Vincent Bolloré is a French billionaire who systematically acquired over the last decade television, radio, and publishing outlets, and who’s been widely criticized in France for advancing a far-right political agenda. This week, in the lead-up to France's 2027 presidential election, he fired Olivier Nora, the head of Editions Grasset, owned by Hachette, and replaced him with a minion, a corporate executive named Jean-Christophe Thiery de Barcegol du Mouli – a name that itself evokes a conservative, Catholic, aristocratic membership in the far right.  

The firing set off a volcanic explosion on the French literary landscape.  Over 130 of France’s most prominent authors – including Bernard Henri-Lévi and Virginie Despentes - announced they were leaving the prestigious 120-year-old publisher, as reported in Le Monde.. A petition of more than 250 industry professionals warned of the “threat to editorial diversity.”  From the outside, it looked like a very French drama – a billionaire tied to the aristocracy making waves in Parisian literary culture as a national election looms large.

But this isn’t just a French story.  The American press has been silent, apart from a few small outlets like Publishing Perspectives, but what happened at Grasset matters to independent book publishing here as well. It’s not just that Grasset is owned by Hachette that also controls Hachette Book Group, one of the “Big Five” US publishers that produces over 1400 titles a year.  The firing of Olivier Nora and the right-wing billionaire takeover of publishing is a warning shot to all those of us who support free expression – and especially independent book production. Olivier Snatje’s report in Publishing Perspectives cites literary agent Pierre Astier, who watched Viktor Orbán take over Hungarian publishing, and who put it plainly: none of Hachette's international subsidiaries are immune.

Vincent Bolloré's’s action builds on a decade of media acquisitions of groups that, on the surface, passed as a corporate restructuring of the industry.  But the effects were – and are – far more insidious.  By the time he ousted Nora – declaring, according to a report in Libération (unfortunately firewalled), “I can’t deal with this asshole – fire him!” -- Bolloré had already put into place an infrastructure for ideological control of the media.

The American publishing industry has been on a parallel consolidation track for decades. Five major conglomerates already dominate the landscape. Private equity has moved aggressively into regional and mid-size houses.  We’ve seen what happens to news media when billionaires take over – Jeff Bezos and the end of the Washington Post is more than just a warning shot. Publishing houses and especially independent publishers are clearly at risk. 

What the French episode makes vivid is how quickly the culture of a a venerated publishing house can be dismantled once ownership shifts. When Nora was fired, Grasset collapsed, but the problem was a structural one.  Independence requires ownership that resists political manipulation, that protects authorial autonomy, and that preserves distribution networks without a fatal dependency on corporate partners.

The Grasset affair is not just a French story.