Press
Interview with Nora Mercurio
1. What have you been busy with lately?
I just finished reading the new manuscript of one of our controversially discussed non-fiction authors, and I had some very intense and interesting discussions about it with him and his editor these days. Now I am preparing the first submission emails about it to a small group of international publishers, which is always the best part of our work, as it is the most creative one.
But my overall occupation these days and months required a very different kind of creativity and skill, since it was mainly: organization, modernization, administration and digitalization. The publishing house is moving into another building this summer and the move triggered a fair amount of new technical implementations and workflow changes. We are currently digitalizing and tagging our file archives, including the over 300 folders with correspondence from my department and, most importantly, more than 1.000 folders with contracts, which are the real treasure of the publishing house, the ground for everything we do.
This digitalization project is joined by the launch of a new homepage, our forthcoming joining IPR (the instant permissions platform), and lastly the restructuring of my team, because two very estimated and longterm colleagues are leaving us soon for retirement. To sum it up: It’s a particularly challenging and contemporarily rewarding moment, with the possibility to re-think the way we work.
2. Can you tell us a little about your work? How many rights sales do you roughly oversee in a year, which countries is Suhrkamp most active with and how about your cooperation with the Chinese market so far?
There is a particularity to Suhrkamp’s Rights Department, as we’re responsible for various tasks which are handled in most other houses of our size in different departments: Intellectual property, contracts, and subsidiary rights. This means that I’m overseeing all the contracts we sign, both when commissioning, acquiring, and also when selling. The acquisitions cover around 650 contracts per year. On the selling side we’re signing around 400-450 new contracts for translation rights, around 2.000 non-exclusive permissions, hundreds of radio readings, approximately 50 audiobook deals, roughly 10-20 film deals, and many more. What we don’t cover are stage rights, and public readings, since there is a specialized licensing team for those in our theatre imprint.
As to the markets, works of our authors have been translated in over 60 languages, but we’re working with publishers across approx. 25 languages on a daily basis.
Our very good relationship with China has been constantly growing since 1992. On the sales side we have 400 license contracts with approximately 40 Chinese houses concerning the canon of German literature and Critical Theory. On the acquisitions side, the numbers don’t match these yet, we have published the works from approx.. 10 Chinese thinkers and writers in the past. But I am delighted to report that the work Tianxia from Zhao Tingyang will be the translation from the Chinese in our renowned humanities list suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft!
3. Cross-media and trans-media publishing and projects have always been a core topic of StoryDrive. Could you tell us some more about the importance of film and tv rights, as well as theater productions for Suhrkamp and your view on cross-media projects?
If you talk to agents and rights people in the international publishing scene it is easy to get the idea that film rights are at the core of what we are all concerned with, but looking at it more closely this is not true. The successfully negotiated film deal, which leads from the option to a produced and broadcasted film or movie is still the exception. And even more so when compared to the numbers of successfully closed deals cited above! The film is foremost important for the author concerning the spreading of her or his name, but overall it doesn’t have the same impact on the publishing house as other exploitations. Obviously, there are exceptions -- the most notable of the last decades probably the Harry Potter saga --, but I’m talking about film rights in highbrow literature, which is what we mainly do. Still, I’m watching the developments in the film rights dealing very closely, and we’re taking an active part in them.
Differently the situation for theatre, which is immensely important for us and our authors, many of which are playwrights. The theatre world is thriving, and Suhrkamp a very important player both in the German language as on foreign stages (just think of Bertolt Brecht).
Cross-media projects are thrilling, they keep the mind young, and sometimes they are mind-blowing. There is much to learn in this field, which contemporarily gives me a huge headache, since there are too little frameworks yet for the compensation of authors. This leads to a constant fight for a fair remuneration for the one who is creating the main content. But it’s also fun. Just yesterday we were discussing whether a chatbot working with one of our authors’ texts in an art exhibition would be considered, in terms of subsidiary rights, more a registering device or a live performance…
4. Do you have any titles or authors whose rights haven’t been sold to China yet that you would specifically like to recommend to local readers and publishers?
As I said, we have a wonderful relationship with the Chinese publishers, but of course there are always some works and authors not yet covered.
In this very moment I’d recommend to have a close look at Uffa Jensen’s global history of psychoanalysis HOW THE COUCH CAME TO CALCUTTA, at Andreas Michalsen’s doctor’s guide to the science of natural medicine THE NATURE CURE, at Nora Bossong’s forthcoming literary novel PROTECTION ZONE, and at Benjamin Labatut’s wonderful literary nonfiction WHEN WE STOPPED TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD, the first Chilean author we represent worldwide.
5. Suhrkamp is one of the most famous publishing houses in Germany. What is your outlook for the future of the German book market? What are the most important challenges and do you think the way we tell and sell stories in the future will change?
Readerships may still decline, but I am absolutely certain that the fundamental cultural practise of reading will not disappear soon, at least not over the next few generations. With a slightly smaller readership quality will again gain another importance, be it the quality of the content or of the book production. I think that people who will just quickly devour a story will probably turn to listening or viewing, instead of the more energy consuming reading, but the bigger part of the readers will stay with the book, for the specific experience only reading offers.
6. What do you expect from your participation in StoryDrive in Beijing?
I am absolutely looking forward to it, and are so curious! I’ve never been to China so far and can’t wait to see with my own eyes and get my own ideas. Traveling is the key to understanding other cultures, and understanding them is the key to trading with them. Having this said, I’m looking forward to meeting many publishers, translators, agents, book professionals and all other kinds of people involved in culture and to learn as much as possible about China and its Asian neighbors. StoryDrive will be the perfect occasion to meet many people and to gather information about China and its media and publishing scene in a condensed timeframe.
Nora Mercurio will be speaking at the StoryDrive conference in Beijing (28 May - 1 June 2019).