How can one survive as a small publisher ?

Créaphis, a publishing house and consultancy for cultural projects, publishes about ten books per year in the fields of the social sciences, photography and architecture, with a print run varying between fifteen and seven thousand copies, with an annual turnover of two hundred thousand Euros. Its founder, Pierre Gaudin, is one of eight hundred small publishers in France who comprise 2% of the national publishing turnover. Faced with stiff competition and problems of circulation and distribution, the small publisher, far from being the kindly amateur which one imagines, has to produce books which sell, in order to survive. As far as this is concerned, Pierre Gaudin has some trumps up his sleeve : a certain freedom in choosing the books which he publishes and adopting an editorial stance, a wealth of books on offer, and a great deal of professionalism, despite the small size of his company.