On the third day of the American editors' tour of the German publishing scene, the group arrived at Suhrkamp, the well-regarded Frankfurt publisher of German and international literature, philosophy and social sciences. Nonfiction editor Eva Gilmer greeted the tour by apologizing: “Sorry if I am redundant with all the previous conversations you must have had about the 'crisis,' ” she said—even though up until that point, no one had mentioned the troubled economy. Then Gilmer, introducing her paperback monographs of seminal reading for students of philosophy, dropped a side statement: “These books sell almost automatically as soon as the university year starts, at about 12,000 copies.” One could hear her American colleagues whispering in disbelief.
For U.S. publishers, Germany looks perhaps not like paradise but definitely like a country where prestige for the book and a broad readership still exist. The March tour, arranged by the German Book Office, covered a mix of more than a dozen companies, some independent, family-run businesses, like C.H. Beck, founded in 1763 and now run by Jonathan Beck, as well as ones under the umbrella of larger groups like Bertelsmann's Random House and Holtzbrinck.
This diversity has contributed to the health of the industry, although publishers are facing a host of concerns. The economy is indeed a major topic of conversation, but so far has not resulted in a steep drop in business. At the recently concluded spring show in Leipzig, an event for the public, attendance was up and there were several panels about e-books.
Given the media hype, one would think that e-books are by now mainstream in Germany. In fact, only the Sony Reader is now available in stores, and Amazon has been quiet about a European rollout for its Kindle. Apple's iPhone is extremely popular among German young people, leading to the possibility that this may become the platform of choice for reading on screens.
Discussing digital strategies with publishers is sobering, as most admitted to only “early experiments.” One goal is to keep e-book prices near those of printed editions. The publishers' association Börsenverein is lobbying hard for a fixed price policy as it exists for the printed book. And, oddly enough, e-books come with a 19% VAT, while it is only 7% for printed books. Overall, the digital future feels more like a threat to German publishers than an opportunity.
There are exceptions, though. Frankfurt-based Campus, a major business book publisher of both translated and domestic works, offers digital packages for company intranets. The publishers' association has launched its own platform for the distribution of digital books, Libreka.de, claiming some 100,000 titles to be available already. Although there is nervousness about piracy, Libreka is opting for watermarking instead of clumsy DRM as its security strategy for digital books.
Perhaps the most significant denominator among all German houses is the strong sense that the book community still is at the heart of German culture. This is reflected by the recent creation of a new funding scheme to encourage translations from German books in the humanities and social sciences into English, called www.geisteswissenschaften-international.de. German publishers can register titles for funding that covers all of the translation costs.
The tour group, with editors from Stanford, Basic Books and Johns Hopkins, as well as Greystone and McGill-Queen from Canada, had plenty to think about afterward—plus a long list of titles to consider for acquisition.
