L'Harmattan

L'Harmattan's headquarters in Paris, France

Éditions L'Harmattan, usually known simply as L'Harmattan, is one of the largest French book publishers.^[1] It specialises in non-fiction books with a particular focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. It is named after the Harmattan, a trade wind in West Africa.

Description

L'Harmattan was founded in 1975. In 2013 it produced 500 magazines and 2,000 new books per year, most as both books and E-books, and has a backlist of 38,000 books, 33,000 E-books, and 1,700 videos, with about a third each on Europe, Africa, and the rest of the world.^[2]

A third of its titles are in literature, a tenth in history, and 5% each in philosophy, current affairs, education, politics, sociology, and fine arts. Slightly fewer are published in economics, psychology, ethnology, languages, etc., but even these categories have hundreds of titles, for example 500 in languages,^[3] and more languages taught than almost any other publisher.^[4]

L'Harmattan controls costs by requiring authors to prepare electronic manuscripts in final format, not paying royalties on the first few hundred copies, and having short print runs of only a few hundred for its most specialized books.^[5]

It has sales of 8.5 million euros per year, of which 2 million are exported.^[6] Thus it has lower sales but more titles than for example Gallimard, which has 135 million euros in sales.^[7] and 1,400 titles,^[8] The differences reflect the low print runs of L'Harmattan's more specialized books.

Collections

• "Questions contemporaines" dirigée par Bruno Péquignot
• "Afrique au cœur des lettres" dirigée par Jean-Pierre Orban
• "Questions alimentaires et gastronomiques" dirigée par Kilien Stengel
• "Éducateurs et Préventions" dirigée par Pascal Le Rest
• "Univers musical" dirigée par Anne-Marie Green
• "Questions autochtones" dirigée par Simone Dreyfus-Gamelon, Patrick Kulesza et Joëlle Chassin
• "Questions sociologiques" dirigée par François Hainard et Franz Schultheis
• "Parlons...", a series of language and culture learning books, dirigée par Michel Malherbe

See also

• Academic publishing
• Electronic publishing
• Language education
• List of Language Self-Study Programs
• List of publishers of children's books
• Periodical literature
• Publishing

References

1. "Autant en rapporte L'Harmattan". Libération, 6 March 1997. Retrieved 22 Sep 2013.
2. "Editions diffusion L'Harmattan". l'Harmattan. Retrieved 22 Sep 2013.
3. "Editions diffusion L'Harmattan". l'Harmattan. Retrieved 25 Sep 2013.
4. List of Language Self-Study Programs
5. "Autant en rapporte L'Harmattan". Libération, 6 March 1997. Retrieved 25 Sep 2013.
6. "Librairie Éditions L'Harmattan". Societe.com. Retrieved 22 Sep 2013.
7. "Editions Gallimard". Societe.com. Retrieved 25 Sep 2013.
8. Éditions Gallimard