Home / Charles Nypels / Charles Nypels Foundation / Jan van Eyck Academie / Authoring the city / The tomorrow book / Contact / Links

Applications / Working group / Lectures / Research theme

For the sake of the book. Conflicting interests of book makers

Introduction: My name is Astrid Vorstermans. Since a long time I am working in the book trade, the last ten years as an editor, and since about five years as a publisher. I have been producing books on contemporary art and architecture. In spring last year I have founded my own business, Valiz in Amsterdam, to publish books and organize productions of books and other art projects for other parties.

My other working experience is in the sales side of the book business: I have worked in several book shops, and in the early nineties I was a sales woman for an international distributor of art, photography and architecture books. I drove a little van, stuffed with the cream of books on art, graphic design, photography, architecture and visited specialized bookshops in Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands.

These are troubled times. A religious war looms on the horizon; in Darfur and in countless other places around the globe there is unrest and people are dying in droves. In the Netherlands the atmosphere, both economic and emotional, is below freezing. Recent surveys show that people are happy enough in their own homes, but woe betide them when they step out the door – there is no mutual respect or consideration out there anymore.

Such an observation is obviously a cliché, but here we are, in the Jan van Eyck Academie’s gorgeous building: a group of right-minded, well-intentioned and well-fed people, contemplating the meaning of the book, and the art book in particular. Thank goodness there are books that provide a critical look at the world in text and pictures, or lay bare the complex state of the world, whatever their content. 

In any case, such an atmosphere of crisis compels us to ask a number of fundamental questions about books, about the making of books, about the implications and intentions of books. Questions like:

— What is the necessity of making a book?
— What are you aiming for when making a book?
— Is a book the best means to communicate certain information?
— What is special about art books (or books on visual culture), special     or different as opposed to novels, books of poetry, academic     textbooks?
— Who will be the ideal user of the book? How can you find this ‘ideal’     user?
— As quoted in the invitation to these lectures, Le Monde      Diplomatique stated that the book is doomed to disappear, due to      overproduction. Is this true?

First off: I have faith in the book, and I don’t think other media like the Internet or other new media forms will take its place. I believe in the book as an information carrier, as a means of communication and as an instrument in the public debate or discourse, however much these functions can be fulfilled by other media as well. Most of all, I believe in the book because it is a concrete object – you can touch it, take it with you, collect it and treasure it. People read in bed, on the train, in the park and any place you can think of. Sometimes they smell the paper, relish in the beauty of the typeface, run their fingers over the cover, or dog-ear the pages. I refuse to believe that people will give up these pleasures. I do accept that all of these alternative sources of information and the economic crisis are putting pressure on the book and on the book market, thereby putting pressure on designers. For that matter, anything to do with nuance and reflection is under pressure at the moment, so it is all the more imperative to consider, when producing a book, what its inherent necessity is, and how to put together a book so that it fulfils its role in the best possible way.

I’d like to begin with the end point in the process of making books: the reader, viewer, user of these books – specifically art books. Who buys and reads this huge pile of beautifully made, alluring and uncommon books? Book publishing is one of the least researched areas of business. There’s been research on the creation or marketing of best-sellers, on the buying motivations for particular kinds of novels, but art books have been given short shrift when it comes to market research. Who buys and uses these books, aside from the makers’ own friends and colleagues? I’ll come back to this question later on.

The world of art books is undergoing tremendous change. When I took my first professional steps in the land of books in the late 1970s, there were only about six or seven big art book publishers. Next to that the exhibition catalogue phenomenon was in full development. The Centre Pompidou regularly published thick tomes on magnificent themes with a broad approach, like the series Paris-Moscou, Paris-Berlin, etc., as well as on Vienna around the turn of the century, on the cultural climate during the Surrealist period, and so on. In Germany, blockbuster exhibitions with blockbuster books, like Bilderstreit (in which our earlier speaker Walter Nikkels played an important part) and Westkunst, were extremely popular. Big publishers saw interest shift from monographs on Impressionists toward much more recent art – key figures in the Pop Art movement, for instance. There were books on contemporary developments or on current, lesser-known artists, but these were often thin, pamphlet-like booklets, relegated to an underground status by their very format and print quality. Fans knew which galleries would occasionally produce their own publications and would snap up these booklets as soon as they came out.

This market expanded in a relatively short time. Specialist bookshops were increasingly better at finding what their customers wanted, and in their wake, general, non-specialist bookshops also realized it was a good idea to have not just Monet and Degas on the shelf, but also a few ‘weird’, less well-known art books to give their shops some cachet.

This is probably when specialized remainder book production started to thrive as well: the planned overproduction of popular and not so popular subjects in art and culture, books that were quickly marked down and ended up in big sections of De Slegte discount booksellers or in attractive Walther Koenig Büchermarkte, for example.

Things changed in the 1990s, when the big Cologne publishing house of Taschen, as well as other publishers, began distributing beautifully printed, thick, well-illustrated books in huge press runs for unbelievably low prices all over the world. Two years ago, Mark Lamster, editor at Princeton Architectural Press, wrote a fascinating article in the catalogue of The Best Dutch Book Designs 2001 about this phenomenon, about overproduction, the quality of art books and what it represents. I quote Lamster (1):

‘A book in the Taschen model is as much an object to covet as a work to read. First and foremost it is fat. […] Words are kept to a minimum. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this – in some cases the results can be quite satisfying (and then he mentions such a satisfying example, a book by Ed Ruscha, They Called Her Styrene, of more than 600 pages). These books are not especially challenging. They do not offer much in the way of new ideas. They are, in effect, the fast food of art books.'

What is the effect of these fat picture books? Go to any bookshop and it’s obvious: there are piles of these fat, extrovert, highly affordable objects, and these piles take space away from other books, books with fresh ideas or perhaps more challenging subjects, or books that are less obtrusive. You find the same piles in every bookshop. You can hope that the market itself will eventually correct this, but in these times of cutbacks and simplification, there is no sign of that as yet.

Mark Lamster concludes his argument with this plea:

‘It is our responsibility to think about the book as something more than an object. And in this project the designer – so often a powerless figure -- does in fact have the capacity to make a positive impact.’

This final proposition raises questions.  Is the designer often a powerless figure? How can he make that positive impact? And my most important question is, with whom does the designer collaborate? What is each person’s role in the making of a book, and who is ultimately responsible for defining the ideal chemistry between content and form?

It might be good to describe the different roles in the making of a book.  Defining these roles may also clarify the different responsibilities.

The author or artist: someone has an idea, or has certain questions in his work which he want to elaborate by means of a book. He might develop this himself and produce a book on his own with the designer and printer of his choice. But let us assume that a professional publisher is involved.

The editor and/or publisher: the author contacts someone at a publishing house – it might be an editor; it might be the publisher in charge. Sometimes the difference is not that great. If we have to define the two roles, the editor mainly concentrates on refining the content as precisely as possible and the publisher is, generally speaking, responsible for maintaining the content of his list of titles, policy and finances -– his interest in the book in question can be viewed in terms of these parameters: how does the book fit in the list; how does it does it relate to certain current issues or discussions the publisher aims to highlight through his list; what is the book’s place in the market; how can it be made financially and organizationally feasible? In many small publishing houses the roles of editor and publisher are combined.

An important quality of the publisher or editor is his ‘ability to unite’. Different people with different standpoints and interests have to work together to achieve the same objective, and I think the publisher/editor has an important part to play in this regard. 

The publisher also ensures that he can select specific know-how out of a good network of translators, copy editors and picture editors so that all details of the book receive the proper attention.

The graphic designer: ideally the author and publisher know what look their book should have. They can opt for an editorially oriented designer, someone who, based on his own expertise, plays a significant role in developing the content and distils the form from this, or a more service-oriented designer, who translates the wishes of the author and publishers as well as possible with the means available to him (good page layout, clear typography, a good rhythm of text and pictures throughout the book, etc.).

The client: the publisher and ultimate client are not always the same. For instance, the book might be commissioned by an institute, company, museum or sponsor, and the publisher reports to this sponsor. Luckily, along with institutional and business clients, there are various funds in the Netherlands which subsidize appropriate projects and which, after honouring a subsidy application, wield no further influence on the exact content or design of the book.

The question is, however, how long this situation of subsidizing will continue, and whether the future of good art books of substance does not also depend, to a large extent, on developing new cooperative projects and fostering the enthusiasm and commitment of additional sponsors.

The lithographer and printer: a good printer knows precisely how to fulfil the wishes of the client and designer and can help the project along by contributing new solutions based on his own advanced technical know-how.

The sales machine: a big publishing house has its own network of PR and marketing people, international representatives, and local stockists and distributors. Smaller publishers work with specialized distributors who have their own people to service the international market.

The market: not an active factor in the making of a book, but an important factor in whether a book reaches its audience. The market is an abstract factor, but it comprises a large number of concrete factors: bookshops, libraries, museum bookshops, Internet bookshops, private individuals.

The (private) art book buyer: of course the buyer is not an active factor in the making of a book either, but you would expect the other parties to try to get to know him and bear him indirectly in mind during the production process.

This list entails several assumptions:
— This list does not apply to an artist’s book, a limited-edition work of art, but to a book that is industrially printed in a particular number of copies/print run.
— Exploiting a book commercially is almost impossible; that is to say, there are few art books whose proceeds cover their cost.
— Every book has an audience.
— There are books that emerge from the maker’s inner need and are not aimed at a particular audience.

If the great question of this symposium – ‘what is the future of books?’ – must be addressed, my answer is self-evident, and to this audience, probably even a cliché: make sure you know one another and make sure you know your audience. I think too many ‘beautiful’ books are made to satisfy their makers’ own needs, whether they be the author’s needs, the designer’s virtuosity or the publisher’s hobby. They are sometimes autistic projects, their exact meaning and implications understood by a handful of people, but lacking any of the communicative function of a book. This is also what leads to overproduction, not just by big publishers, but also in the great mass of smaller producers who make books unable to reach beyond their self-referential significance.

Know one another? By this I mean that in a production process everyone must hone his own qualities and, based on the questions inherent in his role, must be able to constantly question the others and keep them on their toes, and vice versa. That means that every maker of a book, be it the author, graphic designer, editor or publisher, must try to understand the other person’s arguments and at the same time remain true to his own, as well as be able to explain how he arrived at his decisions. As far as I’m concerned, professional expertise includes being able to explain arguments specific to your profession in simple terms to another person, even when this person has a different profession and other references. A successful collaboration entails respect for each person’s specific role, but there can be conflict over how the chemistry of everyone’s qualities ultimately results in a good product. A good collaboration allows the individual participants to excel.

It goes without saying that the publisher, who takes certain financial risks, must know his audience and the market. In my view this is not just the responsibility of the publisher – every maker of a book must take an interest in the user. I do not believe that this results in populist, facile books.

This may seem a self-evident way to work, yet there are many prima donnas, particularly in the world of art and architecture, authors as well as artists and graphic designers, who sneer at the arguments of the abstract user, or dismiss this under the label of “noxious commercialism”. I understand that someone derives zest for work and satisfaction mainly by fulfilling his own potential, not the wishes of an unknown third party, the user. I realize that the makers of a book are not always reaching for the same goal (so there might be conflicting interests of book makers). The author or artist wants everyone to see that he is the genius behind the book, the publisher wants to finally cover his costs for once and the printer wants to really try out a new experimental technique on this book. Aside from these caricatural, divergent interests, it is always surprising how many hidden agendas and psychological motivations play a conscious or subconscious role in each production process. Ultimately, however, all the intentions and all the work result in one thing: the book.

I began this speach with the reader or user, and he keeps cropping up. The question is how do you get to know the user? Again, there is no research available, but that doesn’t mean nothing is known. Looking beyond one’s own circle, especially, and exchanging ideas with people, can make it clear why certain books are usable and popular and others are not. Frequent visits to bookshops, including non-specialist bookshops, and talking with the sales people about which books are popular and which languish on the shelves can provide a differentiated picture of the buyer and user. Distributors and reps are also users, of course, and have a fount of information about which books are popular in particular places and why. It takes a lot of looking around, especially abroad, and asking all sorts of people, young, old, students, specialists, interested laymen, what they find appealing and why. In fact you can learn a lot from uninspired and autistic books, too.

Books from other disciplines can also be a source of information. Many specialized textbooks are hugely successful because they contain complex information presented in a clear and understandable structure. What lies behind this success?  What are the bigger publishers doing that is successful, that you can learn from without copying it?

And above all, learn in hindsight, once a book is finished: provide a lot of room for exchange and critique, including outside your own circle.

The designer a powerless figure? On the contrary, he has a great deal of power. He can deny his power and talent, and his efforts will result in insipid products. Or he can put his capabilities to work toward producing exciting, communicative projects. But that power becomes even greater when, instead of interests conflicting in the production process, everyone focuses on a single goal: making the most tailored, most communicative, most appealing book, in which content and design reinforce each other and the result becomes a vital player in the public debate or discourse.

(1)Mark Lamster, ‘More is Less. Memo from an American editor’, De Best Verzorgde Boeken 2001, Berichten van buiten het dorp / The Best Dutch Book Designs 2001, Messages from outside the village, pp. 150-157, Stichting CPNB, Amsterdam, 2002