Founded in 1995, Makassar primarily distributes graphic novels, children's books, and specialized books (particularly in the social sciences) from the independent publishing sector. The distributor's difficulties stem from a cyberattack in 2024, as well as market developments. Several of its largest clients have undergone receivership or liquidation in recent years, leaving Makassar with significant unpaid invoices that have severely impacted its cash flow and cost it other clients dissatisfied with the service.
For many years, the books of our publishing house, Alternative Libertaire, self-managed by UCL members, have been distributed in bookstores thanks to Makassar's work. Often overlooked in the publishing world, distributors have become essential for ensuring our books are easily accessible in bookstores, both independent and otherwise. Responsible for inventory management, they are also behind a large portion of the financial flows and act as intermediaries between publishing houses and bookstores. When a book is purchased from a bookstore, the purchase price includes several components: the bookstore's share, the distribution and/or sales costs, the publisher's share, the manufacturing costs, and the authors' share. The money thus flows up the chain, and it is the distributor who then pays the publishing houses their share. Makassar's bankruptcy is blocking essential funds for publishing houses, which have already incurred related expenses.
Makassar has been experiencing serious financial difficulties for several years and is now threatened with bankruptcy, potentially dragging down a whole segment of independent publishing with it. Nearly 200 of us currently work with Makassar. The bankrupt distributor means that all the publishers' annual sales revenue will never reach its intended recipients. But the consequences are also far less visible: lost sales of books already in bookstores, the inability to obtain summer sales figures, return costs for print runs that generated no revenue, and unrecoverable stock for some publishers. It's a blow from which many may not recover.
While the decline in book sales undeniably plays a role in the situation, the pressure from the far right and the concentration of the publishing world under Vincent Bolloré must also be denounced: censorship, the acquisition of publishing groups to control what is written, and also the overproduction of books by these large groups, which directly puts smaller distributors in difficulty. More books produced despite the overall drop in sales means more stock and more returns for these smaller distributors to manage. Add to this the recent bankruptcies of numerous independent bookstores swallowed up by an increasingly capitalist market management: higher costs and lower revenues create a losing combination for distributors like Makassar, which has long championed access for small publishers to the mainstream market. Today, however, independent publishers are mutually dependent: if one collapses, the others lack the resources to compensate for the resulting financial losses, and this is the current reality for many publishing houses distributed by Makassar. We know all too well that, ultimately, the consequences will be artists and authors whose voices and resources are being taken away.
Culture cannot be silenced by the far right. It controls an increasingly significant portion of cultural production and promotes a capitalist and competitive logic that threatens editorial pluralism. We know this: publishing houses will disappear if this latest blow materializes. And which distributor will now accept the future of politically engaged and economically uncertain publishing houses? What additional cost will independence now entail?
We call for support for Makassar so that the publishing houses that depend on it can survive and continue to spread their vision of a culture that is inclusive and accessible. Beyond our distributor, we also call for direct support for independent publishing houses and bookstores, without which our dissenting voices are also threatened.
Recent days have seen a surge of initiatives on social media. We urge all those who share our political ideals to concretely support these efforts to prevent the collapse of the structures supported by our colleagues and comrades: crowdfunding campaigns to try and cover deficits, direct orders for publishers with independent stock, withholding returns for booksellers, solidarity among publishers, and so on. Supporting these publishers also means learning about their catalogs from our independent booksellers, talking about what's being created outside the major publishing groups that flood the market, and raising awareness of the content our publishing houses are trying to keep visible despite financial and political constraints. Supporting the book industry also means doing our part to free it from capitalist constraints: no longer waiting for your book order to arrive in less than 48 hours, choosing independence over the convenience of large bookstores and international sales platforms, rethinking a system of outright purchase as opposed to consignment sales, which aim to constantly renew bookstores' offerings at the expense of long-term sales, and also defending self-management in the dissemination of our knowledge to preserve its diversity. Let's not allow our ideas or our jobs to disappear.
Against the hegemony of the sector, long live publishing and a free press!
Libertarian Communist Union, July 20, 2026.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Faillite-de-Makassar-lorsque-la-chute-d-un-distributeur-menace-l-edition
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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