishing, from the inflation of the price of paper. It is because of the economic difficulties with which the group is confronted that the management has resolved to part with part of its staff.

At the registry of the Tarascon court, the accounts of Actes Sud were only filed until the end of 2021, the year during which the turnover amounted to 61.7 million euros and the result, to 2.6 million, for a workforce of 221 employees. A low water level more or less similar to that observed since 2018. Like the whole sector, the pandemic period had benefited Actes Sud, the number of book buyers had been boosted, other leisure activities being inaccessible (cinema, concerts, theater…). But after this parenthesis, the turnover and especially the profitability of Actes Sud deteriorated in 2022.

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“A publisher renewal problem”

This decision comes as the reins of this independent group have been entrusted since the beginning of the year to Anne-Sylvie Bameule, Julie Gautier and Pauline Capitani, the three daughters of Jean-Paul Capitani and Françoise Nyssen, the former boss and ex-minister of culture, who remains on the executive board.

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The new team, which symbolizes generational succession, hoped to be able to avoid such drastic measures in the short term. Recently, a small subsidiary, the publishing house Inculte, co-founded by Jérôme Dayre and deemed too unprofitable, was closed to be transformed into a simple collection of Actes Sud.

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