No matter who emerges victorious from France's presidential election, one group will already have made a killing: the country's publishers, who between them are lining up a record-breaking 35 books by and about this year's crop of Elysée palace hopefuls.

The Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, may not yet have declared his candidacy, but that has not stopped five of his loyal ministers from putting pen to paper in support of their man.

Neither Mr Jospin nor his likely second-round rival, President Jacques Chirac, are themselves planning pre-election books, but nine lesser candidates have not hesitated to set out their stalls before a bewildered French electorate.

Of the dozen or so works by journalists, commentators, analysts and intellectuals, two of the most promising - or least deadly - appear to be Marie-Eve Malouines's teasing Two Men for One Chair and Eric Zemmour's muckraking biography of Mr Chirac, The Man Who Didn't Like Himself.

Even in a country where weighty political tomes regularly top the bestseller lists, it all looks like overkill. "Anyone who reads all that lot won't have a clue who to vote for," said a spokesman for the French Publishers' Association. "But at least they can't complain they weren't kept informed."