Sixth NLPVF International Non-Fiction Conference, 2006 Publishing Against the Grain Friday morning: Commercial pressure: anathema to good publishing or essential to it? Maarten Valken – Welcome to the Rode Hoed, as this building is called, the red hat. It started out as a hatter’s shop. In the seventeenth century it became a Remonstrant church, although services were officially forbidden at that time, so it became a clandestine church. It remained a Remonstrant church until 1957, the oldest and biggest one in The Netherlands, and since 1990 it has become a debating centre. This conference is already the sixth one since we started nine years ago. We were and still are able to organise them thanks to the financial help of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These conferences have become a unique place to meet, to have longer contacts, especially for publishers who have less and less time to talk to each other personally, but also between publishers and translators, and of course for the Dutch authors to get in touch with both of them. The last conferences we started to send around a survey. It was first meant as a source of ideas, but it also turned out to be a very interesting document for the discussions, and we will probably use them later. In the other room as you might have seen there are Dutch books by the authors who are here: Minka Nijhuis who is sitting here, Marjon van Royen, and Jutta Chorus who is joining us later, she will talk tomorrow. These books are not yet translated, although Minka Nijhuis’ book has been sold to Germany and will be published later this year, I think… Minka Nijhuis – September. Maarten Valken – And was also sold to Spain. Minka Nijhuis – Yes, it is. Maarten Valken – Apart from the three authors we invited publishers, foreign and Dutch, literary agents, translators from Dutch to the several languages of the countries the publishers are coming from. Unfortunately, the Polish and the French translators couldn’t come, and also Suzanne Biadene from Marsilio wasn’t able to make it. But we have a special guest from China, the author Xinran, who was kind enough to accept our invitation. Apart from these participants we also invited some Dutch literary agents and publishers who will follow the programme of the sessions. We’ll have three sessions, this morning, this afternoon and tomorrow morning. At today’s sessions there will be four and at tomorrow’s three speakers, who will give a short speech, about an hour altogether, after which we’ll have a discussion for an hour or so. I will introduce the people from the Foundation so if you have any problems or questions you can ask them. First of all Henk Pröpper, our director, and then there are four people you have already seen yesterday: Jaja Holisova, who was indispensable for organising this conference; Barbara den Ouden, who is working at our Translators SIXTH NLPVF INTERNATIONAL NON-FICTION CONFERENCE, 2006 House and is responsible at the Foundation for the translators; Mireille Berman, who is a former editor of De Bezige Bij and recently joined us for the literary events; and then there’s John Müller who’s not officially part of the organisation but a very valuable adviser and provider of ideas, and who helped form the programme from the beginning to its final shape. Another colleague, Maria Vlaar, will join us later today. Now I would like to give the word to Maarten Asscher who is our moderator for the conference. He’s a former publisher of Meulenhoff and now director of by far the best bookshop of Amsterdam, Athenaeum, which is only a few steps away from your hotel. Maarten Asscher – Thank you very much, Maarten. And welcome to all of you from my part as well. The sixth non-fiction conference – I haven’t participated in all of them, I think I was present at three or four – and I hope to relive some of those memories in the form of a very informal gathering that we will be having here today and tomorrow. The word conference to my mind doesn’t describe properly what we intend to do here in this room. It is more I would say a conversation, a professional conversation about how our professional lives work and how they connect with a view to the books that we are writing or selling or agenting or publishing first of all reading perhaps, and translating, which requires reading first. Although I knew a translator whose name I will not mention, who is not present in this room, who always started translations right away without reading the book first and I always thought this was a very dangerous procedure, but he has translated some forty or fifty books in that manner so apparently it is possible. We have an interesting combination here in this room of all the players in the book business: agents, translators, authors, booksellers, editors, people from, well, the various dimensions of the non-fiction book culture. In the discussions I had by way of preparation for this conference with John Müller and with Maarten Valken I was reminded more than once of a quote from Erwin Glikes, the former publisher, he died six or eight years ago if I’m correct. He was publisher of Basic Books, where he started his publishing career with Arthur Rosenthal who founded that company, then he went on to work briefly for Simon & Schuster in America and then founded The Free Press, one of I would say the best non-fiction publishers in America over the past twenty years. And he said a promising book is a movement in some way, a movement that you want people to join. And I think this is an interesting thought that, at least for me, provides a backdrop for the way we might be talking about our different roles in the world of non-fiction book culture. This is specifically true for what we have termed critical non-fiction because critical non- fiction, whatever your definition of it, intends to change something, to introduce new approaches to exciting subjects or to introduce altogether new subjects and critical non-fiction could be described as a sort of small movement, the movement of one author who enthuses an agent, and the agent enthuses an editor, and the editor has to convince a sales manager and then a translator comes into the picture who also invests his or her enthusiasm, and then the sales reps have to join the movement etc. and in the end the reader has to be convinced. This is in a way a chain of enthusiasm that you could well describe in a metaphorical way as a movement, and perhaps not only in a metaphorical way. There are people who say that non-fiction publishing is by definition a form of activism, that you have to believe in the books that you publish, not just because they will be a success, but because they are important and they can change the world and you’re not a publisher just to earn money for your shareholders but to make the world a better one. So in a way this movement could – even by those who believe in this more idealistic approach to publishing – be taken in a very literal NLPVF • For information purposes only • All rights reserved 2 SIXTH NLPVF INTERNATIONAL NON-FICTION CONFERENCE, 2006 way, with of course the problematic consequence that when you publish 250 titles a year there is absolutely no way you can agree with all those stances taken in all those individual books. In general you might say there are two types of publishing, if you will allow me an enormous simplification. One type of publishing looks towards the market and asks what does the market want and we will supply this, and we will look for the best authors to fill the holes in the market. The other type of publishing says here are the best authors, we have discovered them, with the help of authors or translators or by reading important magazines, and now we will approach the market on behalf of this important work and we will try to convince the whole world that this book is worthwhile. This two-sided reality of publishing culture I think also holds true for agents and it holds true even for translators and it certainly holds true for booksellers. And this boils down to the question of how in our time can we make the market work for what we consider as important critical non-fiction, and what cases can we exchange, what experiences can we exchange, what ideas can we exchange to help us in perfecting this mechanism, this orchestrating of movements that are books, the books we work on. There are no ready answers, this conference or rather conversation is not intended to supply us with answers that solve all our problems, that would be dreadful, and I must say I have no programme or formula myself as your moderator, my only role will be to be as helpful as possible in your discussions and I would not like to over-structure those conversations. I will be as mild as possible and only in extreme circumstances, where people speak for twenty-six minutes instead of ten, I will be just and severe. I do want to make sure that all the different players in our field have a proper chance to express themselves and to participate as fully as possible in our conversation, and I think there is a special question here with regard to language.