Culture

Small Book Publishers Are: Ambitious Diversity

The book industry is experiencing an unprecedented publishing wave of start-UPS. With a passion and will to fight the new publishers are trying to secure their existence. The result in some small publishers noteworthy books.

The largest part of the German new releases will not appear in the large audience publishers, but Small presses. Books, brilliant photo books, narrative literature, volumes of poetry, books for so-called marginal groups – the cultural diversity in Germany would be without the creativity of many of the smaller independent publishers.

The sales and stagnant book industry experienced in the last five years, an amazing wave of start-UPS – in Berlin alone there are now over 300 book publishers. Most of them have less than ten employees. How about the rounds? Why dare to a new publisher on the competitive floor? Examples:

Edition Thanhäuser: The publisher as an Aesthete and book lovers

Stress by the industry’s notorious self-exploitation is to be noted that the Austrian Christian Thanhäuser. His Metier is the art of his wood-cuts in China and in Switzerland collected. His workshop in Ottensheim an der Donau is “probably the only print shop that has all the necessary Material for the good mountain by the hand of how Gutenberg invented the hand press print – I can still make books without electricity,” says Thanhäuser.

The Publisher The Publisher Christian Thanhäuser

A publisher, he is already for 25 years. Proud Thanhäuser is on the complex, hand-crafted bilingual volumes of Poetry, the latest of two Chinese poets, Wan Xia, and Wang Jiaxin. They are illustrated cuts his own wood. “300 to 400 copies to sell. There are many collectors who buy my wood cuts, and the purchase of the literature. So I bring the poems to the readers”, Thanhäuser in an interview with DW.

Commercial interests are in this publisher is not recognizable, on the contrary. “If you want to earn money, then you should do something else.” Thanhäuser must always earn money again, to be able to make books. “On average, I pay maybe each book is 1000 Euro. But the best profits are always the personal encounters.”

Publishing Association Format: Well placed by new techniques

But a small, independent publisher, must be at the same time will always be a niche publisher? Heinz-Herbert Reimer of the Format represents the model. He is publishing a group leader of a group of four small publishers with a total of eight permanent employees from Jena. Their market advantage is the in-house production. “We are working with this book manufacturing for other publishers. For large but also for very small.” New printing techniques allow small publishers to survive in the market, so its experience. “Editions of 5000 pieces is not a Must. It used to be a K. o.-criterion for very many titles. Meanwhile, there are numerous publishers who are able to meet with relatively small runs of special needs.” Also, the digitization bring for the global market benefits that have not the printed book. “You have to see the new opportunities. We also see the Ebook rather as a useful complement.”

Open House: Idealistic, self-exploitation, with more ambitious perspective

Summer reading

Get out of the niche, the young publishing house the Open House would like. But still the independent company does not operate profitably. “The important thing would be to make ten books of the year, that is, in our opinion, what you would make ends meet,” explains Christiane Lang, one of the two shareholders of the publishing house. “At the Moment we are in four. We create it with side jobs. It is not only so that we can edit, pick and choose, and the authors take care of, but that we have by the way also live a normal everyday life. And this is also a Job. For example, I work as a Bicycle mechanic.”

The Motivation to start in this Situation, a publisher, was for Long-logical: “This is what happens when you have a lot to do with books and reads a lot, and just sometimes would like to have a say in which book has a right to be a book.”

It is more than idealistic self-exploitation, to prove to the ambitious plans for the future of the makers. “We want the full program – non-fiction books, short stories, novels, stories, specializing in young German literature. Authors, we discover, have not yet been discovered by others, such as, for example, Babet Mader, of which we are already deploying the third title. In the future we will go more in the direction of Norwegian literature, where we found two young authors of real pearls.”

Anaconda: The Low-Budget Professionals

Jean-Merri Röger by Anaconda Verlag

Open House power-consuming, and graphically sophisticated books, which do not justify small runs. In linen, sometimes leather Anaconda Verlag binds many of his title also. With a view to commercial aspects of the Cologne-based publishing, but takes a pragmatic counter-program. “We make books in a high-quality equipment at a very cheap price,” summarizes Jean-Merri Röger, responsible for Marketing and press,. “We want to appeal to people who don’t have the money, maybe as loose as others.”

The publishing program includes such classics as Goethe, Schiller, Fontane, but also philosophy, classics, non-fiction books and guides in the form of special editions. But as the book prices of between four and (for multi-volume editions) is 20 Euro? “We do this mainly through the pooling of the print jobs. We try the formats to align so that we can order many books at once, and this is also very much paper,” says Röger. For the second: We are a very small company with only five employees. We try to keep the bureaucracy as small as possible.” A third of the publishing title was right and license expenditures account for a further third, to keep the costs low and make 40-50 new titles per season.

Support for independent publishers

Even small publishers can book favorite Potential

The prospects were for small publishers at the Moment is not bad, Marketing and press officer Röger. “We are with the development in the book market. In the last few years have established that very many of the smaller booksellers. This has also a positive effect on our business, we benefit from it.”

That way, the promotion for independent publishers by the Federal government Commissioner for culture and media and the Kurt Wolff Foundation, which supports since 15 years, the independent publishing and literary scene.