Économie du bien commun (published as Economics for the Common Good) by Jean Tirole, 2014 Economics Nobel Laureate, has sold nearly 100,000 copies in France. It has also been a great success for Presses universitaires de France abroad with 17 rights sales worldwide. A close collaboration with the author throughout the rights selling process has been decisive.

Économie du bien commun by Jean Tirole, published in 2016 by PUF, is not a classic work. It is book on economics that includes neighboring disciplines such as history, sociology, psychology and ethnology. The author is interested in the behavior of economic actors, the moral limits of the market, the role of the state and the social responsibility of enterprises. "It’s a hybrid; the first part is targeted at the general public, but the second part is quite technical. Both the Nobel Laureate and the researcher speak," explains Sandrine Paccher, Head of Rights at the Presses universitaires de France.

 

If this work of an Economics Nobel Laureate accessible to all was an important editorial event in and of itself, the weight and reputation of the author combined with that of publishers like PUF, a 100 year-old undeniably well-respected publishing house, provided important influence, first for French readers with nearly 100,000 copies sold, and then for foreign publishers.

 

"Prospecting was quite atypical," recalls Maria Vlachou, current Director of the Foreign Rights Department at Le Seuil and former Head of Foreign Rights at PUF who handled the sale of the title in 2016. In consultation with Jean Tirole, prospecting was done first with the author's network, made up of mostly of academic publishers, and then with more generalist publishers. "By listening to the author's requests, PUF gained his trust and was able to open the prospecting to a wider range of foreign publishers. This cooperation has proven to be decisive in the success of the book abroad," explain Maria Vlachou and Sandrine Paccher.

 

The first country to acquire the rights was the United States through Princeton University Press having won the auction with a six-figure bid. This resulted in worldwide sales, 17 languages in total, although some Asian publishers preferred to wait for the English language translation, reviewed and validated by the author's colleagues, before committing. Some chapters deemed "too French" such as the one on the fight against unemployment in France, have been modified by Jean Tirole and replaced by analyses adapted to the countries concerned, upon the publisher’s request.

 

The only small obstacle to the sale of the work is the direct competition with another great French economist’s publication: Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, which some publishers, such as the German ones, preferred to Jean Tirole's book.

Sandrine Paccher and Maria Vlachou, interviewed by Katja Petrovic

April 2021