For these reasons, Boualem Sansal’s new book marketing failed in France!

It seems that Boualem Sansal’s latest book, titled “The Legend,” did not convince many French people, despite the huge sums of money poured into the literary work by the far-right billionaire Vincent Bolloré, along with the massive advertising campaign it received and the extensive media coverage provided by the billionaire’s empire. Nevertheless, the book’s sales remain limited.

According to the newspaper “Le Canard Enchaîné,” Sansal’s book sold only 15,000 copies in its first week. Compared to the sales achieved by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s book, “Prisoner’s Diaries,” Sansal’s numbers appear very modest.

Sarkozy sold over 90,000 copies in the first week of his book’s release, 50,000 copies in the following week, and another 28,000 copies in the third week, bringing his total sales to 210,000 copies to date.

The newspaper sarcastically stated that Sansal needs Sarkozy’s advice to boost his sales. French media outlets had previously reported that Sarkozy was the one who advised Sansal to leave his former publisher “Gallimard” to join the publishing house “Grasset,” which belongs to Bolloré’s “Hachette Livre” group.

This move led to the dismissal of Olivier Nora, who had been the director of the publishing house for 26 years, by Vincent Bolloré, and the departure of about 300 writers from the house in solidarity with him and in condemnation of billionaire Vincent Bolloré’s interference in the editorial policy of the house, due to his imposition of the book’s publication date.

According to the same source, with this sales rate, it is unlikely that Bolloré will recover his huge investment in Sansal and his book.

In addition to the luxurious apartment he rented for Sansal at 7,000 euros per month, Bolloré paid the author one million euros in advance. The publishing house also spent 500,000 euros to promote the book through full-page advertisements in newspapers, posters in train stations, newsstands, and stores… according to data obtained by “Le Canard Enchaîné,” which confirmed that not selling 130,000 printed copies would be “a real disaster!”

Before the book’s release, the right-wing newspaper “Le Figaro” obtained exclusive rights to publish excerpts from it, instead of a literary magazine. Sociologist Gisèle Sapiro commented on this in an interview with the cultural magazine “Télérama,” saying, “Any artistic work is susceptible to political manipulation, whether positive or negative, but in this case, it is clear that Boualem Sansal is exploiting Vincent Bolloré’s desire for rapprochement between the conservative right and the far-right to win the upcoming presidential elections.”

Among the published excerpts was praise for the former Minister of Interior and leader of the far-right “Les Républicains” party, Bruno Retailleau.

This did not serve Sansal’s book, in addition to the author’s known views and statements, which are hostile to immigrants and Muslims, as well as to the French left, especially the “La France Insoumise” party.

For example, independent bookstores, especially those in left-leaning neighborhoods, refused to display the book from the first days of its release, and only sell it upon request.

The book, of which 150,000 copies were printed, is available in only slightly more than 50% of bookstores, which is a very small percentage for an edition of this size. Also, orders placed by booksellers after their initial stock runs out are very few, “and thus the hopes of brilliant success began to fade away,” as the newspaper wrote.