A land of paradoxes, the Netherlands. Book trade concentration is little short of horrific. Depending on who you talk to, and whether Belgian Flanders is included in the calculation, two large groups of somewhat similar dimensions hold either 40% or 60% of the book market, while a third group is half as large as either of the first two. Yet it was one of the country's smallest publishers who recognized the potential of Harry Potter. Jaco Groot of De Harmonie, who buys according to his and wife Elsbeth's hunches, has followed J.K. Rowling ever since, and now has a cool million copies of the HP books in print.
PW's envoy actually visited the birth of another world-class, pocket-sized publisher, the brain-child of Eva Cossée (long associated with the big groups as editor and publisher) and her husband, Christophe Buchwald, who until recently was one of the leading bookmen at Suhrkamp in Frankfurt. Cossée and Buchwald, with partner Wil Hansen, an ex-Meulenhoff man who will be responsible for Dutch authors, took over the lower floors of Cossée's home in Amsterdam for their offices. They begin with a spring catalogue of seven books—seven authors, Eva Cossée prefers to say—mostly her own picks. On the day PW dropped in, she had copies of her first book, Australian novelist Julia Leigh's The Hunter (from Penguin Australia), which came with a highly valuable blurb from Don DeLillo. The Cossée trio will follow up with novels by J.M. Coetzee (who corrected the Dutch proofs himself), Israel's David Grossman (whom she began publishing at the dawn of his career), António Lobo Antunes of Portugal and three Dutch authors of equal drawing power.
Cossée expects to put 15 titles into the stores before this year is over, and 20 to 25 next year. Translations, at least in the beginning, will represent half the list (but that's not a high ratio in the Netherlands); by next year, translations should dominate 60—40, since there is more talent around outside Dutch borders. It's an eager market, in which everyone wants you to win; the partners expect to see black ink by the time this report is read.
What's Happening at Meulenhoff
PW had been following the ascension of what used to be called the Meulenhoff group until the time came for Meulenhoff to be absorbed in a still larger entity, a press group now called PcM. Today, Mai Spijkers runs the book group as managing director and publisher. He doesn't try to dismiss the challenge he faces in bringing together publishers with similar profiles. He calls the process "strategic reallocation." Thus, after the takeover of Utrecht's giant Het Spectrum group, strong both in reference publishing—with a drop-dead database and an encyclopedia back and front list—as well as a sterling trade catalogue built up by former owner-publisher Joost Bloemsma, Spijker has simply detached the commercial fiction side and given it to PcM's bestseller imprint, Bruna, while finding another home for Spectrum's sci-fi and fantasy.
Unlike many of his colleagues, Spijker is intent on covering every part of the market; a group as large as his can do that. The PcM book group issued close to 3,000 titles last year in 22 million copies and keeps 11,000 titles in the catalogue.
It all began with J.M. Meulenhoff, the flagship house, then and now the publisher of Nobel authors and poetry. PW meets Martijn David, in charge of the translated list, with Tanja Hendriks, who runs sister imprint Arena. David explains that after all the recent changes, Meulenhoff remains the group's literary imprint par excellence, with about 100 new titles a year in fiction and nonfiction both topical and serious. Sixty of those 100 books in any year will be translations.
You don't have to write in English to be translated here. Sure, Meulenhoff is Philip Roth's Dutch address, but the list also features Günter Grass, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Amos Oz, Kenzaburo Oe, Gao Xingjian in fiction, Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes in poetry, and Amos Elon, Ian Gibson, Germaine Greer, Oliver Sacks and George Steiner in nonfiction. Martijn David points out that English-language originals often pop up in local bookstores to compete with translations into Dutch; the original edition often gets there first (see sidebar on early export).
Arena, Tanja Hendriks explains, publishes books for (and most often by) women. She looks for books about women exploited in the Third World—but also does a biography of Jordan's Queen Noor. Her latest catalogue features Laura Esquivel and Kate Grenville, about 35 books a year, six in 10 of which are nonfiction.
Mostly from English
De Boekerij, the impressively successful logo for commercial fiction, is run jointly with Forum nonfiction (narrative, business books, mind-body-spirit). The two lines publish about a hundred new titles annually, and 95% of these are translations—overwhelmingly from English. Publisher Marijke Bartels points out that half the list consists of thrillers, ad then there are the romantic novels—romance "with something more." It's the Dutch home of Michael Connelly, Jack Higgins, Marion Zimmer Bradley; on the latest Forum list, Bernard Lewis's The Middle East; Shirley MacLaine's The Camino, A Journey of the Spirit; and The Detox Diet by Paula Baillie-Hamilton. Books from the twin logos often go into the big Bertelsmann club called ECI, the only book club (see sidebar). Bartels worries a little now that ECI publishes its own trade list, but expects the club to continue to buy around. Otherwise, she finds the market stable, healthy but not feverish. "Leave out Harry Potter and it hasn't grown at all."
M Publishers, formerly the "M" logo for entertainment fiction of more sober Meulenhoff, has since been attached to De Boekerij, a more appropriate home. Jacques Post, the publisher, speaks of having gotten a send-off present; the science fiction and fantasy lists of recently acquired Het Spectrum. That gives M a respectable 70% of the market in these categories.
Post is responsible for 55 to 60 new releases per annum, 70% of them in SF, 20% thrillers, the balance general fiction. Thanks to Het Spectrum, too, there is a very marketable name in the catalogue: J.R.R. Tolkien, with The Lord of the Rings. Obviously most of Post's books come from English.
PcM's imprints for literary, trendy, young fiction, nonfiction and poetry operate together as Prometheus/Bert Bakker, but with separate catalogues. Plien van Albada, brought over from De Boekerij, recently took on a traditional children's imprint, Van Goor; henceforth, the three children's logos—Van Goor, Prometheus and Piccolo—will be listed in a single catalogue as Prometheus Kinder Boeken, responsible for some 60 new titles annually.
There are another 90 new titles at adult Prometheus/Bert Bakker—Prometheus for the young and trendy, Bert Bakker for the high-toned (say Umberto Eco). Only four books in 10 are translated, for these are houses that look for and support native writing. But David Guterson is a Bert Bakker author; Jonathan Franzen graces the Prometheus catalogue. Running down the list of recent acquisitions of both houses, PW spots Nadine Gordimer, Stephen Hawking, Nancy Huston, Barbara Kingsolver, Tom Wolfe... with many of their European peers. Proud publisher Plien van Albada assures the visitor that there are readers out there for the kind of books she does; both of her adult imprints had their best years ever. But she is another of the publishers who worry about the effect on the rights market of the early arrival of American and British originals. "So we have to be quick," she says—for the Dutch do intend to fight back.
How Het Spectrum Works
Then there is Het Spectrum. Over the years PW's correspondent has been watching its CEO and publisher, Joost Bloemsma, at book fairs and bookseller conventions, ready with an early bid for a blockbuster (say, Jean Auel). Nowadays, the group's marketing and sales director, Caroline Reeders, tells the visitor, Spectrum means reference—dictionaries, encyclopedias, language teaching materials, but also general nonfiction, ranging from no-nonsense science and medicine to practical how-to.
A little over half the list is translated, chiefly in general nonfiction, and most of the imports come from the U.S. and U.K. In its choices, it sometimes competes with older components of PcM. (Among the books everybody seemed to want were John Gray's Mars and Venus series and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation.) The publisher goes for Oprah Winfrey picks in pop psychology and lifestyle, even books on angels. Bu it is also the proud publisher of Robert Kaplan's Warrior Politics and Ian Kershaw's two-volume Hitler. The Kershaw set did 20,000 copies; a popular Het Spectrum yearbook regularly sells 100,000.
Buying a Gem
Recently PcM picked up a gem of a house called Vassallucci, including the partners who make it what it is, managing director Lex Spaans and editorial director Oscar van Gelderen. It's an eclectic list, with the directors' knack for choosing the special and salable (a Dutch Bloomsbury?). The catalogue is multicultural (Dutch Moroccan, Dutch Jewish, Israeli; it does lifestyle, but also Dutch stand-up comedians. Recent foreign titles include Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day by Dave Sedaris, Candace Bushnell's Four Blondes. And the irresistible children's list includes Artemis Fowl, The Princess Diaries, Time Stops for No Mouse and Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism. If in its early years Vassallucci published only 25 books per annum, this year it will do 70, of which 16 will be on the children's list. "We just weren't the right size," Lex Spaans explains. Either you are really and truly small—or you must be big enough to be able to afford production and sales departments. Of course, it was the PcM connection that made growth possible. Being connected with a mega group hasn't been a problem. "We had more problems when we depended on a bank," says Spaans.
The Unieboek Umbrella
Unieboek, PcM's outpost in a village called Houten, is the umbrella for a number of traditional imprints, among them Van Holkema & Warendorf, Van Reemst, Gaade, Fibula, and Van Dishoeck. Managing director Wouter van Gils describes a sprawling, vast operation strong in travel, children's books and novelty titles, as well as popular fiction and general nonfiction. This group within a group sells well in supermarkets and drugstores as well as through the trade, with business-to-business sales accounting for 15% to 20% of annual turnover.
The emphasis is on strong names and brands. Unieboek does the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness guides, and a new imprint called KITT exploits (among other characters) Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit and Eric Hill's Spot. And it is the Dutch publishers of the likes of Maeve Binchy, Rosamunde Pilcher, Jackie Collins and Michael Ridpath. But look for more Dutch originals in future; PcM would also like to export.
Last but not least: Standaard, PcM's outpost in Belgian Flanders, which shares the Dutch language if not always the tastes of its northern neighbor. Comic books are big in Belgium, for example, and Standaard is market leader. But, insists general manager Eric Willems, the Antwerp house is very definitely a general publisher; you have to be that in so small a market. In children's books, it's the Belgium home of Harry Potter.
It goes without saying that the company distributes the PcM group in its territory. But if Belgians readily accept Dutch books, the Dutch don't buy from Belgium, which is often dismissed as a backwater. As a consequence, Belgian authors writing in Dutch prefer to be published in the Netherlands. There are nearly 16 million Dutch, only six million Flemings.
The Divisions at Veen
In the beginning, there was Wolters Kluwer, a European leader in law, tax, business, health, science and education, but with that odd bump called trade publishing. So this congeries of trade houses known as Veen and headquartered in Utrecht bit the bullet with a management buyout engineered by its CEO Bert de Groot and financed by a friendly bank. The same bank went on to finance Veen's takeover of the publicly listed Bosch & Keuning group last year. And that provided critical mass, making the country's number two more or less equal to number one (PcM). Bert de Groot estimates they each hold a 25% slice of the market. Apart from seizing an opportunity—say, some good small publisher needing a home—Groot sees no need for further expansion.
To manage all this, explains Bert de Groot, components of the group have been divided by function—fiction, nonfiction, special interest and educational. One of the Veen's group's best-known labels is Luitingh-Sijthoff, a leader in commercial fiction and certainly Veen's prime publisher in this area. Hanca Leppink, managing director and publisher, outlines a vigorous publishing program of 150 new books per annum, of which 40 are on the children's list under the Piramide logo. Luitingh-Sijthoff is upmarket but story-driven, and eight books in 10 are thrillers.
Leafing through the spring catalogue, PW notes the presence of Thomas Harris (with Hannibal of course) and Stephen King (From a Buick 8). And Danielle Steel, Dean Koontz, Barbara Taylor Bradford, John le Carré, and both Mary and Carol Higgins Clark.
For Hanca Lippink, the Netherlands is now experiencing a bestseller culture. That means the end of midlist. "Paperbacks—of our kind of books—are a growing business. We sell more to outlets other than bookstores now." She describes a competitive jungle, especially when a new imprint pops up and must prove itself.
In the same sober canal house, Mizzi van der Pluijm presides over the Veen group's literary list using the logo Contact. Hers is an impressive collection of Dutch authors and carefully chosen foreigners. She points to one book featured in her spring catalogue that is sure to make it: the title translates as Larva, and the author is biologist Midas Dekkers, whose subject is adults who seek to return to childhood. Peter Mayer grabbed it for translation at New York's Overlook Press.
In another genre, Contact does what Mizzi van der Pluijm describes as her country's only library of American classics (from Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter to Tender Is the Night and Slaughterhouse Five). But what she really counts on is her Dutch list. These days, she says, when an author thinks of moving, he or she moves over to Contact. Some 70 new books a year, and it's hard work to limit it to that. One book in three is a translation (but there used to be more).
Elsewhere in this building full of surprises, Emile Brugman has been celebrating the 10th anniversary of Veen's Atlas imprint, which has had its "best year ever." First, its author Naipaul got the Nobel, then a Dutchman on the list won his country's equivalent of the Booker, after which its author Peter Carey won the real Booker and a Frenchman it translates won the Goncourt. "So we've been drinking a lot of champagne."
Atlas is a publisher of fiction and nonfiction both, and translations represent some 50% of each category. "Atlas is a reflection of my tastes," confesses Brugman, though it looks a lot like van der Pluijm's Contact. It's the house of Paul Theroux and Kazuo Ishiguro, and in nonfiction David Quammen's The Book of the Dodo. The spring catalogue includes the letters of Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse.
The 70 books released annually are divided rather equally between fiction and nonfiction. Brugman's upscale list has an eager public, with sales rising every year. Some of his nonfiction authors have made the difficult passage into English; he's waiting for the first novel to do that.
Chris Herschdorfer of Ambo/Anthos was an editor at nonfiction house Bosch & Keuning before joining A/A as publisher three years ago. Both of his imprints are strong in nonfiction, Ambo with psychology, philosophy, history and the social sciences, Anthos with cultural history, politics, religion and current affairs. At Anthos, for example, the thrillers are literary, often drawn from upscale American and British homes. And if Anthos specializes in English-language literary fiction, sister imprint Ambo is more continental (the former publishes Don DeLillo, the latter Milan Kundera).
All told, about 100 new books are produced yearly by the twin logos, a number that won't rise because Herschdorfer knows he won't improve sales by grinding out more books than he can successfully market. Right now some 85% of the list is translated, but the Dutch contribution in both fiction and nonfiction is to be expanded, for this is the more rewarding side for a publisher who is also an editor—and it's less expensive. Among recent and upcoming fiction: books by Ethan Canin, Etgar Keret, Kathrine Kressmann Taylor (Address Unknown), Nicci French, Don DeLillo.
Bringing In a New List
In a habitually quiet trade, there was considerable commotion when a Meulenhoff veteran, J.M. Meulenhoff publisher Tilly Hermans, quit her job abruptly during the transition from large group to megagroup. Many of her authors, Meulenhoff stars, joined her in the walkout—enough to compose a new publishing house, and she soon joined forces with Veen group publisher Emile Brugman of Atlas. Hermans was putting together her first list at the time of PW's visit, and it will be published in August; it's only coincidence that her new imprint will be baptized Augustus.
Finally, Kosmos— Z&K (Zomer & Keuning), one of two houses in the Veen group wholly devoted to nonfiction, the other being Tirion (do-it-yourself, nature, sports, cookery). Kosmos is the place to go for travel, health, gardening and spirituality. Publisher Hans Janssen explains it is also the Dutch publisher of National Geographic guidebooks. Kosmos is also the Dutch imprint for Berlitz travel and language guides and for the U.K.'s Automobile Association. Such dynamism has catapulted the house to market leadership in a number of subjects. "The last time we met," Janssen reminds the visitor, "we spoke of saturation in the cookbook market; customers waited until they were remaindered to buy them. Now we can't make them expensive enough."
Dutch Challenger
In an earlier, simpler era, one strolled along the Singel canal to a little house at 262, where the publishers occupying the premises were known as the Singel 262 Group. Then one of the country's leading magazine publishers, WPG, took over. At the time of PW's recent visit, the well-known children's book publisher Ploegsma joined this group, whose chief elements are Arbeiderspers, a general trade house (with imprint Archipel), and Querido, with its general and children's lists, to which publishing imprints Nijgh & Van Ditmar and now Athenaeum—Polak & Van Gennep have been attached. Not to forget De Bezige Bij, which came into the group since PW's last report on the Dutch scene, and Ludion for art.
The visitor calls first at De Arbeiderspers, meeting new managing director Rob Haans, who describes a broad translating program that mixes the popular (Paulo Coelho, Louis de Bernières) with the caviar (Isaac Singer, Paul Auster, Eugenio Montale). An ongoing literary series called Private Domain is this nation's market leader in memoirs and biography. And there is poetry, only two or three titles in each of the three annual catalogues but an "important" category, Haans says, both for altruistic reasons and because poetry lovers are also good readers of prose. There are some 110—120 new books annually at Arbeiderspers and sister imprint Archipel. Half the list is translated, but Dutch books still sell better.
Haans rolls out some of the figures publishers must cope with here. If more than 20 million people in the Netherlands and neighboring Belgium use Dutch, the estimate is that only 1.5 million or 1.6 million are readers—potential book buyers. It becomes worthwhile to translate when a book can sell 4,000 copies, although publishers will do a book with a lower expectation of sales if it's important enough.
De Bezige Bij—"The Busy Bee"—has long been one of the most respected of Dutch publishers, and joined WPG five years ago. To keep the house in the front line, the press group had the good sense, and the luck, to hire Robert Amerlaan, until then a high-profile publisher at Ambo/ Anthos whose list included Don DeLillo, John Irving and Susan Sontag. "But De Bezige Bij is something special in our country," he tells PW, "part of our cultural legacy. It's a job you simply cannot say no to."
Amerlaan moved over early in 1999 and was able to bring along some of his best authors—and friends: John Irving, Donna Tartt, Susan Sontag, Anne Tyler, Oscar Hijuelos and Graham Swift among them. The house leaped into the black; Dutch writers, queried by a weekly, voted it the place they'd rush to if they ever left their current publisher. And although the focus here was on native Dutch literature, Amerlaan soon refashioned the catalogue to include his international bent, with a list in history, cultural history and current affairs, including Peter Gay, Sylvia Nasar (A Beautiful Mind), George Steiner and Daniel Goldhagen. Late flash: Amerlaan was tapped to be the first world publisher of Donna Tartt's The Little Friend. At Ambo/ Anthos, the same author's The Secret History sold 700,000 copies, one of the biggest sales ever in this modest-sized market.
Classic and Current
Back at Singel 262, PW calls on Lidewijde Paris, publisher of the Querido adult list. While in the past the house focused on Dutch fiction and international classics (say, Kafka), it now translates current fiction as well and a category Paris calls "intellectual entertainment." Still, Dutch originals still dominate among the 35—40 new titles released each year. There are only four or five foreign authors now, but Paris promises that there will be more, though they won't necessarily be writing in English.
The visitor moves on to meet Jacques Dohmen, editor-in-chief of Querido's children's department. "There is always a debate about whether a children's book should be well written first of all—or teach something," says Dohmen. "We think that excellence comes first, and that means some people see us as too literary." Querido's children's list takes most of the country's book prizes. It is also one of the country's market leaders; the other is Rotterdam's Lemniscaat, which is paradoxically small and independent, specializing in quality picture books and juvenile fiction (about a dozen of the former, 15 of the latter each year). Lemniscaat's publisher, J.C. Boele van Hensbroek, tells PW that in both lists half the authors are foreign.
New Home for Ploegsma
The visitor had long planned to call at Ploegsma, one of the most international of Dutch children's publishers. During preparations for the meeting, Ploegsma publisher Nanny Brinkman let PW know that her house, a family company since the 1930s, had been sold—to WPG. So the visitor sat down with Nanny Brinkman and WPG's choice as the new publisher, Martine Schaap. They speak of a program of some 40 new titles a year, of which 70% are translations—mostly from English, and currently including both the Olivia and Lemony Snicket series. Among the most popular books on the list: America's Laura Ingalls Wilder and Arnold Lobel.
Standing Alone
PW had called on the good people at Wereldbibliothek years back, finding it odd that so big a name belonged to so small a publishing operation. Now this "World Library," publisher Koen van Gulik explains, is a holding company grouping the Wereldbibliothek imprint and Van Gennep, an innovative small publisher. In a sense, Wereldbibliothek was the translating publisher par excellence, its founder (back in 1905) having resolved to make the best foreign literature available to all and at the lowest prices possible. The backlist still features Dante, Goethe, Spinoza and Tagore, and Freud's introduction to psychoanalysis, now in its 20th printing. The moderns include Isabel Allende, Roberto Calasso and A.B. Yehoshua.
Nowadays, when the Dutch market is flooded with translations, and translators demand and deserve higher fees, while reviewers usually give priority to Dutch originals, the latest generation at the helm at Wereldbibliothek finds it increasingly difficult to break even. Van Gulik outlines a new policy: publishing translated and original Dutch fiction in equal proportions. And most nonfiction will be Dutch. It's also true that when the house translates these days, it's not from English, for rights holders demand advances the owners can't afford.
