Albums and Business

Franco-Belgian Comics: Bande Dessinée

Course 1 · Chapter 8 · Albums, Publishers and the Business

The earlier chapters followed creators and characters. This one follows the money: the publishing houses that own the classic series, the album format and its many editions, the bookshops and festivals through which comics reach readers, the economics of an author's life, and the two forces that changed the market since the 1990s, Japanese manga and the internet. Figures in this chapter are rough, vary by year and source, and all are flagged "check".

From Magazine to Album

The old chain

For most of the 20th century a story appeared first in a weekly magazine (Tintin, Spirou, Pilote), then in a hardback album, which was the real profit centre. The magazine paid the artist a fee and found an audience, and the album sold the story again as a book.

The break

The great weeklies lost readers from the 1970s onward. Pilote stopped in 1989 and Tintin magazine in 1993, while Spirou survives (check). Publishers moved to publishing the album first, with no serial, and the series became a product of the bookshop.

The one-shot

Alongside long series came the "one-shot" (one-shot or récit complet), a single book that stands alone, as in the graphic novels of Chapter 7. Publishers also reissue earlier series in collected editions (intégrales) (check).

The Publishers

House (check each)	Known for
Dupuis	Spirou, Gaston, Lucky Luke (for a time), the Smurfs; based in Belgium (Chapter 4).
Le Lombard	The Tintin magazine house, with Blake et Mortimer and other series in the Brussels tradition (Chapter 3).
Casterman	The publisher of the Tintin albums, and of (À suivre); part of the Gallimard group (check).
Dargaud	Pilote and the Astérix albums; many leading series (Chapter 5). Dargaud, Dupuis and Le Lombard have been brought into one large group, Média-Participations (check).
Glénat, Delcourt, Soleil	Large independent houses from the 1970s and 1980s, strong in fantasy, adventure and later manga (check).
L'Association and other small presses	Authors' books outside the mainstream (Chapter 7).

Ownership has become concentrated, with a few groups controlling many famous series and the catalogue rights to the classic heroes. Estates and family firms, such as the Hergé estate, keep a close hold on their characters (check).

The Album and Its Editions

The standard. A hardback of about 48 pages in colour, priced in the range of the low-to-mid teens of euros for a new album (check). Many titles now run longer.
Special editions. Limited, signed or deluxe printings (tirage de tête), numbered prints, and sketchbook editions aimed at collectors (check).
The collector market. Original pages by artists such as Hergé and Franquin have been sold at auction for large sums, and rare first editions of early albums have fetched high prices (check the records).
The rights business. Merchandise, films, games and theme parks bring in more money for the biggest series than the books, which is why the owners guard them (check).

The Book Trade

The market. France has one of the largest comics markets in the world outside Japan and the United States, with several thousand new titles a year (check the figure) and comics making up a significant share of the book trade by value.
Where it sells. General bookshops, specialist comic shops (librairies spécialisées), large chain stores and supermarkets; also libraries, which lend heavily (check).
Festivals as sales events. Angoulême and others are also trade fairs, with signing sessions where artists sell and sign books for hours (Chapter 9).
Public support. The state backs comics through the national book centre, public libraries and a themed year in 2020 (check).

The Author's Life

A hard living (check all) Most authors are paid an advance and a royalty on each sale, usually a share of single digits to low teens of the cover price, split between writer and artist when they are different people (check). A series artist may spend a year on a single album. Surveys by author associations in the 2010s found that many creators earned little more than the minimum wage, or less (check), and that women earned less than men on average. These findings led to public meetings (états généraux) in 2015 and to campaigns for better contracts and social protection (check). The rich stars and the poorly paid majority exist side by side.

Manga and the Digital Change

Development (check each)	Note
Manga arrives	Japanese comics grew in France from the early 1990s, helped by translations of Akira and Dragon Ball and by television cartoons (check). France became one of the largest manga markets outside Japan, and manga accounts for a large share of the comics sold (check). French publishers such as Glénat, Kana and Pika were prominent.
The effect	A new younger readership, a different format (paperback volumes, reading from right to left in the original style), and a spur to French creators who borrow from the style (sometimes called "manfra", check). It also raised the question of what counts as "bande dessinée" in the shops.
Digital	Web comics and blogs gave authors direct access to readers. Pénélope Bagieu's blog, which became the book series Ma vie est tout à fait fascinante and later Les Culottées, is an example (check). Crowdfunding, vertical-scroll mobile comics from Korea ("webtoons") and online reading services have all expanded the market (check).

A British comparison The British weekly comic system lasted into modern times without producing the album: The Beano, from Dundee, is still published weekly by D. C. Thomson but with a small fraction of its old circulation (check). Mainstream British comics publishing is split between children's weeklies, graphic-novel imprints in general publishing houses and specialist firms such as Rebellion, which owns 2000 AD (check), with sales through the Diamond-style specialist shops and, increasingly, bookshops and libraries. The main difference is scale and public support: France treats comics as a part of its national book culture.

Check the details Figures about sales, royalties and market shares are rough and change from year to year; the publishing groups and ownership have changed repeatedly and should be checked against current sources, such as industry reports and the publishers' own pages. Statements about authors' pay are drawn from author-association surveys and not from official statistics (check).

Exercises

Exercise 1

Describe the old chain from magazine to album, say why it broke down, and explain what replaced it.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

An artist draws one 48-page album a year, earning a royalty of 10 per cent on a retail price of 15 euros, shared equally with a writer. Show how many copies would need to sell to reach a given annual income, and discuss what the calculation leaves out.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Assess the effect of manga on the French comics market: two benefits, two problems, and the evidence you would use.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Old chain: magazine, then album; magazines decline from the 1970s
Publishers: Dupuis, Le Lombard, Casterman, Dargaud, Glénat, Delcourt, Soleil
Album: 48 pages, hardback, plus special and collected editions
Authors: advance and royalty; many on low incomes; états généraux (2015)
Changes: manga from the 1990s; web comics and webtoons