Antje Kunstmann Publishing House

Antje Kunstmann

30 years ago Antje Kunstmann founded the Weismann/Frauenbuchverlag publishing house with Peter Weismann in Munich, which became the Verlag Antje Kunstmann publishing house in 1990. With sales of 4 million a year and 10 full-time employees, it is also one of Germany's commercially successful independent publishers.

The Verlag Antje Kunstmann is no longer a typical women's publishing house. The publishing programme has its own special selection of German and international novels and prose, non-fiction works from the fields of sociology, politics and ecology, sophisticated humour in the manner of the New Frankfurt School and contemporary light fiction for a wide public. It is the mixed programme of a general interest publishing house, but with the very personal and unmistakable Kunstmann touch. 260 titles and 180 authors can be found on the back list. 'BuchMarkt' magazine crowned Antje Kunstmann 'female publisher of the year' in 2006. When asked about her special publishing strategy. Antje Kunstmann replies: "I wouldn't call it a strategy, perhaps more of an attitude. As Kurt Wolff put it so beautifully: the publisher's task is to shape public taste, not run after it slavishly."

Satire ensures sales

Greser & Lenz

German authors with a strong background ensure reliable sales. Axel Hacke is one such example: for the past 16 years, his weekly column for the weekend magazine of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" has been published by Kunstmann in book form. In this case, the public is already 'pre-shaped', which also applies in the case of the cartoonists Greser&Lenz, who give proof of their wide popularity in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" and "Stern". Hacke's columns can also be seen by Germany's TV viewers on channel 1 of the ARD and sales of each of the books containing the collected columns now run into the six digits.

This eases the financial situation and makes it possible to cross-subsidize this or that unknown author, create reserves and bridge short lean periods. Humorous literature is an important segment of the programme: you can marvel at and enjoy examples of ex-Federal President Lübke's linguistic gaffes on CD, or Funny van Dannen's satirical poems "News from God" or Bernstein's Superfusseldüse (Super Fluff Nozzle) about the transformation of Germanic world knowledge of a humorous type. The sophisticated humour of the New Frankfurt School is also represented by Robert Gernhard, F.K. Waechter and Chlodwig Poth with various works, and the belligerent satirist Wiglaf Droste with CDs and books

An international network over the years

Véronique Ovalde

International literature plays a big role at the Kunstmann publishing house, mainly in the form of translations from French and English. The publisher herself also shapes the international programme and search for authors: "In the beginning, our orientation is towards the languages we can read and judge ourselves. Then a network of editors and publishers who work in a similar manner develops over the years. So we get recommendations and read. If we hear a new accent, we take our cue from the author's style and view of the world and society." After a number of ambitious works, the Canadian authoress Barbara Gowdy, one of Kunstmann's regular authors, landed one of those surprise successes in 1998, with her novel "The White Bone", that even the cleverest publishing budgets cannot forecast. Books such as Véronique Olmi's novel By the Sea about a young French woman from the lower classes who kills her two beloved sons, provide renewed evidence of the fact that social provocation via fine literature still works.

An integrated programme

Often, when publishers subdivide their programme into fiction and non-fiction, this is connected with short-term trends in the respective segments. Literature has its tendencies, non-fiction its topical themes. The Antje Kunstmann publishing house has a somewhat different structure: the problems touched upon in ecopolitician Hermann Scheer's objective work on green energy policy, Noam Chomsky's political work on "failed states" - one of the year's most important non-fiction works - and Barbara Ehrenreich's investigative study on the devaluation of work are mirrored in Barbara Gowdy's elephant novel, Véronique Olmi's novel about the mother from the suburbs or Francois Emmanuel's narrative about the work psychologist who suddenly finds himself confronted with the thinking of Nazi holocaust policy. The global dimensions of the integrated perspective of the Antje Kunstmann publishing house reach as far as the Arctic, where Véronique Ovaldé describes the fate of an Inuit woman under the sway of a poison-gas catastrophe. The publisher's strategy has proved its worth over the years, with its own editorial office and ongoing collaboration with tried-and-proven translators, and intends to keep on producing about 20 titles a year of the usual Kunstmann quality.

Literature Noam Chomsky: Der gescheiterte Staat. Aus dem Englischen Kollektiv Druckreif-Gockel/Jendricke/Wollermann. 2006, 399 S. Véronique Ovaldé: Alles glitzert. Roman. Aus dem Frz. C Kallscheuer. 2006, 191 S. Barbara Ehrenreich: qualifiziert & arbeitslos. Eine Irrfahrt durch die Bewerbungsindustrie. Aus dem Englischen Kollektiv Druckreif-Gockel/Schuhmacher. 2006, 255 S. Francois Emmanuel: Der Wert des Menschen. Roman. Aus dem Frz. L. Federmair. 2006, 93 S. F. W. Bernstein: Die Superfusseldüse. 19 Dramen in unordentlichem Zustand. 2006, 200 S. Grese&Lenz: Deutschland im Glück. Cartoons. 2006, 285 Seiten Hermann Scheer: Energieautonomie. Eine neue Politik für erneuerbare Energien. 2005, 316 S. Veronique Olmi: Meeresrand. Roman. Aus dem Frz. von R. Nentwig. 2002, 118 S. Lothar Baier: Was wird Literatur? 4 Essays. 2001, 192 S.