And Other Stories lets readers help decide what they publish. Publisher Stefan Tobler talks to Readux about what’s coming up in German.
Last summer, I stumbled across the website for And Other Stories, a new UK-based press. I was curious about how the independent publishing landscape in the UK compares to the one in the US, and fate and relentless internet sleuth work led me to And Other Stories’ site.
My interest was piqued by something I had never seen on any other publisher’s website. There, the publishers describe And Other Stories as “a literary publishing house that works on the principle that great new books will be heard about and read thanks to the combined intelligence of a number of people: editors, readers, translators, critics, literary promoters and academics. We hope we can host such collaboration.”
For And Other Stories, “combined intelligence” translates into actual dialogue with anyone who wants to share their opinion about a book. Now that And Other Stories is set to go to press with their first four books this year, founder and publisher Stefan Tobler has put an editorial plan into action that complements his lofty ambitions to run an “open” press.
Last year, he and his small staff organized reading groups to help them sort through the books they’ve considered publishing. The groups are always organized by language and readers generally discuss four to six novels in each session. Last year, the London-based groups focused on Lithuanian, Spanish-language, Portuguese-language, Latin American and German-language literature. They’ve been holding sessions on contemporary Russian literature since early March, and as And Other Stories was about to begin their second German-language literature meetings, I talked to Tobler, himself a translator from Portuguese and German, about his ideas and plans for German books and the future of the press.
So far, the reading groups have developed organically into the friendly casual conversations that Tobler was hoping to cultivate, inspired by his own experiences meeting with a small group in a bookstore while he was living in Dresden. (By the way, it’s called Lesezeichen and Tobler promises it’s a great place.) The groups have attracted mostly readers who are competent in the languages considered, although sample translations of each book are available on the press’ website. At the first meeting for German-language books, readers discussed contemporary novelists Anne Weber, Gabriele Petricek, Susann Pásztor, and Katharina Hacker, the 2006 winner of the German Book Prize.
Shortly after the book discussion, Tobler determined some of And Other Stories’ first publications for 2011, one of which will be Clemens Meyer’s collection of short stories Die Nacht, die Lichter. Katy Derbyshire’s translation, All the Lights, will be available September 1. Meyer, who has received considerable attention since receiving the Leipzig Book Prize for Die Nacht, die Lichter in 2008, has a clear confessional narrative voice that depicts the lives and disillusionments of young former East Germans living in the newly reunited Germany of the 1990s. The historical context could certainly be a hit with English readers and I’m looking forward to seeing how Meyer’s precise style is rendered in English.
True to his belief in listening to other readers’ impressions of a book, Tobler explains how the buzz around Meyer caught his attention. “A lot of people who couldn’t read German but who were involved and were coming to our acquisitions meetings after having read the stories that Katy [Derbyshire] had translated really loved Clemens Meyer. It was pretty unanimous; everyone who read him was a big fan.”
The early 2011 reading groups are aimed at determining more of And Other Stories’ early list. Since Tobler didn’t receive the kind of reader feedback he was anticipating before the new German meetings, he ultimately chose authors for the group to read that he was personally excited about. (Actually, Tobler attributes these choices to his “education in contemporary literature at Lesezeichen.”)
From March 14-April 24, readers will be meeting to talk about Johannes Jansen’s novels Kleines Dickicht (Ritter Verlag) and Heimat. Abgang. Mehr geht nicht (Suhrkamp), Peter Kurzeck’s Übers Eis (Suhrkamp) and Christoph Simon’s Spaziergänge Zbinden (Bilger Verlag). Tobler’s taste seems promising, ranging from Janssen’s short prose pieces about growing up in reunited Germany to Simon’s nostalgic narration of love and loss after the death of the 87-year-old narrator’s wife.
When not busy organizing reading groups and attentively listening to fellow readers’ thoughts and suggestions, Tobler and his staff are gathering subscriptions, And Other Stories’ financial backbone. “Selling in retail trade in Britain, as in America, is very different than in Germany, without the net book price agreement that the German trade has,” he explains. “It’s pretty tough and pretty cutthroat. Large and online retailers force publishers to give big discounts and it’s very hard to not lose money publishing literary fiction through retail. Having subscribers buy directly from us makes publishing these more risky books possible.”
For a new press that’s not only passionate, intelligent, and daring, but also a much-needed addition to the English-language publishing scene, subscribing or contributing (whether by attending a reading session or buying one of these first few books) seems like a worthy, enriching cause.
© Catherine Stupp 2011. All rights reserved.
