The important work carried out by the BIEF (Bureau International de l'Édition Française) to establish a series of 7 regional data sheets on the French-language book market worldwide has allowed BearingPoint, following a research and extrapolation process, to establish an inventory of the French-language book market in 2020.

Some of the findings are edifying:

• While Europe and North America represent 33% of the world's French-speaking population, they are the source of 95% of revenue from book sales;
• The price of a book in Africa is on average 12 to 27 times more expensive than in France;
• The price of a book in Africa, if reduced to its share of purchasing power, would be equivalent to €150 in France.

On the basis of this data, the challenge of this economic simulation was to project this same market to 2030, from the perspective of current managers, and 2050 at the scale of a generation.

To achieve this, an international scientific steering committee made up of French-speaking researchers was set up to identify drivers (demographics, number of speakers, level of education, opportunities linked to digital technology, etc) that will underpin the establishment of possible market development scenarios.

Each scenario - decline, continuity, influence, separation - has been modelled in order to present the different possibilities of economic projections.