First conquest. The Editis group – now officially owned by Czech Media Invest, a subsidiary of Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky since November 2023 – announced, Friday 1is March, the next takeover of Editions du sous-sol. A fifty-sixth house to come, therefore, in the galaxy of the second French publishing group. The transaction price and timing were not specified.
Young people, Editions du sous-sol were created in 2011, at the same time as two magazines, Serial et Sports, before being resold and becoming a department of Seuil (subsidiary of the Média-Participations group, the French number four in the sector). The house founded by Adrien Bosc owes its name to Fyodor Dostoyevsky who, in The Basement Notebooksalready announced the situation: “Leave us alone, without books, and we will be lost, abandoned, we will not know what to cling to, what to hold on to; what to love, what to hate, what to respect, what to despise? »
Under these auspices, Editions du sous-sol have published authors as varied as David Grann, Mariana Enriquez, Nathaniel Rich, Emilienne Malfatto, Deborah Levy, Manuel Vilas and William Finnegan. In August 2023, The Wager Shipwrecks, by David Grann, has also established itself as the best-selling foreign novel of the last literary season. It must soon be adapted for the cinema by Martin Scorsese.
“Collective ambitions for renewal”
To complete this operation, Editis also announced the appointment of Mr. Bosc, who was also deputy director and then director of publishing at Seuil since 2016, to the management of Julliard. Catherine Lucet, general manager of Editis, explains that “the arrival of an editor as talented as Adrien Bosc confirms [ses] collective ambitions for renewal »his desire to give to Julliard “great means” and of “continue the relaunch initiated by Stéphanie Chevrier”, who remains president of Julliard and La Découverte.
Adrien Bosc knows her well since they worked together at Seuil and like each other. “What she has built with La Découverte and Julliard, in a particular context, is remarkable”he said, referring to the fact that Editis belonged to the Vivendi group of billionaire Vincent Bolloré before being taken over by Daniel Kretinsky.
“I deeply believe in the need to align ideas and actions. Stéphanie is proof that you can stand firm on your principles”, he added. La Découverte has in fact not varied in its editorial programming, publishing authors who are very left-wing, while Vincent Bolloré has never made a secret of his very right-wing positioning.
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