Eulalie Delaune and Aurélia Andriamampianina, Bubble Paper Publishers

• Introduce yourself! Who are you ? What research are you following?

Aurelia Andriamampianina : My name is Aurélia Andriamampianina, I’m 23 years old, I’m in the Master 2 Digital Humanities, digital publications course at the Normandy University of Rouen and I’m Malagasy, which makes me a foreign student. I am the secretary of Bubble Paper publications and this is the most important thing.

Eulalie Delaune : I’m Eulalie Delaune, I’m the vice-president and community manager of Éditions Papier Bulle and I’m in the same MA as Aurelia.

• You created the association “Papier Bulle” a few months ago. Can you tell us more?

YY : This is an associate and university publishing house. Our main goal is to print all types of literary works: illustrated stories, comics, novels, etc. The association consists of ten volunteers divided into two teams: the editorial team and the communication team.

Ed : We all mostly come from the Master of Digital Humanities, but we still have a new member who arrived a few weeks ago and is eligible. If we talk about Genesis, it is a project owned by someone else in the base and started two years ago. This person was able to raise a lot of money to start a publishing house, but had to give it up for a professional project. The Office of Student Life (OSL) came to our Master to offer us the envelope that the person collected and therefore set up the project. Everything had to be done. Neither the name nor the administrative procedure was initiated. It took us the whole year of Master 1 to organize everything, and the publishing house was born in August 2022. We have permanent connections with the university’s associative life, which guides and connects us. We have university accreditation which is mandatory for all university associations.

YY : First of all, it was BVE that pushed us to implement this project. Moreover, he was really enthusiastic because we were one of the only two associations formed this year.

• Who is publishing for?

Ed : Mainly for Rouen students. We can gradually expand to the region, but we will try to limit ourselves to this area. We prefer URN students, but we will see if others are interested. It will depend on the editorial project. Anything can be sent in terms of content. But obviously, since this is a quasi-professional editorial job—in any case, we model ourselves on what professionals do—choices are bound to be made, and therefore quality will prevail. And of course, this is done according to our own criteria. Since our budget is limited, we prioritize projects that we like. But everything can be sent to us, and we support authors and artists as much as we can. We will try to give very quick and very accurate, constructive feedback for the improvement of the author. Even if he’s just starting out, he can send us his work for an initial review.

YY : We also present ourselves as a literary agent, if I may say so. We support students as much as possible. The goal is to highlight students who really want to be artists, authors or screenwriters.

• In early 2023, your first publication will be released. Can you tell us about it?

YY : This will be an editorial project in the form of a composite journal on the topic of remembrance. It will be released in the summer of 2023, in June. We are in the process of development and call for projects. We put up posters in the university, posted on Instagram, did a lot of publicity, and also on the Radio Campus. Until January 31, 2023, students can send us their work by email, and from there we will study everything that is offered to us.

Ed : So far we have received news, illustrations, comics. We are open to all types of works, even digital literature. We will be interested in surprises, things we haven’t thought of yet.

• How do you operate in terms of the creative process? How do you select texts?

Ed : We try to diversify the offers as much as possible, we are interested in multiple genres so that there is interest in the composite collection. The goal is that it’s not too linear. For example, we got a sci-fi short story, a slightly more historical comic, another a little more scientific, but also illustrations that fit the theme very specifically while others do it more metaphorically. We try to be as different as possible.

YY : Organizationally, we are made up of editorial teams. We have a little document where we can sort of make reading sheets and where we grade student writing. Then we all get together to discuss and decide what can be published.

Ed : We don’t necessarily expect professional quality work. Anyway, we would like to promote different genres whenever possible. We don’t want to create a collection of beautiful letters.

YY : Our goal is not to emphasize a specific literary genre. It’s really about showcasing students’ talents, regardless of literary genre, and providing them with a springboard for their future careers.

• Are you really a professional publisher? With beta readers? Proofreaders? and so on.

Ed : We are a kind of mini company with a social and cultural purpose, but our organization is very horizontal. The editorial staff consists of almost all members. We all have the same status. As soon as we accept the author or the artist, we assign him a literary agent to deal with his pursuit, to be his referent in the association.

YY : With this role, we have to be professional. Admittedly, we are an association, but we also have to prove to them that we know what we are doing.

Ed : We actually have three hats. The first is to support authors. The second is to train ourselves. We don’t think about it, but it is also important. We both found very influential experiences through publishing. We have a third cover, which is the organization of events

YY : We love to create and organize events. We participated in The zazimuts and the horse festival of social and solidarity economy From Rouen. Used books were sold there. We are really versatile as a mini company. We manage everything and train ourselves in this very organization. We thrive on autonomy, we discover many things. I take myself as an example, but the administrative side, I didn’t know anything at all, but I did it, now I know how to do it.

Ed : Plus, speaking of the social and solidarity economy, we’re committed to paying our artists. All jobs are salaried. We’ve modeled our contract on an authorship basis, which will take 6-8% of the entire publishing process.