IN DEPTH
What publishing is really about is making contacts and there are a lot of people I still haven’t met. I hope this award will open some more doors for us
Interview Dorotea Bromberg
not just for me personally but for what my father achieved [he died in 1993]. I think it recognises what we have been doing, that we have been privileged to publish literary authors without going too commercial. But I’m mostly thinking about the future, not the past. What publishing is really about is making contacts and there are a lot of people I still haven’t met. I hope this award will open some more doors for us.”
Nobel house If there is a shorthand for Brombergs’ place in its home market for British readers, it is the Faber of Sweden: a venerable house which stands toe-to-toe with (and oſten surpasses) the big boys in book awards. It has about a 60/40 ratio of translated titles to home-grown authors, with its foreign writers including Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy, Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Franzen. Its top Swedish star is probably the journalist and novelist Majgull Axelsson. Yet, Bromberg cautions, the literary sector is still a struggle, “even if you have been going for over 40 years”. She explains: “I think it’s like in the UK and other markets: what is selling is crime, self-help and ‘feel-good’ titles. We’ve done OK in the past few years, but not great.” Interestingly, the roaring Swedish audiobook market is not helping as “it is probably even more commercial [than physical book sales]”. But Brombergs has reacted to the changing landscape, launching a successful children’s list and embarking on a ramped-up programme of live events. Bromberg says: “I love doing events, and we’ve done a lot over the years, but not in a systematic way. So we are puting a lot of planning into roadshows, working with
TheBookseller.com
Dorotea Bromberg with author Umberto Eco
[local authorities], figuring out how we can cheaply and efficiently bring our authors to the public.” Lack of speaking Swedish aside, Adam Bromberg was not unskilled for publishing—he had been a translator and academic publisher in Poland, so it was not a completely random decision to go into the trade. He also had “undaunted optimism”, launching the company with a fresh-out-of-universit Dorotea aſter convincing a “very inexperienced bank manager” to give them a loan. Luck was on their side: the first book was a weight non-fiction tome on China which “every house in Sweden turned down twice and even the agent tried to tell us not to acquire”. It became an unexpected hit. That freed some more cash from the inexperienced bank manager, which led to the acquisition of five titles from Isaac Bashevis Singer, who a year later won the Nobel Prize. Bromberg says: “The Nobel, of course, means a lot in Sweden, so the first Singer book, which we thought might sell 3,000 copies if we were lucky, sold 150,000. And the media went mad, trying to figure out who these immigrant Poles who opened a Swedish house were. It really put us on the map.” Brombergs then began publishing the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz, who was unknown in Sweden; two years later he, too, claimed the Nobel. Bromberg says: “It was at first a labour of love; my father thought it was criminal that he wasn’t published in Sweden. And we took on all his world rights which, to be honest, for most poets is a lot of administration for very litle money. But, as you might imagine, rights sales took off aſter he won the prize.” Two Nobels in three years gave the firm a solid base from which it built. Now, a third generation of the family is in the business, with daughter Casia Bromberg the publisher and head of publicit and marketing. Dorotea Bromberg says: “I want the publishing house to be here long aſter I leave. Casia has grown up in the business and has interesting ideas about how to adapt to the market. This makes me believe that the business will stay strong. “You know, when the award was announced, I got a lot of nice messages from people in publishing, which was wonderful. But it was also in the media in Sweden, and I have had so many best wishes from readers. It doesn’t really mater if the public knows who I am, because it is the author who maters. But the fact that people took the time to tell me they care and understand the effort we put into the business means a lot.”
<
Pictured from left are Maria Olofsson, economy and buis- ness strategy; Lena Pallin, editor/foreign rights; Jenny Keller- man Pillay, publisher of children’s books; Casia Bromberg, publisher and PR/marketing; and Dorotea Bromberg, publisher and c.e.o. The Brombergs team was photographed at its office by Ann- Marie Thunell.
37
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44