The writing profession in France: Between symbolic and professional recognition

How does one become a writer?

Unlike the organised professions (law, medicine, architecture), no diploma is required to access the literary field, and, in France at least, there is no specific training to become a writer (Sapiro, 2007). Very recently, a number of universities have started offering creative-writing programmes, following the American model, and there are now eight in France (Bedecarré, 2017). There are also some private courses, including the most prestigious and most expensive one run by Gallimard. The programme has gained in attractiveness since Leila Slimani, winner of the Prix Goncourt, revealed that she had taken part in the Gallimard creative-writing workshop.

Literary agents are also rare in France, compared to other countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and Germany, where agents have become the first intermediaries in controlling access to the literary field (along with the creative writing MFA programmes in the US). The profession of literary agent is developing and organising itself – the first professional association of French agents was launched in 2017 – but like the development of creative-writing studies, it is quite a new phenomenon and, while François Samuelson represents famous authors like Tahar Ben Jelloun and Fred Vargas, some ‘French’ authors such as Jonathan Littell, Michel Houellebecq, and more recently Christine Angot and Édouard Louis, have chosen a British or American agent. ⁴ French publishers are indeed still very reluctant to work with literary agents, as they wish to select manuscripts themselves and negotiate contracts directly with authors, as well as represent them when dealing with interest from abroad and from other media. More significant, however, is the role of subagents selling rights to other countries or media, especially in specific geographical areas, such as Corinne Quentin for Japan, or Arabella Cruse for the Scandinavian countries.

Consequently, publishers are still the main ‘gatekeepers’ of the literary field in France. Bourdieu (1977) describes publication as a magical transfer of symbolic capital to the author performed by the publisher’s griffe, like that of the haute-couture designer. Publishing with a professional and recognised publisher is indeed a condition for achieving both symbolic and professional recognition. It is also a preliminary condition for obtaining grants from the government (through the Centre national du livre) or from regional authorities, for being admitted in professional associations such as the Société des Gens de Lettres, and for being awarded prestigious literary prizes. This fact reinforces the impact of social capital in gaining access to the field, as only 1 per cent of the manuscripts sent by regular mail get published (Simonin and Fouché, 1999). The number of manuscripts that major publishers receive ranges on average from 3000 to 6000 per year, according to Sophie de Closets, the president director general of Fayard. ⁵

The role of publishers in controlling access to the literary field has even increased since the 1980s, as that of literary magazines, who used to be literary authorities introducing new authors, based on the judgement of their peers, has declined. This role was strengthened by the state’s cultural policy: in the mid-1970s, a change of policy brought greater support for the publishing industry following a campaign led by Jérôme Lindon, head of Éditions de Minuit, in defence of upmarket literary publishing that was threatened by the stiffening of commercial constraints, as distribution channels and the publishing industry were increasingly concentrated through mergers and acquisitions. In 1978, Lindon (1980) attacked the discounts offered by the chainstore FNAC and was condemned for this attack (Le Monde, 1980), but he won his advocacy for a ‘prix unique du livre’, a measure adopted in a 1981 law by Minister of Culture Jack Lang under the newly established socialist regime. Most state subsidies devoted to literature are now attributed to publishers, based on the assessment of publication projects by committees composed of specialists (publishers, authors and literary critics). ⁶ Only a small proportion of the 10 per cent of the Centre national du livre budget is directly attributed to writers for ‘résidences’, and part of it is for literary festivals, another phenomenon that has developed since the 1990s.

Analysing the publishing field, Bourdieu distinguishes the pole of large-scale circulation, governed by the law of market forces, and the pole of small-scale circulation, driven by the specific logic of the literary field, meaning that aesthetic judgement prevails over sales to assess the value of literary work (Bourdieu 1992, 1993). At the pole of small-scale circulation, literary recognition thus needs to be confirmed by the judgement of peers and specific authorities, including critical reception, prizes and invitations to literary festivals, which play an increasingly important role in the consecrating process (Sapiro 2016; Sapiro et al., 2015; on literary festivals, see also Giorgi, 2011). In the publishing field, a division of labour can be observed between the small publishers who often discover new talent, like Minuit or POL, and the larger ones like Gallimard, Le Seuil or Fayard, who usually wait for experimental writers to achieve a certain degree of literary recognition before publishing them: for instance, Marie NDiaye was a Minuit author until she moved to Gallimard and won the Prix Goncourt for Trois Femmes puissantes (2009); François Bon moved from Minuit to Fayard; and Camille Laurens from POL to Gallimard (after a conflict with her first publisher). In the case of Minuit and POL, however, many writers stay with their publisher even after they have made a name for themselves. For instance, Jean Echenoz stayed with Minuit (even after he obtained the Prix Goncourt in 1999 for Je m’en vais) and Olivier Cadiot has remained with POL. Conversely, the big publishers sometimes also launch young experimental authors, just as Fayard did with Philippe Vasset.

Beyond the symbolic capital conferred by the publisher, grants and fellowships have an increasing impact on forging a literary career, as they contribute to both the professionalisation and the symbolic recognition of debutant writers, as well as to the upholding of established writers’ positions. The circulation of works also depends on intermediaries belonging to the book chain: booksellers, librarians (Rabot, 2015), and to new intermediaries organising literary events (Sapiro et al., 2015).

These new spaces of recognition – literary events and residencies – offer settings to personalise writing, as writers read and/or comment on their own work (Meizoz, 2016), or in which to stage literary works as ‘performance’. Festival manager Olivier Chaudenson speaks of ‘live literature’ (interview 30 June 2011). These new inscriptions of literature in the public sphere help to redefine the social functions of literature in two different ways. First, in literary events, the audience is often in direct contact with the author and can engage in discussions during the question-and-answer session at the end of such events. Such a space for discussion did not previously exist when literary criticism used to monopolise the authoritative discourse on literature. These gatherings thus contribute to democratising access to literature. In research on the literary festival Les Correspondances de Manosque, we observed that these exchanges were very intense, and not only focused on literature: writers were asked political and sometimes existential questions. For instance, Kamel Daoud was speaking of ‘littérature d’urgence’ written during the 1990s civil war, and answered questions about Algeria (Sapiro et al., 2015). ⁷ Secondly, a new concept of residencies has developed: writers are no longer offered a fellowship to go away from home and just write, but rather to stay at home and implement a series of public activities in their local area: in bookstores, libraries, schools, hospitals, prisons and so on. This concept offers writers a new social role in the public sphere.

These public activities also contribute to transforming the literary profession from the standpoint of the organisation of labour and its temporalities, as well as, more profoundly, forms of literary creation. Some of these activities are recognised as literary activities and paid in royalties. How do they combine with the work of writing? How do writers consider them subjectively as part of their work? I shall examine these questions after having presented the stages of the literary career as experienced by the writers we interviewed, with a specific focus on the place and impact of these ‘activités connexes’ in this process.

‘I was so happy to be published’: the crucial role of the publisher

As previously mentioned, the publisher is a key authority, a ‘gatekeeper’, who controls access to the literary field in the absence of diplomas, specific training or agents. Publishing is a preliminary condition for embarking on a literary career. As a result, publishers wield great power over writers, especially on those just starting out. Bourdieu (1977) has described the magic relationship induced by the ‘election’, which acts as a first symbolic recognition. Many writers we interviewed remember their feeling of happiness when they heard that their manuscript was accepted. One of them speaks of a ‘miracle’. He evokes this ‘magnificent day’, this ‘recognition’, which vanquished the feeling of ‘uncertainty’, and marked the ‘beginning of a new life’. He defines it as the ‘primordial founding act’.

This enchanted relationship, based on elective affinities, as shown in the film by the recently deceased publisher Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens (the founder of POL), Éditeur (writers also choose publishers by sending them their manuscripts), relies on the denial of the economic dimension of the exchange (Bourdieu, 1977). Some writers, especially women, told us they did not negotiate the publishing conditions for their first books, and some of them did not receive any advance on royalties. One of them explained that she was then a secondary school teacher and did not think of negotiating anything: ‘Enfin j’étais tellement contente d’être publiée, ça ne m’est même pas venu à l’esprit, et lui [l’éditeur] ne me l’a pas proposé. Ni pour celui-là ni pour les suivants.’

Publishers also take advantage of their power in other ways, for instance by compensating for losses from one book to another. One of our interviewees, also a woman, the daughter of a famous writer, had only one contract for all her books with a famous publisher, meaning that the advances were reimbursed by the following books if they were not covered by sales, a practice that is no longer allowed thanks to the efforts of literary associations in negotiating with the publishing association. It was not until she won a prize that her publisher started signing individual contracts with her for each book.

The only writer who spoke of a ‘commercial relationship’ with her publisher was working as an editor herself, but when asked if as an editor she was better prepared to negotiate her contract, she answered:

Pas du tout, ah non pas du tout! Parce qu’en fait je n’ai pas du tout confiance en moi. Là mon livre commence à marcher … Mes autres livres n’ont pas tellement marché à part le premier, et donc quand vos livres ne marchent pas, vous n’avez pas une très grande marge de négociation [rires] … c’est un rapport commercial, donc … si vous ne faites pas gagner d’argent à votre éditeur, vous ne pouvez pas lui en demander beaucoup.

Another female author, who is also a university professor, explained, in a debate at the Salon du Livre 2016, that she did not negotiate her rights because she knew that there was a ‘reserve army’ behind her.

With the ‘miracle’ accomplished, publication also means professionalisation, first by learning the book production process. One of the authors we interviewed remembered how he discovered the process of copyediting and proofreading:

Voilà, vous avez un éditeur qui vous appelle, qui est enthousiaste en plus de ça, qui vous parle de plein de détails et tout, et effectivement … Puis après vous êtes dans tout le processus de préparation d’un texte, dans une maison d’édition, la préparatrice de copies, le correcteur, et vous entrez dans tout ce long … Je me souviens d’ailleurs – même si j’étais passionné de littérature – mais je n’avais pas une conscience ni une connaissance des processus de fabrication.

The writers’ commitment to their publisher expresses this enchanted relationship, often described in affective and kinship terms, which explains the reliance on trust. One of the authors did not remember even signing any more contracts after a while, or if they did, it was a year or two after the book appeared in print, which happened after one of her books was awarded an important literary prize. Consequently, when her publisher decided to stop publishing her, she felt doubly betrayed.

One of our interviewees also mentioned the fact that she was staying with her publisher in order to have all the books in the same series and format; in this way, she had more of a sense of an ‘oeuvre’. This feeling indeed corresponds to an objective reality: in such a competitive market, the association of an author’s name with that of a renowned publisher enhances its chances of attracting attention and accumulating symbolic capital, as it also means that the publisher continues to invest in the writer. Nonetheless, even when they keep a main publisher, writers often carry out occasional projects with others (usually in different genres, such as youth literature, drama, translation, essays and so on). In the national survey conducted by the CNL in 2016 on the authors affiliated with AGESSA, the respondents published on average with five different publishers (a rate inferior to that of translators, for whom it was eight). ⁸ As previously mentioned, an ascending literary career often implies moving from a small publisher to a larger more prestigious publishing house (it happened to several of our interviewees). The reverse process also happens, albeit not always signalling a relative decline in their trajectory.

This enchanted relationship with one’s publisher can also be observed at the pole of large-scale circulation, as became apparent during an interview with a best-selling author, who has an agent, but is committed to staying with his publishing house, which he described as a ‘family’, and which he trusts (he said he never checks his contracts). He compared the stable, human, familial publishing world – which ‘has not yet been totally absorbed by large conglomerates and is not yet managed by white collars and black ties’ – to that of the cinema industry, which is much harsher: for instance, you are not sanctioned if you are late handing in a manuscript. It was after the huge success of his first novel that he was able to quit his activity as an entrepreneur when he was 38, which marked the point when he started conceiving of himself as a professional writer; until then, he had felt like a ‘student’ or an ‘intern’; after that he felt he had achieved ‘tenure’.

For best-selling authors, the advance on royalties allows them to make a living. Such is not the case at the pole of small-scale circulation; these writers do not earn enough to make a living. For instance, one of them explained that it takes them four or five years to write a book, and between 2007 and 2012 they received €8000 in advance payment of royalties, which works out at €80 per month. Nevertheless, it is only when they have achieved symbolic recognition, and when they start thinking of earning a living from their writing, that writers become conscious of the material conditions of the writing profession and begin claiming their rights through negotiation. One of them, who had a hard time obtaining higher advances because his publisher deemed the sales of his books insufficient, mentioned the need to recognise the symbolic value that he brought to the firm.

Whereas 81 per cent of the respondents to the CNL survey on authors affiliated with AGESSA consider they have good, and even excellent, relationships with their main publisher, half of them have faced irregular practices such as: lack of accountability (29 per cent); non-payment of royalties for translations, adaptations, etc. in order to compensate for losses (10 per cent); non-payment of royalties for books to compensate for poor sales of previous books (8 per cent); non-payment of rights with no explanation (10 per cent); non-payment of rights because they represented small amounts (25 per cent); non-payment of rights because of the acquisition or bankruptcy of the publisher (12 per cent).

Some of them complained that their royalties decreased and that their relationships with their publisher had become more tense and impersonal in a context of accrued competition. ⁹ According to the CNL survey, one quarter of the affiliated authors declared income of less than €8799 from sales or the exploitation of their work in 2013; this is especially the case for one-third of the writers under 35 years old, and half of graphic artists and designers, but also for 28 per cent of textual authors. For the latter, the average is €21,988, but the median is €12,793, indicating a great disparity in income. In fact, one-third of authors declared an income of less than €10,000 derived from their writing that year, another third earned between €10,000 and €20,000, and a quarter between €20,000 and €40,000, with only 10 per cent earning more than €40,000. ¹⁰

Advances on royalties are the first source of income for authors who are entitled to them. They represent more than half of their income derived from their literary work (56 per cent), while royalties themselves count for only 20 per cent, fixed remuneration 17 per cent, foreign rights 4 per cent, secondary rights 4 per cent, and royalties on sales paid by distributors 0.75 per cent. These advances are however, like the income, very dispersed: the average is €12,200 (all formats), whereas the median is much lower: €4,000. ¹¹ The average rate of royalties varies from 4.4 per cent to 7.1 per cent (the median from 5 per cent to 8 per cent). The average print-run is 9231 copies, the median 4500, situating most of these writers at the pole of small-scale circulation of the literary field. ¹²

Though not conditioned by a training period, professionalisation is a longer process than in other occupations. Close to half the authors of books in the CNL survey declare that their income in royalties has not always been their main source of income, but has become so, against 22 per cent for whom it has always been the case, the last third being equally divided between those for which it has never been and those for whom it is no longer their main source of income. This process is not linear as the last category suggests. While some stages of the professionalisation process can be reconstructed, it is not a clearly designed ‘career’.

‘Being distinguished’: stages and modalities of the professionalisation

In contradistinction to the pole of large-scale circulation, at the pole of small-scale circulation, professionalisation starts with symbolic recognition: literary reviews, literary prizes, and invitations to radio broadcasts and other media are all marks of symbolic recognition that can be converted into economic capital, but does not necessarily do so. One of our interviewees was invited onto the TV programme ‘Caractères’ to promote her second novel. As a result, 5000 copies were sold, whereas her first book had sold only 1500 copies, a figure that nevertheless satisfied her publisher who considered it was ‘pretty good for a first novel’. Another interviewee mentioned, by contrast, an immediate symbolic recognition with no money: ‘complete discrepancy between the monetary and symbolic value’ as he puts it:

C’est puissant … tu es à Beaubourg, tu es au Musée d’art moderne, tu es à New York, Tokyo, tu vas lire cinq minutes à Caracas. Donc, puissance symbolique maximum, dans le cadre d’une certaine réussite on va dire, mais financièrement … zéro franc. Donc coupure totale, totale, totale entre argent et symbolique. Ce qui est compliqué après à gérer dans sa vie, parce que non seulement le symbolique il se jouit, mais il doit aussi se défendre, c’est-à-dire que si tu rentres dans le truc, tu es obligé de devenir toi aussi un porteur, un [mage?] du symbolique. De donner au symbolique un sens politique, de lui donner une morale.

For all our interviewees, symbolic recognition is more important than professional recognition. One of them mentions the small literary prizes she won before being awarded a big one (one of the Autumn prizes). She said she then started being more confident, since these prizes were attributed by leading authorities in the literary field.

The propensity to deny the economic dimension is even higher among writers who have another main source of income. ¹³ For instance, a scriptwriter for films told us she did not care about negotiating her publishing conditions, since she earned a living from her scripts. Another of our interviewees, who had a main job, did not care about her income from her writing. What mattered for her was to gain visibility in the media, to be short-listed for prizes, in sum, ‘d’être distinguée, au sens où vous n’êtes plus dans la masse des gens qui écrivent mais que, voilà, on fait appel à vous en particulier’. For her, winning a prize was very important, though she did not believe she would at the time of the interview (actually she did win a very prestigious one just after the interview). But being short-listed had already encouraged her to write another book. Moreover, the prospect of winning a prize allowed her to think for the first time about the possibility of dedicating herself entirely to writing. Last but not least, it pleased her publisher who changed his view about her. She described the evolution of their relationship:

Concrètement, il est plus sympa avec vous, il vous envoie plus de mails, il vous appelle plus souvent! … D’abord il est obligé de vous appeler parce qu’il y a plus de choses à vous dire, alors il vous invite, vous êtes invitée dans plus de trucs, donc il est obligé de communiquer avec vous, il est obligé de vous dire bravo quand vous êtes nominée … Et puis, il vous dit qu’il réimprime votre livre, et puis voilà, il y a plus de choses à vous dire en fait! Il prend un peu plus de temps pour vous … Mais je comprends, j’ai été éditrice donc je comprends très bien cette attitude, c’est un commerce, donc forcément son intérêt est plus grand.

Winning a prize is a decisive phase in terms of symbolic recognition, but also in terms of financial security. ¹⁴ One of our interviewees sold 100,000 copies of her prize-winning novel, her seventh book, and this income allowed her to pay off her debts and live more comfortably, as well as to save money for her retirement.

Winning a prize is often the moment when authors start thinking of quitting their main job. For one of our interviewees who was a school teacher, and wrote experimental novels, the prize she was awarded doubled the sales of her book from 100,000 to 200,000 copies. Afterwards she decided to stop teaching, otherwise she would not have been able to accept all the invitations to present her book. She just decided to stop for a while, but never returned to teaching. She said she adapted easily to this new life, but was still very anxious about not earning a monthly income. It was only from that moment on that she started presenting herself as a writer, and still prefers sometimes to present herself as a teacher, because, she says, ‘profession: écrivain, ça fait bizarre, ça continue à être bizarre’. In other cases, the authors had to return to his or her previous job for some time before definitively quitting.

Grants and residencies also play a role in this process: they are experienced as both signs of recognition and of ‘trust’, especially since they are awarded by committees of peers and specialists. One of our interviewees who won two fellowships at the Villa Medici insisted on the notion of ‘trust’. This trust helped her complete the project:

[C]’était génial. Enfin j’ai trouvé ça vraiment extraordinaire comme système d’aide parce que ça permettait de se consacrer à ce qu’on voulait faire … enfin on vous faisait confiance déjà sur ce que vous aviez écrit, et on faisait confiance sur un livre à venir … J’aimais bien aussi que ce soient des commissions, en tout cas pour le CNL, c’étaient des commissions – c’étaient d’autres écrivains qui attribuaient la bourse – et qui se renouvelaient. Après, j’ai participé à ces commissions, ça m’intéressait. Et c’est ce qui m’a vraiment donné la force de démarrer, de ne pas continuer dans les autres branches, dans les autres choses que je faisais … C’est: ‘Voilà, on te fait confiance.’ Je pense que ça c’est très important. On te fait confiance, et aussi d’une certaine façon on attend quelque chose de toi, c’est-à-dire que le livre pour lequel on a été aidé, évidemment, on a encore plus envie qu’il voie le jour. Moi je n’avais pas besoin de ça, j’étais assez obstinée pour aller jusqu’au bout des choses que j’entreprenais. Mais ça donne vraiment un cadre, oui. Un cadre de confiance.

These fellowships are of course important for writers who have no other income, but they also allow those who have a job to take a break and devote themselves entirely to writing for some time. All the interviewees were grateful that this type of support was available. Nonetheless, some pointed out that the fellowship model is not suited to parents with small children, especially mothers. The new model of home residencies with interventions in public places in a specific area is better fitted to those who cannot leave home, but implies other constraints, such as diversifying their activities, which prevents them from concentrating on their writing, as some told us.

Having another source of income is a security but also a constraint, as one of our interviewees said: he quit teaching because it was too ‘constraining’ for him, it was too ‘absorbing’. Another one mentioned the notion of ‘dédoublement’ to describe her double activity as a scriptwriter and as a writer, and one even spoke of ‘schizophrenia’ (he is an editor). Despite this experience, he still prefers to keep his job, in order to avoid writing becoming a routine, as he explained to us. While attacking the romantic myth of the dispossessed writer, this author revives a related myth, that of creativity induced by inspiration, spontaneity and non-routine work, as opposed to professionalisation and rationalisation. This myth has been and still is one of the major impediments to the professional development of the writing profession in France. For another author, keeping her job is also a condition of ‘freedom’, being free to write whatever she wants, with no restrictions.

As has already been said, it is only once they have gained symbolic recognition that writers start being preoccupied with material issues, especially when they decide to quit their second occupation. Whereas for those who have another job, professional recognition by AGESSA does not count, it does for those who earn their living from their writings. One of our interviewees put it ironically: ‘je suis devenu écrivain le jour où je suis à l’AGESSA’. However, being affiliated with AGESSA implies certain constraints: there is an income threshold, the minimum yearly income required being €8487 (special conditions are offered for debut authors for three years, based on an assessment of their application by a committee). For the author just mentioned, these conditions ‘exclude any inventive person’, all authors ‘qui feraient de la littérature un peu expérimentale, sans être des loosers de la mort’.

The entire disconnection between symbolic and professional recognition is, for this author, as for others, a source of anger and of suffering. It was the related activities and the residencies which allowed him to convert his symbolic capital into economic resources and thus to achieve the status of professional writer.

‘I do many things besides’: the related activities

Related activities provide a vital source of income to writers situated at the pole of small-scale circulation. One of the prize-winners we interviewed told us she was able to live for more than ten years thanks to her book, but it would be impossible for her to earn a living from the books she has published since then. ‘I do many things besides’ she added. Most of the writers we interviewed were in the same situation. The mean income from related activities (apart from the media) is €5238, and the median is €2000, according to the CNL survey. ¹⁵ Of the respondents 42.8 per cent declared having earned royalties from at least two different artistic activities. Out of the 144 authors of texts that were working at more than one activity, 31 were also translators and 28 scriptwriters (for TV, radio and film). ¹⁶

The related activities can be ranked according to their relative proximity to creative work, following the writers’ subjective hierarchy. Public readings, working with other artists (musicians, choreographers) and adapting their own work for the theatre or cinema come first. These experiences are very much praised by writers and contribute to their symbolic recognition. Such is the case with public readings. In the case of poetry, it can precede the publication. The rise of literary events has fostered the development of ‘hybrid forms of performance-reading, with music and singing’, as one of them defines it. The director of the festival Les Correspondances in Manosque, Olivier Chaudenson, recalls that, at the beginning, writers were sometimes reluctant to experiment with these hybrid forms, as they were used to working alone, the literary profession being the most individual of all arts. But some of them started liking these experiences and replicating them. More and more he received concrete proposals from writers willing to collaborate with musicians, video artists and choreographers. Now he also encourages such encounters at La Maison de la Poésie in Paris, which he has run since 2013, and which he has turned into a ‘literary scene’. In 2007 the festival Concordan(s)e was launched, which organises and stages encounters between writers and choreographers.

In the past these activities were not paid, since authors were considered to be promoting their books. One of the interviewees compares this situation to that in Germany or the US, where she discovered she would be paid for her readings and book presentations.

Et j’ai découvert quand j’ai été en Allemagne, quand j’ai eu des livres en allemand, que, là-bas, on faisait une lecture, on était payé. Waouh! Dingue! Génial. Ou aux États-Unis, dans les universités … [En France] jusqu’à présent, le plus souvent, tout le monde était payé lors d’une rencontre, celui qui vous interviewe, le journaliste qui vous interviewe, celui qui vous éclaire, celui qui fait le son, etc. … la personne qui organise la manifestation … tout le monde est payé, parfois salarié et parfois juste payé pour l’événement, sauf l’écrivain. Donc que ça bouge, c’est une très bonne chose.

As has already been said, a governmental circular has allowed the payment of royalties for those activities since 1998. However, many literary events continued not to pay authors at all. By the mid-2000s, literary associations started lobbying on this issue, and an association of literary events led by the festival Les Correspondances de Manosque was founded under the name ‘Relief’ in order to promote the remuneration of authors invited to participate in literary events. Funding bodies like the CNL and regional authorities decided to make paying writers a condition for the attribution of subsidies to festivals. Despite these measures, less than half (46 per cent) of the 310 respondents to the CNL survey who had given a public reading in 2013 had been paid for it, but close to two-thirds had their expenses covered. ¹⁷ The public sector pays more systematically (in more than three-quarters of cases) than the private one, in particular for those events designed for schools or public libraries (87 per cent), for events in public libraries that are not for school children (83 per cent), and in retirement homes, hospitals or prisons (72 per cent), as opposed to private events in salons and fairs (44 per cent), large cultural stores such as FNAC (23 per cent) or bookstores (9 per cent). ¹⁸ Surprising though it sounds, the Salon du Livre de Paris had, for instance, a budget for plants but none for authors. In bookstores, writers are very seldom paid, and apart from the authors of comics, who sign by making a drawing, most of them claim not to be paid for book signings. ¹⁹

However, not all writers are up to engaging in such activities: some of them do not feel comfortable in these situations and are too shy or embarrassed. The opposite tendency was described negatively by an interviewee as the ‘espèce de désir rentré de chaque auteur d’être une rock star’. Some people ‘pensent qu’il suffit de prendre un pied, un micro, et de se mettre au-devant de la scène et de lire son texte, et des fois, c’est nul’, he regretted, criticising those who engage in such activities without any prior thought or preparation.

Moreover, notwithstanding the professional and symbolic recognition it may provide, collaborative work is not always a positive experience for writers. Conflicts often arise, and the process of adapting a text for another medium is sometimes experienced as a dispossession and a loss of autonomy. An interviewee told us how much she had suffered when co-writing a scenario based on one of her books with a scriptwriter, up until she decided to halt the process, as she felt that the scenario was ‘denaturing’ her work. Financial conflicts can also arise from such collaborations, as one author mentioned.

Columns in the media form part of a writer’s ‘oeuvre’, even though they publish non-fiction texts: revenue from written media accounted for close to one-fifth of the overall income of authors of books affiliated with AGESSA, against 4.7 per cent for the writing of scripts. ²⁰ Questioned about the relation between her columns and her literary writing, one of our interviewees mentioned two modalities : ‘résonance’ or ‘délassement’. She said that ‘on est presque heureux d’écrire une chronique parce que c’est quand même de l’écriture, c’est quand même une forme d’écriture littéraire, et en même temps c’est plus léger, c’est court’.

Writers also consider working on the text of an author they appreciate – be it a classic, modern or contemporary text, in French or in a foreign language – as enriching and rewarding, since it nourishes they own creative activity: writing a literary critique, a newspaper column, adapting it for the theatre or the radio, translating. This can explain the fact that such activities are sometimes done for free. A writer describes the effects the work of translation has had on his own writing: ‘Traduire la Bible, par exemple, ça a été une expérience qui a modifié mon écriture de manière rythmique, mais alors cette fois-ci de manière profonde, de manière rythmique’. Another one describes what working for the radio represents for him:

Ça s’intègre merveilleusement, ce travail d’adaptation … C’est comme aller à l’école. C’est-à-dire, ce sont des livres que j’admire, je sais qu’être dans cette fréquentation-là … de ces bouquins va m’apporter beaucoup. Donc pour moi, c’est à la fois très différent … c’est-à-dire que quand je fais ça, je ne suis pas en train d’écrire mes livres, en revanche, j’écrirais moins mes livres si je n’avais pas justement cet … [nom d’un auteur étranger], ça a été fantastique, [titre du roman], ça m’a énormément apporté. Si je n’avais pas fait ce travail sur [titre], le livre que je suis en train d’écrire, n’existerait pas vraiment en fait.

However, even among these activities, some are regarded as ‘nobler’, others are just aimed at earning a living: such is the case with translating texts with no literary value, or writing for brands, which is very well paid but not very well considered, not to mention advertising. One of our interviewees who worked in an advertising agency said he saw there ‘ce que c’était qu’un mot qui valait un million de dollars, et un million de mots qui vaut un franc … l’inversion absolue, et donc c’était prodigieux’. As a matter of fact, confirming the functioning of the literary field as a ‘reversed economy’ (Bourdieu, 1983), the relationship between symbolic and economic profit is often reversed: the most noble activities are those that are the least profitable. Some writers are ready to invest in very poorly paid projects when they have a high literary or activist dimension. For instance, one of our interviewees mentioned a project that was for him a form of ‘militantism’. This example illustrates types of disinterestedness that are specific to the literary field and their links with a commitment that can adopt quasi-militant forms (Sapiro, 2017).

Such an inversion can also be observed in the case of translation. Translating recognised works is prestigious, but much less well remunerated than technical translation. However, on the hierarchical scale of values of literary creativity since romanticism, even the most praised literary translation remains inferior to original writing. One of our interviewees remembered how the attitude of editors and publishers changed when he acted as a translator and not as an author.

Events and debates around literary works are welcomed by authors, as they not only promote them but also provide a space for reading extracts and discussing them. Now that they are more regularly remunerated, these events also offer writers new possibilities for professionalisation, in addition to the symbolic recognition that they earn. However, out of 220 authors of books affiliated with AGESSA that participated in a debate about their work in 2013 (that is to say 20 per cent of the respondents), only one-third had been paid for this, and only one-half had their expenses paid. ²¹ The Charte des auteurs et illustrateurs jeunesse has adopted a minimum of €250 gross for half a day, and €414 for the entire day.

Teaching creative-writings workshops can be paid in royalties, with a maximum of five sessions per year. Events in schools, hospitals, prisons and retirement homes also offer new sources of income for writers. For one of our interviewees, events in schools provided a significant income, even though she did some of them more out of commitment. One of them was leading a workshop in prison for free, which resulted in the publication of a poem by one of the prisoners in a poetry anthology. This engagement is part of his conception of literature as a ‘communication act’, in echo of Sartre’s definition, and of its social utility. While most writers regard creative writing as disconnected from their own work, for him, the experience he conducted in a residency in the banlieue contributed to the renewal of his work: he dropped metaphors in favour of daily writing that places a greater emphasis on narrative. He also introduced a narrative, a fiction, to his poems, using a woman’s voice.

Leading encounters and organising festivals come last: these activities are not very common among our interviewees. One of them did not feel that this activity distanced him from creation. But he regarded it as more ‘alimentaire’ than working for the radio.

To these related activities, one should add evaluation tasks such as participating in literary juries, a non-paid activity which confers a consecrating power in the literary field, or in selection committees. The assessment is rarely paid. The national commission for theatre pays €30 per report. It is not much given that four hours are needed in order read a play, as one interviewee explained (it thus amounts to less than €10 per hour, without the two days spent on the committee).

Managing all these disparate activities is a constraint in itself for writers and requires strict time management. For instance, one of our interviewees is a member of an important literary jury and has to organise her year accordingly: she writes during the six or seven months that precede the receipt of books in order to be able to dedicate herself to intensive reading during the remaining months. The writing of columns can be considered as ‘relaxing’ if the rhythm is not too intensive, but a weekly column was deemed too constraining for one interviewee, who explained that she would rather write one every two weeks.

Whereas the long-term timeframe for writing and reading is managed individually, collective activities create constraints that disturb the temporality of the work of writing. An interviewee who is very busy with related activities, adaptations, editing a journal, organising festivals and also free activities which he defines as politically committed, explains: ‘C’est exactement comme si j’étais salarié de n’importe quelle entreprise. J’ai les mêmes problèmes. C’est comme si j’avais des horaires, 8h – 18h, et l’écriture qui vient après, quoi.’ Although he does not feel as though he is wasting his time on these activities, notably organising festivals, he does feel they take a lot out of him: for instance, the endless emails do not facilitate concentration on a writing project. The description of his various commitments clearly illustrates the difficulties of organising work over time, as some of these activities take place simultaneously and have unexpected extensions. According to Olivier Chaudenson, head of the festival Les Correspondances de Manosque, there is a difficult balance to find for writers between writing and related activities, which implies a risk of engaging in too many different tasks.

Conclusion

The traditional division of writers between those who have a second occupation which is their main source of income and those who earn a living from their writing (see, for instance, Lahire, 2006) does not account for a more complex reality, where many intermediate situations exist, from the temporary interruption of work to giving up completely and then starting again. It does not take into account the related activities that are more relevant to creative work and to the forging of a professional identity as a writer, but that can also distract an author from writing. The ‘second occupation’ can be experienced as totally disconnected from creative work, even when it involves writing: an obvious example is advertising, but also translating or scriptwriting, or when the activity is related to writing, as in the case of teaching or editing. The separation is such that any connection to the literary activity is ignored or denied. Denial is due either to the lower prestige of the day job, or to the demanding investment it requires, that is incompatible with the concentration that is required for writing – except in the case of writers who prefer occasional writing, as we have seen.

The issue of investment is linked to how work time is spent and organised, but also to the construction of identity. A feeling of ‘double identity’ is often experienced when the remunerating occupation is the activity of an intermediary: editor, professor or another type of writing like journalism – these three occupations being the most common among writers affiliated with AGESSA. ²² Supposedly it is due to the difficulty of building a public image of a writer. This explains, by contrast, why those who started having such occupations after having been recognised as a writer do not experience it in such a contradictory manner. From this standpoint, the publication with a professional publisher, grants and fellowships, prizes, invitations to read in public, at festivals and other literary events, constitute signs of distinction and of election which pave the way to the literary field and confirm the literary calling. These are symbolic rewards that acknowledge the symbolic value of the work and thus are more significant for the authors than the material rewards at the pole of small-scale circulation.

If all these signs of literary recognition contribute at the same time to the professionalisation of the newcomers in the literary field, it is, as has already been said, only once they have gained symbolic recognition, and especially when they make the difficult decision to devote themselves entirely to writing, that the writers located at the pole of small-scale circulation start considering the material aspects of the literary profession.

Such a decision, when taken, often comes late, once the identity of a writer has been endorsed and when it ensures sufficient income to make a living – sometimes a very modest one. The CNL survey showed that 47 per cent of the authors of books affiliated to AGESSA in 2013 declared a net monthly family income of €2500 (including their income from royalties) – although this concerned more comics designers and illustrators (more than half of them) than literary authors (16 per cent). However, the related activities nowadays offer significant complementary resources to those who earn a living from their writing, all the while confirming their professional identity as writers, in a context where visibility in the public sphere is very much dependent on the media, emphasising the tension between the time that is necessary for creation and the acceleration of the communication temporality.

In effect, while the writer’s identity needs to be regularly reaffirmed by the publication of a new book, the writing of which can take a couple of months or years, public readings and debates, like translations and adaptations of the works, reduce the feeling of uncertainty regarding this identity by prolonging the existence of books in the public sphere beyond its three-week period in bookstores, and beyond the critical reception, that spreads during the two or three months following its release. The other related activities – criticism, newspaper columns, translations – also reduce this feeling of uncertainty by maintaining the presence of the writer in the public sphere between two publications and by punctuating the time of creation, which oscillates between the risk of routinisation and the intermittence of moments of creativity, two tendencies that are both worrisome.

Lastly, as we saw, although they can turn out to be time-consuming and swallow up the time devoted to writing, the related activities, from the work with other artists to creative-writing workshops through translation, sometimes offer, to those who know how to take advantage of them, opportunities for resourcing their own work, and for renewing the contents and forms of literary creation.