Great publishers, where are you gone away ? Reduction of creation to income statement logics in the French public sector

The French publishing sector has had more than its share of great publishers-Maspero, Wahl, Giribone, Vigne, Lindon, Bourgois, Gallimard, etc.-whose ability to pick their authors was highly reputed. They represent a traditional model of publishing in which managing editors trust in publishers's inherent qualities. In our case study, we observe a shift away from this model. The Hatier Jeunesse Paris-based publishing firm belongs to the highly diversified French Lagardère Group (press, multimedia, radio, television, publishing, sports, aeronautics). How can such a diversified group of companies be managed other than by means of the income statement ? Here, the income statement becomes the benchmark tool and the management controller, the central actor. The income statement provides the following equation : a good book equals high sales figures. When we talk about the income statement, we are not talking about the editors's coup de coeur for a character, neither about the author's engagement that leads all her family to move to a provincial place, far away from the supposed creation center of France, e.g. the parisian area. Nor are we talking about the bookseller's own personal favourites and about the impact this may have on a book's appearance inside the bookshop next-door. In the end, we are not more talking about the various people involved in the process of constructing the result presented in this income statement. If the scene takes place within a financial holding group, then the controller alone will give account. Accounting and control appears both to constitute the beginning and the end of the process. As judges, they make the accounts and take action to give account. However, by reducing everything down to a few figures in a handful of account statements, they are unable to account for all the stages and all the key moments that, together, make up the act of creation.