| Éditions L'Harmattan | |
| Status: | Active |
| Founder: | Robert Ageneau and Denis Pryen |
| Country: | France |
| Headquarters: | Paris |
| Distribution: | Worldwide |
| Publications: | Books and magazines |
| Topics: | Humanities |
| Revenue: | (2018) |
Éditions L'Harmattan, usually known simply as L'Harmattan (in French l‿aʁmatɑ̃/), is one of the largest French book publishers.[1] It specialises in non-fiction books with a particular focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. It is named after the Harmattan, a trade wind in West Africa.
L'Harmattan was founded in 1975. In 2013 it produced 500 magazines and 2,000 new books per year, both in print and as e-books, and has a backlist of 38,000 books, 33,000 e-books, and 1,700 videos, with about a third each on Europe, Africa, and the rest of the world.[2]
A third of its titles are in literature, a tenth in history, and 5 per cent each in philosophy, current affairs, education, politics, sociology, and fine arts. Slightly fewer are published in economics, psychology, ethnology, languages, etc., but even these categories have hundreds of titles, for example 500 in languages,[3] and more languages taught than almost any other publisher.
L'Harmattan controls costs by requiring authors to prepare electronic manuscripts in final format, not paying royalties on the first few hundred copies, and having short print runs of only a few hundred for its most specialized books.[4]
It has sales of 8.5 million euros per year, of which 2 million are exported.[5]
In 2021, L'Harmattan was publishing 1,300 "collections" (book series),[6] including the following: