Her name: Céline Ravier. She has just written a remarkable book, entitled:
([AUTO] PHOTOGRAPHIC EDITION. Investigation on a mutation.)
The book is published by the publisher Arnaud Bizalion.
We will publish the main themes of the book in four installments, this is the second one!
The current upheavals in the photographic publishing market
Enjoyment comes from the image. This is the big change. – Roland Barthes
The world of photographic publishing has evolved profoundly over the past ten years and the observation is unequivocal: on all sides, we are now talking about “overpublishing”. What are the factors?
Today, it is possible to distinguish several categories of photo books publishers: historic publishers, independent publishers of smaller size, alternative publishers or micro-publishers, and self-published photographer-authors.
In addition to this large landscape of publishers (and publishing methods), there is an increasing number of photographers fresh out of photography schools that want to publish their books. In results since the 2010s, an inflation in the supply of photography books. Patrick Le Bescont, founder of the Filigranes publishing house, has seen a fairly clear change over the past five years: “There are more and more books and more and more photographers. Several hundred graduates graduate from photography schools each year like the ENSP in Arles (École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie), the ENS Louis Lumière in Lyon or the Gobelins in Paris. ”
Another observation: the slump in the magazine market and the press in general, one of the main supports for photographers, which has been steadily deteriorating over the last 20 years. Now magazines rarely have a big enough budget to order documentary or photojournalism work.
According to the last report published in March 2019, this micro-market for French publishing, which represented 2.9% of the publishing market in 2017, is almost stable (- 0.8% compared to 2016). However, many specialist publishers talk about the fragility of their economy.
The fact is now clear: the photographic edition is today situated in a dysfunctional economic system. That of a fragmented and competitive micro market where public demand, despite the growing enthusiasm for photography books, is not growing in proportion to the inflation of supply. We will, in the following pages, try to better understand the various upheavals of this market in full reconstruction….
Céline Ravier
