Q&A Michael Krüger


bad books—i.e. those books booksellers need to sell to be able to also order the good ones”


Digital readers love


Magic Mike


Michael Krüger has published 16 Nobel laureates in his 45-year career, and today becomes the ninth winner of the LBF Lifetime Achievement Award. He talks to Tom Tivnan about the pace of change in the industry—and how he hates book fairs


What has London Book Fair meant for your career? Are there any memorable deals or anecdotes of past LBFs? I am not so much a lover of book fairs because I am a passionate reader. But of course I love book fairs when they are giving me a prize.


You actually worked as a bookseller in London early in your career. Did that help or influence your subsequent career in publishing? A lot! I came from a very provincial Berlin at the beginning of the Sixties, and London and the British publishing scene opened my eyes. Hamish Hamilton, Tom Maschler, George Weidenfeld and Marion Boyars meant the “big world” for me. After coming back from London I only wanted to work in publishing.


thebookseller.com


Hanser is obviously a very literary publisher. How do you balance the literary with the commercial side of the business? Or is your success simply about publishing what you are passionate about? I don’t like bad books! So the only way to survive as a publisher was to transform good books into commercial successes.


When you look back at your career what do you regard as your highlights, and what are you most proud of? I see me sitting in the National Teatre of Stockholm [at Nobel Prize ceremonies], looking at our author in tails or a beautiful dress. I always found that they look better than the other winners. And I was especially proud that four of them were poets!


Are you optimistic about the future of publishing and bookselling in Germany? Half and half . . . I was never actually very optimistic about the future of publishing and bookselling, and therefore I am deeply surprised that that world still exists, and also that I am still a part of it. If there are no independent booksellers left in Germany, I will open up a bookshop myself.


How has digital grown for your business in the past year or so? How do you see it growing in Germany in the next five years? Will it hit the levels we are seeing in the US and UK? Te acceleration of change makes me speechless, and that means prophecy is forbidden. But the number of people who like to read literature digitally will grow, from the present 4% [in Germany] to at least 10%. Unfortunately, digital readers love bad books—i.e. those books booksellers need to sell to be able to also order the good ones. My dream of a digital library


would be 40% poetry (from Milton to Heaney); 40% novels (only the good ones); 19% literary criticism


and philosophy; 1% self-help books: how to repair a bicycle, how to make a salad, that sort of thing. All the other books should be issued only on paper, even if the International Forestry Cooperation is protesting.


You are leaving Hanser at the end of the year. What are the main challenges facing your successor Jo Lendle when he takes over? Tere are three challenges: a) to decipher my handwriting; b) to learn the psychology of the authors at Hanser; c) to find the right tails to go to Stockholm for the Nobel ceremony.


Michael Krüger was born in Berlin in 1943. After leaving school, he apprenticed as a publisher at Herbig Verlag (now an imprint of LangenMüller), before working as a bookseller in London from 1962–65. He joined Munich-based Carl Hanser Verlag in 1968 as an editor, was made editorial director in 1986 and has been its c.e.o. since 1995. In his career Krüger has published 16 Nobel laureates, of which he personally edited eight, including Seamus Heaney, Czeslaw Milosz and Herta Müller. He will retire at the end of 2013, and will be succeeded by former DuMont Verlag m.d. Jo Lendle. An author himself, Krüger has had


over 30 books of poetry, essays and fiction published since 1976. His writing awards include the 2010 Joseph Breitbach Prize, the 2004 Literary Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and the 1996 Prix Médicis Etranger.


Krüger will be presented with the LBF Lifetime Achievement today at 12.30 p.m. at the Earls Court Conference Centre Room 1.


16 APRIL 2013 | THE BOOKSELLER DAILY AT LBF 9


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