French Book Trade Launches #SauvonsLaLecture Campaign Against Funding Cuts

Nearly 60 French book-trade organizations have launched a national campaign against cuts to state funding for books and reading. The group calls itself the Plaidoyer pour le livre et la lecture (roughly, "the case for books and reading"). Its campaign began on October 27 under the hashtag #SauvonsLaLecture ("let's save reading"), according to a statement published by the Syndicat national de l'édition (SNE), France's publishers' association.

The headline of the statement, in PT's translation: "Books and reading are not something to cut when the numbers don't add up: our common future is in danger."

The numbers behind the campaign

The collective says direct state support for bookshops, publishers, libraries, festivals and reading programs comes to about €17 million. That's 0.21% of the Ministry of Culture's budget. The statement says this money fell by 25% between 2025 and 2026, and that the draft 2027 finance bill keeps the lower level in place.

It also lists other cuts:

• The Centre national du livre (CNL), the state agency that gives grants to authors, translators, publishers and bookshops, has lost 22% of its funding over two years.
• Money for cultural access programs ("démocratisation culturelle") fell 30% between 2024 and 2026.

The groups tie the cuts to falling readership. Citing the Culture Ministry's own key figures for the book sector, they say one French person in six read no books at all in 2025. They put that at five million fewer readers than six years earlier.

They also point out what looks like a contradiction. The government has talked about making reading a "Grande Cause nationale," a national priority. "Can you want to make reading a national cause while cutting the means of those who bring it to life?" the statement asks (PT's translation).

What the collective wants

For the 2027 budget, the groups are asking for three things:

• A national reading policy that runs across government ministries.
• Budgets big enough to stop the fall in reading, from the national government and from regional and local authorities too.
• Renewed support for the whole book trade, including more money for the CNL and for cultural access programs.

The statement says the cuts are already being felt. It describes them as weakened jobs, dropped projects and smaller book-buying budgets, plus access to reading that depends more and more on where you live. It lists schools, hospitals, prisons, poorer urban districts and rural areas among the places where book professionals and volunteers work.

Why it matters for writers

The amounts are small next to the whole state budget, and that's the collective's main argument. Cutting €17 million saves the state very little, but the loss is large for the people who rely on it. For French authors and translators, CNL grants and stipends are among the few public funds that pay for writing time, so a 22% drop over two years is a direct hit. Writers elsewhere should watch this too. France is often held up as the model for public support of books. If even France is trimming that support, other countries could make the same cuts.

Sources

• Syndicat national de l'édition, October 27, 2026: Le livre et la lecture ne sont pas une variable d'ajustement : notre avenir commun en danger (French; quotes translated by PT)