Frankfurt book fair: How the industry is? What is the deal with the talk of the book market crisis? Or rather, it is a Reading crisis? We have checked with the publishers and with a professional reader.
In the past year, the excitement was big, as the literature editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sandra cone, asked prior to the book fair in an editorial provocatively: “Is the book in the end?” Cone came to a few sobering insights. Every Fifth reading at all, it is not the people ertrügen the silence, which is the basic requirement for reading and if employment with the literature, and then only in the context of Events.
The article sparked a discussion, many industry representatives criticized the pessimistic view cone. In particular, the börsenverein of the German book trade defended itself against the supposed talk of Crisis.
Sandra cone: “Every industry is not afraid of bad news”
But: Had and the cone is not right? Speak – a year after the debate – the Numbers are not always even for that, for example, in the last few years, more than six million readers have been lost?
We meet Sandra cone at the fair. The excitement of 2017 was so great, don’t get you today, but understand that you don’t want to fuel the black painting from the outside: “Every industry is not afraid of bad news, and you don’t want to talk to a industry down, and certainly not the actors themselves.”
Literature expert, Sandra Kegel from the FAZ
Book market crisis, and crisis of reading were two different things, she says, and thinks: “I believe now, that we have no crisis in the reader, but the Non-readers. Earlier Not have possibly bought more readers to books that do that today.” The book as a gift to an invitation, there is today much rarer.
Convinced, too, that one can speak of a “crisis of the in-depth reading”: “Here is a culture technique, is lost perhaps. This is Not to say: to read only a little, but in a Text into it: this high concentration, the need of certain requirements, peace, loneliness, the opposite of Event.”
The publisher make themselves aware of
And how that will see the publisher? Would have to know eventually, because you realize pretty quickly, if your books are not sold and the red threaten. From the talk of Crisis most want to hear, but actually nothing.
“I will not sit here and practicing a self-flagellation with well-known slogans such as ‘The world of the book goes under’ and don’t want to, as it happens like the reader to remember how toasty and nice, almost in a Wellness mode – it was in the past, to read a book,” says Claudia Baumhöver of “dtv”. The present and the future were quite different: “We are in the field of culture with nine billion in annual sales, a colossus, larger than the cinema, Netflix, and games for consoles. We always reach to 33 million people who read.”
Claudia Baumhöver (dtv)
Horst Lauinger by Manesse Verlag (part of Random House) takes a similar view: “We live actually to be pre-an island of the Blessed, when all the negative tendencies, of which we remain, of course, not spared.” You know, as the reader has been developing in the last few years, and where the journey will go. “But in a direct comparison with Italy, France or the USA – if you look at the Abundance of new releases at us, the Abundance of Translations, it is, as before, so that we are highly favored by fate.”
Some publishing houses do good business
Also Nicholas Gelpkevom Mare-Verlag is very pleased with the Numbers of your own house 2015, the best year was with the Mare at all and the two following years hardly be worse: “Overall, I can confirm that we sell, certainly in comparison with, for example, 15 years earlier – less books, or less money for books.”
The many small publishers who often earn hardly any money with their books and forced to work on the principle of self – exploitation, to look at them differently-and some of publishing giant without literary content, the concept might also.
Horst Lauinger (Manesse)
dtv, a long time more than a paperback publisher, Manesse and Mare don’t like to agree with the talk of Crisis. So no crisis in the book industry? What can be some rather, is to speak of a “crisis of reading”. And that has something to do with their leisure behavior. Since there is little, if in the list of the most popular pursuits in the German “read” in the respective rank lists is not slipped. The main competitor for read, it sounds in all talks at the fair are the many offers on the Internet and especially Streaming services such as Netflix or Amazon.
The struggle for time quota
The Sandra Kegelso: “reading is always that on the basis of black letters on a white or a greyish Background to make your own worlds. This is an active activity in comparison, when you consume an image, a Text, a sound.” She didn’t want to play in books for series or movies, “but that we make nowadays, so many things that deter us, apparently, from the reading, this is worth thinking about.” There should about be thinking, “even in the schools,” adds the literary editor.
Nikolaus Gelpke (Mare)
The committed Mare publisher Nikolaus Gelpke: “The time problem is the problem of our industry, working with paper, this is definitely so.” Horst Lauinger, that looks similar to this: “Netflix is of course a very aggressive competitor for the consumption of culture. If you budget, take a look at the time, that goes for the Stream of it, so you can calculate how little time remains at the end of the day to read. The complain also a lot of Reading: lack of time.”
The classic educated middle class is disappearing
The Manesse-in-chief says the loss of a certain audience of the classics of specialized publishing: “What we notice in the last few decades, is that our homogeneous target audience, the educated middle class, splits and the edges are fraying. The classical education of citizens, for it belongs to the self-understanding, to read every year, two, three classics that I miss.” For while there is “a ‘level-environment’, the sophisticated literature with Conviction and pleasure” reading, but: “This layer is not as homogeneous as the good old middle-class.”
What are the three draw, then your optimism, if a renewable audience divides his spare time today so very different? What do you recommend against the dwindling readership?
Where is the book market?
Claudia Baumhöver sets to a whole new offers from your publishing house: “A new Imprint called ‘bold’ that stands for ‘bold’ and ‘courageous’.” The turn of targeted “to the young Generation of Digital Natives – in the Form of speech through which particular authors and texts.” And implemented by a purely digital Marketing approach: “Something completely New will to communicate!”
A new target audience with new products develop
Agents and publishers in the United States, where already advertised will be thrilled – and because it’s “a publishing house with a solution approach”: “We turn therefore to the group of Digital Natives, which, according to Rumor, Yes the avowed non-readers to be heard and thus to the alleged decline of the industry that is supposedly a decisive contribution.”
And also on the particularly well-equipped book, the publisher, and so on Tradition. Just to prepare for dtv, a magnificent Humboldt issue: “We are fighting Alexander von Humboldt’s ‘other cosmos’, with over twelve million characters in ten volumes in the Edition of ‘All the Scriptures – the Bernese output’.” The to be published “not less than ten kilograms in the book, 1000 articles in 14 languages, 30 scientific disciplines, in 250 cities in the world and in 100 publications on five continents.” The Whole is to appear in July 2019.
Well-made books as a selling point
Also Nikolaus Gelpke wants to put up with his Mare-books continue to be on the “special book”: “It is a matter of fact, you might have to find its niche.” There is “still enough people who read and if there are people who want to not only read, but also reading a book, even a Hardcover want to read, then you want a Hardcover just made a formally good.”
With Humboldt from the crisis?
Horst Lauinger is convinced of the need to present themselves in the future in addition, yet self-confident: “We beat at the Moment, a fight to the time and resources of our audience, the my, to be in doubt with a Film easier to entertain than with a book, only read, creates a desire for the Fictional, a mode of Cognition, prefigured in the brain. These are things that we need in our self-understanding is much more to the fore.”
The industry’s head not in the Sand. You can see the development of the readership, also registered declining interest in the cultural good book. On the other hand, it is believed, however, that the book will also claim in the future – with quality, a careful selection and design and new formats.