The Diversity Report 2010 is out: Mapping and analysing literary translations in Europe

The Diversity Report 2010 aims at portraying and mapping how a significant sample of the best renowned contemporary authors of literary fiction in Europe shape cultural diversity (and its limits) across 15 European book markets.

Translation of works of fiction makes stories, memories and idea travel across cultural boundaries. And literary authors and their work stand for the cultural richness of this continent.

However, our understanding of the flows of – and the barriers to – translation mostly lacks the empirical groundwork for a solid analysis.

Building on its two preceding reports, the Diversity Report 2010 will track ca. 200 well established fiction authors and their work across large parts of the European book markets and hence the cultural landscapes for a detailed account of

•  Who is translated into which languages, and who is not;

•  What languages are more receptive for translations, or are better received by other territories, than others;

•  What are the overarching patterns and trends with regard to translations of the core of European contemporary fiction?

Surveyed authors will include writers from English (British and South African), French, German, Austrian, Spanish, Swedish, Italian as well as, with specific emphasis, Central and Southeast Europe.

The Diversity Report 2010 will be presented and debated on March 31 st , 2011, at the World Book Summit 2011 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. ( www.wbs2011.si ) and at the London Book Fair, Centre for Literary Translation on April 12, 2011, 10 to 11 am.

eBooks: Kleine Verschiebung, grosse Wirkung!

Natürlich ist die Suche nach eBooks noch ziemlich mühsam, zu unberechenbar ist das Angebot, zu willkürlich, was von Verlagen digital zum sofortigen Download angeboten wird, und was nicht. Und die Wirrungen enden nicht mit der erfolgreichen Suche. Die fangen mit dem Fund erst so richtig an.

Das Auffälligste ist gewiss, wie durchgängig hier, auch bei deutschen Angeboten, plötzlich über den Preis geworben wird. „Jetzt kaufen. Print Ausgabe 31,00 Euro – durchgestrichen. eBook 26,99. Sie sparen 5,01. Sofort lieferbar (Download)“. Darunter wartet schon der „Warenkorb“.

Weiter lesen hier.

EBooks unterm Weihnachtsbaum – eine schöne Bescherung!

„Schatz, legst Du schon mal die eBooks unter den Weihnachtsbaum?“ Der Satz wird diesmal noch nicht ganz so häufig ins Wohnzimmer gerufen werden, aber es wird ihn geben. Er wird sich diesmal noch eher auf kleine Kartonschächtelchen mit den Lesegeräten darin beziehen, denn die Bücher selbst, jeweils gerade mal eine kleine elektronische Datei, in ein paar Sekunden aus dem Netz geladen, benötigen keine Verpackung, sondern nur ein Preisschild – zum Beispiel für einen Weihnachtsgutschein.

Aber das Preisschild wird verwirrend sein und vielen aus der Branche erhebliches Kopfzerbrechen bereiten. Und das hat erst einmal gar nichts mit den festen Buchpreisen zu tun, sondern mit der neuen digitalen Welt.

Weiterlesen

Packed room for debating the global ranking of publishing at Frankfurt

The first debate of industry leaders, based on the Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry, found an audience of over 150 publishing professionals at the first day of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2010.

Debate on the Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2010

Debate on the Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2010

Co-organized by Livres Hebdo, buchreport, Publishers Weekly and The Bookseller, and kicked off with some key findings of the Global Ranking that we research every year since 2007, top executives of five major actors in this field discussed where in their view publishing is heading for.

With Jesús Badenes, Managing director books of Planeta, Peter Field, CEO Penguin, UK, Carolyn Reidy, President and CEO of Simon & Schuster and Pascal Zimmer, Managing director, Libri, Germany, the stage was well set for a broad panorama.

Together, these speakers could cover many of the major markets of this industry at first hand experience, notably Germany France, Italy, Spain, Latin America, the UK and the USA – representing together well over two thirds of the global turnover of publishing. The focus was put on the impact of the difficult economic environment, the perspctives of digital and how roles of publishers, retail and agents are confronting change.

There was a quite surprising consensus on a cautious optimistic outlook for the economic side of the business, based on the hope that the coming high season around christmas may see a recovery after two mostly strenuous years.

E-Books are considered by now as just an integral part of the book business – or ‚just one more edition of a work, according to Peter Field, yet in its early stages, where it is still open to understand where the digital replaces, or cannibalizes, the printed, at lower retail prices, thus c hanging the economics quite a bit (Carolyn Reidy).

Everybody underlined efforts necessary to stabilize this new market segment (e.g. Teresa Camisi, describing the huge differences betwee stable French, and a turbulent Italian market where the prize of a book released on Monday may have already changed by the following Firday), which was also set apart from the turbulences as seen in the music industry, because books are just different from other forms of content. (Jesús Badenes)

Everybody was fond of the so called ‚agency model‘, with the publisher setting the retail price, and not the retailer. And while the explosion of available titles through publishing on demand, or self publishing, not only in the USA, but in Europe just as well is seen as one key driver of change in this industry (Pascal Zimmer), there is still a solid role for publishers with their knowhow on bringing authors to their audiences.

The complete ranking here (1.2 MB)

The presentation with key findings of the ranking is for download here.

Livres Hebdo here and here

buchreport here

The Bookseller here

Publishing Perspectives here

Xinhua here

Deutscher Buchpreis: Congrats to Jung und Jung Verlag and winning author Melinda Nadj Abonji (and a quick foot note)!

With Melinda Nadj Abonji winning the Deutscher Buchpreis very unexpectedly (and Jung und Jung Verlag proving in a most stunning way that a very small publisher can land a very big hit in German language lands indeed!) I am, first of all, in line for all the best wishes! What an accomplishment!

This said – and in an earlier bet on this blog, based on Amazon.de market data, wrongly  predicting a head on head race between Autrian Doron Rabinovici and German Bachmann Prize winner Peter Wawerzinek, I must add that I am of course very pleased with the final result.

This just adds evidence that book landscapes are much more diverse and open to new voices, and new publishers, small and big, than many would suspect. Initiative, good knowledge of literature AND the trade pay off, and it is just not true that successful literature in Europe is more or less always much of the same. NO.

So we will very closely map incoming data about what this surprise evening will set off – and report here as well as through the channels of professional publishing media.

Vorauswertung zum Deutschen Buchpreis 2010: Kopf an Kopf zwischen Wawerzinek und Rabinovici

Ginge es nach der Gunst von Lesern und (online) Buchkäufern, dann müsste die Entscheidung zum Deutschen Buchpreis heute Abend in einem Kopf an Kopf Rennen zwischen Peter Wawerzinek(„Rabenliebe“, Galiani) und DoronRabinovici(„Andernorts“, Suhrkamp) fallen.
Dies zeigt eine Auswertung, basierend auf Daten von Amazon.de von der Veröffentlichung der LonglistEnde August bis gestern, Sonntag 3. Oktober 2010 zur Entwicklung des Verkaufsranges wie auch der Bewertungen und Rezensionen von Lesern.
Der diesjährige Bachmann-Preisträger Wawerzinekging als klarer Favorit in die Vorrunde zu diesem medial wie auch am deutschen Buchmarkt präsentesten Preis.
Rabinovicikonnte allerdings in den letzten beiden Wochen unübersehbar an Publikums-wie Medienwahrnehmung zulegen.
Zu den Einzelheiten siehe unten die Datenauswertungen von Rüdiger Wischenbart Content andConsulting.

The Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry 2010: Join us at the Frankfurt Book Fair for a debate with industry leaders on facts, trends and outlooks

The Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry 2010:
Facts, Trends, Outlook.
Industry leaders discuss the business of publishing today
.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010, 14:30 – 16:00
Frankfurt Book Fair, hall 4.2, Room Dimension
Organiser: Livres Hebdo with buchreport, Publishers Weekly and The Bookseller.

What is the state of the publishing industry? What are the powerhouses, what the strategies and the perspectives for winning the game of change? How is the complex relationship between publishers and retail evolving in a landscape of changing roles?
Based on the empirical evidence as presented by the Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry for the fourth year in a row, top representatives of leading global trade publishing and retail groups discuss where the business is going.
Two years into the financial crisis as well as into the take off of e-Books, the consolidation and the globalization of the business, as well as the challenges and opportunities from digital innovation are on top of everyone’s agenda.
But what does this mean, really?
Initiated in 2007 by the French book trade magazine Livres Hebdo, and co-published by buchreport (Germany), Publishers Weekly (US), and The Bookseller (UK), the Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry is updated annually and has been researched by Rüdiger Wischenbart Content and Consulting.
In cooperation with the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Speakers:
Jesús Badenes, Managing director books, Planeta
Peter Field, CEO Penguin, UK
Carolyn Reidy, President and CEO, Simon & Schuster
Pascal Zimmer, Managing director, Libri, Germany

Moderated by Fabrice Piault and Rüdiger Wischenbart

The beat – and the business – of news media in the digital era ahead.

The Future Face of Media: Business Models for the Digital Era.

Frankfurt, May 18, 2010.

It was great fun and highly inspiring to moderate two panels with top media leaders on the “Future of news and news publishing” in Frankfurt organized by Mark Schiffhauer for the Maleki Group.

Rona Fairhead, Financial Times, Andrew Langhoff, Wall Street Journal Europe, Arthur O. Sulzberger, The New York Times.

Rona Fairhead, Financial Times, Andrew Langhoff, Wall Street Journal Europe , Arthur O. Sulzberger, The New York Times.

The prestigious group of speakers at the panels included the publishers of many of the top newspaper and agency brands globally and in Germany, notably Rona Fairhead of the Financial Times, Andrew Langhoff of the Wall Street Journal Europe, Arthur Sulzberger of The New York Times, Laurent Joffrin of Libération, Chris Ahern, of Thomson Reuters, Katharina Borchert of Spiegel Online, Christoph Keese of Axel Springer, Malte von Trotta of dpa, Google’s Kay Oberbeck, Hessische radio news editor Katja Marx, and old Perlentaucher chum Thierry Chervel (with Robin Meyer Lucht as my co-host).

What we learned was perhaps not the big surprises, but a first class survey of firsthand accounts of where several of the very top global media brands are set to go from this point – and that we most likely are at the crossroads, really.

There is not the one true model for the digital era ahead, was the gospel of NYTimes’ Sulzberger. But media (aka newspapers) need to be experimental, engage with readers, develop – and keep – their brand promise (“If we lose it, we are lost” – Langhoff of WSJEurope). “Information wants to be expensive”, according to Fairhead, FT, so introducing metering models and building pay walls is the way to go for everybody, at least at the top end of those media brands. And sure, everybody on the panel was excited about the closed system proposed by Apple’s iPad, which allows to retain exclusive control over a media’s brand, content and payments. This sweet promise appears to have triggered instant decisions to investing significant money for the development of dedicated services and formats for the new platform (e.g. at Axel Springer).

Really stunning was the overall optimistic outlook of almost everybody on the stage. The “religious wars” have been declared to be over (Langhoff). Reuters has hired 200 journalists as of last year (Ahearn) to develop high quality, notably for exclusive new interactive services for a post TV era elite, to be branded “Reuters Insider”.

“Citizen journalism” was remembered coolly as yesterday’s challenge. Solid professional quality journalism was declared to be the frontier of the future.

It was much harder though to find clear statements on the requirements for this good journalism to take off. So far, at least in Germany, “agenda setting” from the “crowd” – or twitter, blogs, anonymous voices from out there – are considered as a rare exception to the rule, while the main brands still rule – said at least the voices from the main brands. However, we desperately need a debate on the quality of journalism today and tomorrow (said Borchert of Spiegel Online).

While everybody seemed to nod at such good intentions, it was less obvious who would spend new money on the new journalism’s digital rise, aside from the recently formed 800 pound gorilla of Thomson Reuters (with its 12,997 million $ of revenue at an operating profit of 1,575 $ – this is really big global media!).

And your moderator – me – was criticized, a bit, by labeling some of the less innovative, less aggressive established media companies’ attitude to be “aristocratic” when they expected that the new entrants should politely knock at their doors (von Trotta, dpa, commenting on Google’s attitude).

Of course, bloggers and twitterers from the audience objected to the big media brand’s optimism, not only by pointing to poor salaries paid for most of today’s online journalism. They also deplored the more and more closed walls of those behemoths represented at the panel.

Conclusions:

NYTimes Sulzberger, the natural born leader of the panels’ pack, and Borchert of Spiegel Online, Germany’s youthful, bright and dangerously smiling new front runner in the digital rat race, both insisted that the future may be wide open for everybody who is prepared to move their bottoms vigorously, ready to learn, play pathfinder, take risk – and start all over again every other day.

But disregarding all the optimism which was displayed by the leaders, one other thing was made clear as well: The land ahead ain’t no level playing field. It won’t be offering the same rewards to all, to the many, be they big, medium or small. Instead, there will be winners – and losers – indeed.

Past the religious wars of who’s right – in the trenches of the past five years or so – a hardly original split seems to lay ahead, and the current economic crises will certainly highlight the differences ever more radically:

The landscape ahead – seen from some kind of ‘Moses angle’, knowing that there is a promised digital land out there, yet not knowing exactly who will be allowed to settle in this land, and who is to go away before, in the painful process of finding this land – will be not only highly fragmented, but cascaded.

The boldest of the top media brands go for it in full force, massively investing money and gathering talent now – yet mostly organizational talent, and less often additional talented journalists. They combine muscle now with propositions and guts, so it is only reasonable to expect that some of them will make it, and even make it well.

On the other hand, the crowd out there is nothing less than opaque, or homogenous, in a solitarian “us vs. them” scheme. The crowd includes new entrants and new outcasts, new cowboys and new Indians. And of course, many within the big media fortresses are, at the same time, part of the crowd, as they connect and interact on all available channels, they facebook and twitter and blog and link.

But only a few from the crowds “out there” will be able to end up with a bottom line written in black ink, from providing profitable services, or by leveraging on their digital exposure with other chargeable services, directly or indirectly, from their writing and taping and aggregating and editing. Some will positively do so as niche players in the crowd, yet most will not.

The middle ground, or the majority of actors who used to form the core of “diversity” in the classical media, the local and regional newspapers and radio stations, were only marginally represented in the room and, if so, critically addressed in their desperate lobbying for life saving government regulation, as it is currently proposed in Germany or in France (as ‘Leistungsschutzrecht’, or ‘publisher’s rights’). Their actions will most likely produce some results, but perhaps this is more about buying time, than entering a new safe haven for the long term future.

Personally, I was most comforted – which I had not expected – by realizing that good journalism, broad and in depth coverage, nuances and diversity of angles and opinions seem to have many more realistic perspectives than one would assume from listening to most similar debates over the past few years.

But for those young aspirants who plan to take up such journalism as their profession and career, this is going to be a tough choice. The news and information business will be probably more competitive than ever. Competition will occur between all layers and factions, anywhere, anytime, anyhow, local and global, bringing about a profession that will be unforgiving for most.

At least for most of Europe, such strains will mean a deep change of a professional culture which used to be traditionally based more on a vocation and shared values, than on a struggle for survival. But it will have “manna” on offer for some – the most talented, the most aggressive, or the luckiest.

And a similar pattern may be true for the readers: Top quality journalism will continue to be on offer – at a price. All kinds of information as well as opinion will be available freely as well. But fine, yet clear distinctions will be prevalent, much more than ever before, in what will be accessible by whom, how quickly, under what rules, and at what cost.

For videos of the conference see at Carta;

for Twitter summaries see here and here;

for a German summary in Perlentaucher see here:

and for the complete program see here.

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