There is no room for surprise: without a doubt, Asterix’s new album will be a considerable success among readers. The 41st album by the famous Gallic warrior, always accompanied by his faithful companion Obélix, arrives this Thursday, October 23, in bookstores in around twenty countries. Two months before Christmas, no less than five million copies of the Portuguese adventures of Asterix have been printed, of which two million copies for France, Switzerland and Belgium.
In France, the expected success of Asterix occurs, however, in a gloomy context for the book market, which is facing a drop in sales and greater second-hand competition in recent years, turning the page on the post-Covid boom. According to figures from the National Editorial Union (SNE) published last June, book publishing activity fell by 1.5% in value and 3.1% in volume in 2024.
Fewer new books
While publishers’ turnover in 2024 (€2.9 billion) remains slightly higher than in 2019 (€2.8 billion), the number of copies sold last year (426 million) was below the number spent the year before the pandemic (435 million). Furthermore, “the decrease in the number of new releases continued in 2024”, with 36,632 titles, the SNE highlighted in its annual report, 19% less than the peak of 2019 and its 44,660 titles.
In terms of turnover, literature (+5.7%) was the only publishing segment that recorded an increase in 2024. But this growth was mainly supported by sales of major bestsellers. “It’s a trompe-l’oeil effect: this figure is mainly related to bookstore phenomena,” such as Freida McFadden’s thriller The Maid, in addition to a “very important contribution to the development of the romantic novel,” SNE general director Renaud Lefebvre said in August. Telerama.
The beginning of 2025 seems to confirm this trend. The publishing market fell 0.8% in value between January and August 2025, according to data from the Nielsen GFK institute cited by the world. If we remove the books by the successful American author Freida McFadden, the market even falls by 2.7%.
Second-hand competition
In addition to an unfavorable economic context and the recent revision of the Cultural Pass granted to young people, the publishing sector is also facing increasingly strong competition from second-hand books, driven by large platforms (Amazon, Recyclivre, Momox and even now Vinted) that offer increasingly recent books at lower prices than new books.
According to a study conducted in February among 1,768 authors, 18% of them have already realized that their book was available second-hand from the day it was published and 42% claim to have found it “in the following days or weeks.”
Not to mention another threat: artificial intelligence and its automatically generated books. With the spread of generative AI, books and guides 100% written by AI are occupying an increasingly important place on major platforms, starting with Amazon. In its annual report, the SNE deplored the “proliferation of fake books on certain platforms,” referring to “mass-generated content without any editorial control by artificial intelligence.”
Source: BFM TV
