The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu defines the field of publishing as a relatively autonomous social space, governed by its own set of rules but reflecting external forces that are both political and economic (Bourdieu, 1999). According to cultural historian Jean-Yves Mollier, the history of publishing intersects with social, legal, political and religious history, each of these dimensions contributing to the globalising ambitions of the industry (Mollier, 1996). In this chapter, these critical analyses of publishing will be used as a framework to analyse feminist publishing.

In France, the development of feminist publishing coincided both with the second wave of feminism, the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (MLF), and with a major restructuring of the publishing industry. The 1960s were a golden age for publishers in the humanities and social sciences, thanks to the combination of technological innovations (such as the mass production of paperbacks), the growth of an educated readership and wide interest in the work of French intellectuals such as Sartre, Lacan and Althusser (Surel, 1997). This tendency was reversed in the 1970s, at a time when conglomerates were taking over the publishing industry. A shift occurred in the nature of capital investments from the domination of market sectors typical of conglomerates towards the financial priorities of groups outside the publishing industry: namely, the increase in the value of the shares of companies in the cultural sector, the demands of economic globalisation having spread to the market of cultural commodities (Mollier, 2009). As commercial and financial agents intervened more and more in book production, publishing policies were forced to adapt to market forces. However, seeking short-term profits demands a diversified catalogue that can only be created by long-term publishing policies which create an attractive commercial portfolio. This model was also hard to reconcile with the needs of smaller publishers, or of recently created publishing houses, whose ‘brand’ depended above all on the charisma of their founding editor. In the 1980s a new generation of publishers tried to combine intellectual value with financially savvy policies to develop publishing strategies based on the distinctive nature of their catalogue (Bouvaist and Boin, 1988).