Reed Exhibitions, the company that runs Book Expo America and the London Book Fair and charges exorbitant rates for booths at these events, has created a stir in France by reacting with extreme high — and public — dudgeon in repsonse to a French publisher saying it charged exorbitant rates for booths at Reed’s Salon du Livre, aka the Paris Book Fair.

As Barbara Casassus reports in a story for The Bookseller, it started when “An article on the Hachette Livre online book club site Myboox said that the group was scaling back its display area from 900 to 800 sq metres because of the “exorbitant” rates charged by Reed, which runs the Salon du Livre.”

In response, Reed rolled out the umbrage:  Jean-Daniel Compain, “general manager of Reed Exhibitions’ culture, sport and leisure division,” ripped off an open letter to Reed’s CEO, Arnaud Nourry, saying that Hachette “seems to seek failure” for the fair and that “all the other exhibitors are surprised by the campaign of denigration.” He also claimed “Hachette had exaggerated the prices charged,” and accused the company of “attacking a public event to strengthen its strategic leadership over the [book publishing] sector.”

In response, a Hachette spokesman said, essentially, “Oy vey,” except he said it in French: “Mr Compain built his case on things we never said. We have been very careful neither to disparage the Salon nor to influence other publishers.”

Meanwhile, the Bookseller report notes that while Hachette is, after all, maintaining at least a “token presence at the fair, publishing house Bayard has pulled out completely.”

The Fair begins on March 26,