Literature

Claude Monet

Since the 1990's German art-book publishing has been booming. Digital lay-out processes, the involvement of museums, galleries, art collections and the art-book publishing companies themselves in various scientific-cum-journalistic projects, as well as new global sales strategies using international distribution channels have enabled the art book to become a reasonably priced medium that is available everywhere. Read on to find out about some of the key players on the German scene.

Right from the start the publishing houses of DuMont, Hatje Cantz and Prestel have been way up there among the great producers of that rare commodity so great in demand – the art book. As international publishers of art books these medium-sized companies have been active in the three main areas of program, production and distribution since about the middle of the 1980's – the focus being on international sales. To varying extents they place emphasis on producing their own classic art books, the acquisition of licences and collaborating with institutes on exhibition catalogues. The expansion of the sales market led to a surge in translation.

It is still mainly the English language that is required for an all-encompassing, sales strategy; depending on the target market and the local distribution network however carefully planned editions can be printed in other languages as well. One of the advantages in this case is the low cost of having a reprint done in another language. Since the 1990's however the cost of image copyrights has skyrocketed due to the monopolisation of the rights trade.

Born global with mass circulation

Art Now

One of the pioneer names in the internationalisation of art-book publishing is Taschen. Back in the early 1990's Benedikt "Born Global" Taschen had a somewhat obvious business idea – art books for anybody interested in art. His plan – editions in large numbers would make for low prices. Taschen achieved these mass-produced editions by printing low-price art books in several languages right from the beginning and offering them directly to the bookshops at special terms. This offer however was only available if the bookseller was prepared to place large orders for the books and display them either in or in front of the shop on pallets. For Taschen this form of marketing was also the moment when art was "democratised". His business idea was a success. Today the Taschen publishing house has a staff of about 150, has set up subsidiaries in six countries and no longer restricts itself to the classic artists of the modern age. Among other things Taschen now produces the catalogue on the complete works of Manet, other ambitious books on the contemporary art scene, as well as exclusive, up-market art books.

A publishing house with tradition

Egon Schiele

Prestel is a publishing house that can look back over a long tradition. Its main emphasis is on working hand-in-hand with museums and has been the market leader in the field of exhibition catalogues since 1990. It underwent the first attempts at an internationalisation back in the 1930's when it published prints of the Old Masters for the international market. Later in 1955 it picked up the trend again when it became the sole publisher of the Dokumenta catalogue and then in 1983 it made a striking attempt to represent new German art abroad. The art book Expressionism. New Art from Germany made artists like Baselitz, Immendorf, Kiefer, Lüpertz and A.R. Penck popular. Prestel raised the number of books it produced in English from 8.3 per cent in 1990 to 32 per cent in 2000. Prestel solved one of the main problems of international book sales by collaborating with teNeues - the calendar and lifestyle publishers – on a joint distribution project for the USA. In the meantime the company has set up subsidiaries in England and the USA.

Sole distributors

On the art market the firm of teNeues is mainly active in the field of non-books (above all in the field of art calendars). teNeues has acquired the global rights to such non-book articles as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe. Since 2000 it has also been promoting its international book program on design, photography, architecture and lifestyle, although the charm of these books seems to emanate quite conspicuously from their rather smooth aesthetics and the technically spectacular. The attraction of an international system of distribution that has its own subsidiaries in the art capitals of the western world has in fact developed from a new special approach to the production of books – the complete production process from the initial idea to the printing is outsourced to external producers. TeNeues then accepts a certain number of the books and markets them internationally as the sole distributor. The books, printed in three to five languages, can be sold in up to 70 countries.

Joint distribution projects all over the world

The advantages of a global distribution system have also been of benefit to the company of Birkhäuser – the publishing house for architecture. It has been able to exploit the structures of the group's mother company - Springer Science+Business Media. When it comes to art books Birkhäuser has also noticed the potential for innovation – by involving seasoned specialist publishing houses (Lars Müller Publishing) in their organisation they have managed to extend their range; their collaboration with universities or on academic projects has triggered a critical discourse on the art-book scene; their cooperation with Princeton Architectural Press on the distribution of its books outside the USA and Great Britain has led to interesting reversals of direction on the international side of the business and in the meantime a joint project with China Architecture and Building Press has been agreed on – the CABP has already purchased 40 licences from Birkhäuser. Now there is even talk of acquiring licences from China.

Quality in demand

China

Gerhard Steidl, once printer for Joseph Beuys, has also turned into a global player. It all started back in the 1990's with his "Photography International" program. Alongside his headquarters and production centre in Göttingen (all production processes in one building, 30 employees) he has also set up an office in London, a global system of distribution and various long-term joint projects, for example, with Karl Lagerfeld /Paris and his Edition 7L. Steidl is an ambitious printer of art-books and much sought after on the international art scene. When it comes to the actual making of the books he is a perfectionist who sees his company as a publishing house for artists. It is also to be assumed that the lucrative global rights to the complete works of Günther Grass make life somewhat easier when it comes to the task of costing highly sophisticated art books that often have a critical political edge.

Specialist publishing houses – Specialising is the best advert

The Cologne bookseller and art-book publisher, Walther König, has geared himself to the international scene right from the start (1968) and now sells two-thirds of his books in the English-speaking world. The publishing side of Walther König's book business places great emphasis on projecting a recognisable, specialist profile which individual artists can identify with. One of Walther König's passions is art books - Fischli/Weiss (edition 65 000) and Gerhard Richter to name but two of his more successful ventures. Editions of art books usually comprise between 1000 and 2000 books, in the autumn of 2006 there will be 10 new books coming out. Autumn 2006 will also be the first time König has produced a book for the Chinese market – Chinese Pop by Thomas Beyerle will appear in German, English and Chinese.

Back in 1974 it was the publishing house of Schirmer/Mosel that was the first European publisher to specialise in the field of auteur photography. The company made its national breakthrough with August Sander (in 2001 a seven-volume complete edition was finished) and Heinrich Zille. Its first international successes were the Moholy-Nagy-Fotos monograph and Fotogramme and in the year 2000 there was a global best-seller – the book of the film Buena Vista Social Club by Wim and Dorothea Wenders that came out in an edition of 70,000 copies. In 1985 Schirmer/Mosel launched a French-speaking program in France and in 1990, under the publisher's imprint of Schirmer Art Books, an English-speaking program consisting of 12 books.

Ever since its founding in 1882 the Wasmuth publishing house in Tübingen has been known for its cooperation and co-editions with France, England, Italy and USA. One of its main focuses is on architecture monographs – the interesting thing here is the company's commitment to European cultures. Over the last few years, depending on which countries were being focussed on at the Frankfurt Book Fair, it has worked on Arab and Korean subjects. When it comes to the international side of the company's business Hong Kong is also being considered at present as a printing location.

The Heidelberger Edition Braus (founded in 1983) at the publishing house of Wachter is also very active on the international scene – not only with a whole range of photographers, but also in international co-productions with publishing houses in all the major cities. Since 2002, in cooperation with Actes Sud/Arles, Apeiron Photos / Athens, Dewi Lewis Publishing / Manchester, Lunwerg Editores / Barcelona and Peliti Associati / Rome, the publishing house has organised the Leica European Publishers Award (EPA). This year has been very exciting due to the publication of the Humanism in China exhibition catalogue – a new edition of the Chinese version with the captions translated into German.

International promotion of young talent

At the publishing house of Hermann Schmidt (since 1945) in Mainz the accent is on typography, graphic design and visual communication. The International Yearbook for Students of Visual Communication is published in English and Bertram Schmidt-Friedrichs is very much involved as the German Liaison Chairman of the Type Directors Club of New York in the world's most renowned typography exhibition – the Type Directors Show. The Bund Freischaffender Foto-/BFF (Association of Free-lance Photo-Designers) that brings out a comprehensive and elaborately designed yearbook containing all the current works of its members (30 per cent for abroad) also goes for the international option when it comes to promoting young talent. The BFF awards the Reinhold Wolf Prize and the BFF Sponsorship Prize which is open to participants from abroad and for which graduates of universities, colleges of applied science or any other state-run academies can enter the work they submitted for their final exams. The BFF Annual Congress 2005 with its guests from China and its special subject "China – Photography, Art and Advertising Today" made it quite clear that there was a new wind blowing on the international art-book scene and from which direction it was coming.

Current titles of selected German art book publishing houses with reference to Martin Zähringer's online article  (Word-File, 34 kb)