French publishers are drowning under a sea of unsolicited manuscripts. “With the short 35-hour working week in France and a fall in the average retirement, increasing numbers of French men and women are turning pen to paper to write ‘their book’. Most, some 75 percent, write novels loosely based on their own experiences, turning the editor into a kind of shrink, an often unwilling confidante party to the author’s deepest secrets, fears and desires.”