Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.04.2015, Qupperneq 10

10
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 4 — 2015
However, as Iceland continues to pub-
lish books at a higher volume every
year, an important question naturally
arises: are Icelanders actually buying
up all these books? When the hustle
and bustle of the Christmas season
fades away, bookstores increasingly
report that they must resort to steep
sales and heavy discounts in order to
rid themselves of their excess inven-
tory. Furthermore, Icelandic state
television recently aired a news re-
port stating that this backlog of un-
purchased books is posing problems
for Iceland’s largest publisher For-
lagið, which sometimes struggles to
find storage space for these leftover
books in its warehouse. In some cases,
these unpurchased books even have
to be destroyed.
It appears the annual Book Flood
is leaving behind large “puddles” of
books that never fully dry up. Is it
time for Icelanders to scale back this
time-honored tradition and seek out
more efficient ways of distributing
books? Faced with these challenges,
Icelandic bookstores and publishing
houses are brainstorming new ways
to market literature to the public,
while still preserving the nation’s
cherished Book Flood tradition.
The annual
book glut?
“I definitely think we could do
some ‘editing’ in the book market
here in Iceland,” says Anna Friðríks-
dóttir, manager of Mál og Menning
bookstore. “I would say that the ex-
cessive amount of books published
is, in a way, reckless. I think part of
the problem is that books are always
being printed in large amounts,” she
says. “Sometimes it’s cheaper to print
in bigger volumes, but it ends up wast-
ing paper because some books natu-
rally don’t sell as well as others.”
Anna recalls one year when the
publishing companies collectively
released almost a hundred new cook-
books, showing just how unpredict-
able and haphazard the Book Flood
business in Iceland can be. “Herd be-
haviour in the book market is a com-
mon thing,” she says. “An idea catches
on and then everyone else follows the
trend until it dies out.”
According to Anna, this follow-
the-leader mentality causes a consid-
erable amount of excess and frustra-
tion for booksellers. “We return the
books that don’t sell to the publish-
ers, and they end up selling them at
discount book markets,” she says.
“It causes some tension between the
bookstores and the publishers when
they end up selling books at these
markets for a ridiculously low price,
lower than they sold them to the
bookstores the previous year.”
Another consequence of Iceland’s
massive amount of publishing is that
great books frequently go unnoticed.
“Every good Icelandic author was
publishing a book a
couple of years ago,
causing some of them
to be overlooked,”
Anna reports. “Some-
one was throwing a
release party one day,
then the next day
someone else was, so
the previous book suddenly became
old news.”
From the bookstores’ standpoint,
it is clear that the annual Book Flood
is not always an ideal marketing strat-
egy, leaving customers to wonder how
this once-a-year book-selling bonan-
za became a custom in the first place.
The publishers’
perspective
“During World War II, there were
strict restrictions on imports in Ice-
land and we didn’t have the currency
to import foreign products,” says
Jóhann Páll Valdimarsson, director of
Forlagið publishing house. “Because
Icelanders couldn’t buy many foreign
goods, this tradition of giving a book
at Christmastime came around.”
Responsible for managing Ice-
land’s largest publishing company,
Jóhann sees that important changes
are steadily taking place that will im-
prove the efficacy of Iceland’s clut-
tered book market. “Until recently,
books were marketed only at Christ-
mas. This is changing a lot, though,”
he reports. “Publishers originally
thought that there was no market for
paperbacks. The books at Christmas-
time are usually published with the
best paper and the best covers be-
cause they are designed to be gifts.”
Jóhann recalls sitting up in bed
one night, asking himself if any con-
vincing effort had ever been made to
create a paperback book
market in Iceland. Un-
able to say yes, he later
devised an experimen-
tal plan to market and
sell six paperback titles
using cardboard dis-
play stands in grocery
stores. The experiment
was an overnight success. “Paperback
sales have convinced me that the peo-
ple of Iceland really are interested in
reading throughout the year, not just
at Christmastime,” he says.
To help reduce Iceland’s growing
backlog of books, Jóhann also sug-
gests scaling back the number of book
vendors across Iceland. “We are sell-
ing to 150 stores across Iceland, so our
stock is spread all over,” he explains.
“We have to print 1,500 copies of each
book just to be able to cover and fill
all the bookstores, and even if there
are only five copies left in each shop
after the Christmas season, then that
still leaves 750 copies that we have to
buy back and store in our facilities.
We eventually have to destroy books
that we can’t store any more because
it would simply take too long to sell
them.”
This problem is not as simple as
publishing fewer books and fewer
authors to fewer bookstores, though.
The high volume of books published
in Iceland each year allows up-and-
coming voices—not just a few peren-
nial, best-selling authors—to make a
mark on the Icelandic literary scene.
“We could publish fewer books—and
many think we should—but which
ones should we not publish?” asks
Guðrún Vilmundardóttir, publishing
director of Bjartur, Iceland’s second-
largest publishing house. “Usually,
and for most titles, our print runs are
quite accurate. When we have great
success, we have to order extra print-
runs, which is of course a good thing.
But we have also made mistakes. It
has happened that we order, late in
December, a new print run that we
see later was unnecessary. That is a
waste, and it happens because of the
great frenzy of the Christmas book
market,” she says. “I like to be opti-
mistic, though. I think there are a lot
of positive sides to this Book Flood. It
puts the spotlight on literature for a
few months of the year and promotes
Iceland’s literary culture.”
An evolving
market
Because of its small size and
sparse population, Iceland’s economy
rarely, if ever, fully equalises, and the
nation’s book market will probably
always reflect the nation’s enduring
economic challenges to some extent.
However, as the remnants of the an-
nual Book Flood pile up each year,
Icelandic publishers are starting to
rethink how books are distributed,
marketed, and sold to customers not
only to improve efficiency but also to
reduce growing paper waste. For now,
the Book Flood tradition will live on,
but the evolution of the book market
in Iceland is far from complete.
The annual jólabókaflóð, or Christmas Book Flood, is a
beloved Icelandic tradition. Every year around Christmas-
time, publishing houses across Iceland unleash a deluge of
new books on the marketplace and inundate bookstores
with stacks of fresh titles for the holiday season. During
this lively time of year, book vendors and literary muse-
ums alike host reading after reading, release party after
release party, giving hundreds of Icelandic authors—both
emerging and well-known—a chance to showcase their
latest work.
Kolabrautin is on
4th floor Harpa
Reservations
+354 519 9700
info@kolabrautin.is
www.kolabrautin.is
A dinner or lunch at the elevated fourth floor of Harpa concert hall is a
destination in itself. Relax and enjoy fine Italian cuisine complemented
with a spectacular panoramic view of Reykjavík and the surrounding horizon.
Brand new à la carte 2015.
UNIQUE EXPERIENCE
AND A VIEW LIKE NO OTHER
Books | The land of...
Book Flood
BacklogIs Iceland producing more books than
it can handle?
By Elliott Brandsma
Photo by Alisa Kalyanova
In some cases,
these unpur-
chased books
even have to be
destroyed.