Hello Barbera, can you introduce NAi and tell us a bit about your role there?
NAi Publishers is specialized in books about art, architecture, new media and design. The two main branches are art and architecture, I work as publisher for the art field. However, current digital developments, which I think is the main topic of this interview, involve all NAi fields because everybody here is still new with it.
Furthermore, last year we were looking for a new production person and we wanted him or her to expert in new media. That was because we were conscious we don’t know enough about that, therefore hiring a specialist would mean being a step ahead. Unfortunately we were not able to find anybody who was expert of the field, probably because everyone is looking into it and investigating, still trying to find the right way to deal with new media.
Every year we go to the Frankfurt Book Fair where we talk with several international publishers and we find out that they also don’t know what to do with these new opportunities. All publishers worldwide are trying to solve issues like, for instance: «What price should we ask for ebooks? How will we sell them?» They’re all trying to solve these problems themselves but nobody knows the answers yet.
How many books do you publish per year?
We publish between forty and fifty books per year. And that also includes smaller books like magazines.
How do you find contents for you books?
NAi originated as a department of the Netherlands Architecture Institute, therefore, when the company started, our content came directly from there. If there was an exhibition and a catalogue was needed, NAi curators would provide the content to us. NAi expanded and we got in contact with other architectural firms, which gave us their content so we started to publish architecture monographs. Then we initiated collaborations with authors who had suitable contents for NAi. Currently, either someone who is interested in publication comes to us, or we, as publishers, decide to produce a book on a subject which we think has a market, so we start contacting people who can deliver appropriate content to us.
How do you review the content?
It depends: in my field, which includes the art books, when I work together with a museum, I assume that curators are the experts and what they write is correct, therefore it becomes their responsibility to deliver a perfect text. However, our books are made for a certain audience, so if I work on a book for an exhibition, the visitor of the exhibition should be able to read it; in that case I act as the first reader, figuring out if everything is clear and coherent. For some books and magazine we have peer-review, like OASE for example.
OASE Magazine, several issues
Who is in charge to review the contents?
There are people working at the university or experts of the subject who approach specific essays.
How long does all the process generally take?
There are many variables: whether the book has pictures or not, whether it’s hardcover or paperback, whether it’s in one language or in several… The shorter period is probably three months, but it tends to take longer because for lot of our books we need subsidies, and that can take a long time. I usually say that to publish a good book at least a year is needed. Even more, because for some books you really need to do a lot of reseach: writing, editing, translating, finding the correct images, looking for a good designer…
How do you find subsidies?
It depends on what kind of book we’re working on. Sometimes we work together with a partner, like a museum or an architectural firm, who may give us money, because it considers the book important. We translate this wish in something that can be considered a proper book and we sell it in bookshops. When we need extra money for the budget, a company may help us. This is also a form of subsidie, but we usually have to apply for funding to boards like the Mondriaan Institute. For each project we look for the chances we have.
How do you sell your books?
We have our own bookshop in NAi, which it’s connected to a webshop, so people can order books from it. We sell our books in bookshops all around Holland through our representatives. For international distribution we work with different distributors, the american ones place the books on Amazon. But we also work with bol.com by ourselves.
In which formats do you provide your books? Are you developing alternatives to large series, or even to printed matter?
Our core business is around printed books, but of course we’re trying to stay in pace with the world. For instance, a book in the Reflect series, without pictures, went sold out, but we still had demand for it, so we did a Print on Demand version. We printed a hundred copies and some of them are still available, we know in this way if there’s still demand for the book so that when it get sold out we can print another hundred. I believe PoD versions are particularly suitable for students, because sometimes an entire class has to buy the same book.
We also wanted to make a PoD version of a book which was originally in full colours. We tried to do that in black and white but the quality was not satisfactory. So we made an attempt in full colour but it was too expensive, not allowing us to earn any money.
The quality of our paperback books is very high: they’re well printed, they usually have a lot of images and of course texts are perfectly edited. I can say PoD means a bit less quality, but much more availability.
What’s the price difference between hardcover and PoD version?
In this specific case I mentioned we sell the different versions for the same price.
We are also realized an ebook version of some text books in EPUB format, replicating the exact layout of the printed version. It’s already available but the problem –which I think is common to most of the publishers– is about presenting it. We added it in our brochure but it isn’t clear yet to us how to market and to sell it. Currently we have almost completed our new website, there you’ll be able to buy ebooks directly, but for the moment there are many unknowns.
Who is the one who makes conversion?
We asked a commercial industry to do that for us.
What’s the price difference between printed version and digital one?
An example: the printed version of one of our books costs 22.50 euros, while the ebook is 14.50.
How did you choose this price?
Well, it’s not a simple issue and I know every publisher is dealing with it. It’s not easy because we don’t have high extra costs for the ebook version, we already payed authors and we need to adapt the design slightly. I know that some publishers price the ebook version higher than the printed one.
While some other publishers provide ebook version for free…
We do that for Oase magazine: considering that many students read it, we decided to give away for free PDF’s of the older issues. For the last five ones you can have a look to the layout, which is done by Karel Martens and Werkplaats Typographie. It is also possibile to download individual essays and articles. But all these features are quite new for us.
We also made another experiment with a book called CHECK IN / CHECK UIT. The book is full of hashtags that you can read with a smartphone. They bring you directly to a web pages and extra contents. I think we were the first in Holland to do this!
Is the publishing process speeden up by technological improvements?
NAi has been active for almost twenty years, and I’ve been working here for around twelve years. When I started we had to share one computer. I think things changed a lot, just think at the process to reproduce pictures… Now with Dropbox everything is much easier! Also the editing part became faster: now you can easily send a pdf to the other part of the world and correct it real-time. But checking the content, editing and translating it, it’s still a very long work.
Sometimes authors design the book themselves and they send it to us. They think it’s possible to print it in three days, but it actually takes three weeks. People tend to forget that because the other things go so quickly.
How do you promote your books?
Our bookshop has a newsletter and we have a printed catalogue which is sent out to around 5000 people: press, bookshops, universities, insitututions. We also contact companies which may buy large quantities of our books. In addiction we do press releases.
Do you organize events to promote you books?
Well, we are in a very good positions because we work together with cultural institutions. Sometimes we do presentations in an location related to the book’s content. For example, we always present Architecture in the Netherlands: Year Book, which is our most important publication, in one of the building included in the book. Obviously we don’t do presentations for every book because it would be too expensive and it would take too much time.
Do you think online sales can be compared with traditional bookstores’ ones?
I’m not sure but I think most of our books are sold in traditional bookshops. Especially outside the Netherlands because people want to have a look at those first.
Were sales affected by cutbacks in the cultureal field? If there were no subsidies, do you think your model could still be sustainable?
I think it’s a big problem. But actually Nai Publishers, does not receive subsidies as company,: we stay alive through the sales we do, but we also work on books for certain institutions and they pay us for actual development of the book. This won’t change as long as these institutions will have money to make books. A few years ago, the museums that I work for had no money problem at all: the books could be as expensive as we wanted. Now they don’t have so much money anymore, therefore we have to manage the budget at different levels: for example I have to ask the museum to buy a certain amount of copies to cover the budget with sales. If we work on a book which has a large sales’ potential there’s no problem, but if we want to publish a young starting artist’s monograph we can’t do that without subsidies. I don’t know what will happen but I’m a bit worried those books won’t be made anymore, not by us at least.
Do you generally provide previews of your books?
We provide complete PDF preview for press, but in general we list on our website book’s covers with a few pictures to let people see what the book looks like. It would be great to have Amazon-like inside preview.
What’s your position about licensing?
Copyright remains of the author, but we, as publisher, do a lot of work on the text, so we don’t just send it out to everybody: if another publisher wants to reproduce a text, we check with the authors; most of the time they agree and we allow that. We’re not making money on licenses or copyright. If another publisher wants to have all the book’s content for translation, it’s another story. There is a lot of publishers who sell licenses and language rights, we don’t do that. We don’t buy and don’t sell licenses, we produce our books.
Is there any author who asked for a different license from traditional copyright, such as Creative Commons?
I remember the author of the first publication we did with the INC – Organized Networks – was talking about Creative Commons, but at that point I had no clue on it. So I thought it was better to wait until we become more conscious of it. Clearly we’re not against that, it’s just that we are not actively into it.
How do you find your designers?
I think design is what make us a very special publisher, because we work with many designer with whom we have been in contact for a long time. We also collaborate with young designers to give them a sort of chance to make their first book. I can only talk for myself, but I think my colleagues work in a similar way. We think about the book long before it is actually designed. We already have an idea of the format, the size, the number of the pages, etc. We figure out how to sell the content we have, so we ask ourselves: «What does the future buyer want? What does he expect?” At this point we think of the designer who can make the book. The final design it’s always a big surprise: in the beginning we sit down and start talking of how the design will look like and in the end it’s always different. Sometimes it’s perfect while some others there are some adjustments to make, so together we come up with something that really sticks to the content. I think that’s why most of our books are really successful: the design goes with the content. There is no overdesign and the design is not just an artwork in itself.
Are the designers you work with especially Dutch?
We work with international designers, but usually they’re based in Holland. I prefer to work with designer based in the Netherlands because I think it’s good to see each other at least once or twice to discuss.
What’s about the reactions of designers and authors to PoD and ebook experiments?
Authors are mostly interested in the availability of the books, even if it means less quality. In the case of a sold out book, the author would only be happy to have it available again in PoD. Same discourse goes for ebook version. Without PoD we cannot easily afford a reprint: if a number of copy is already been sold we can’t be sure the others will be, therefore we cannot say if the cost will be covered again.
Do you think new technologies are affecting the content of the book? Some argue, for instance, that the dissemination of ebooks is making fiction books shorter.
In our case there is already a struggle to limit the number of pages, often we ask for a precise word amount and then we have four times the amount. I believe new technologies are not affecting the content in our field, at least for what regards the lenght of it.
Do you have to manage with special licences and copyrights for ebooks? Are there some new issues to deal with, for example concerning images?
If we know from the beginning we’ll produce an ebook version there is no problem, because we can ask in advance permission for that. But if we want to develop an ebook version afterwards, we have to go back to each owner of the picture’s rights and ask for permission again, this takes a lot of time. This is true also for a reprint, that’s why it’s quite unlikely we will make ebook version for old books.
In occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Architectural Yearbook, we are planning to make something extra which will go along with the book, maybe an iPhone application. In this case we will ask in advance to photographers and architectural firms if they agree with that.
How do you cultivate communities? Do you get feedbacks from your readers?
We don’t really actively do that. Commonly the author of the book has a specific audience and he or she gathers these contacts by himself.
What’s your presence on social networks?
I have my personal account on Facebook as Barbera Van Kooij, but I only use it for promotion of my books and to have my own network. I’m linked to a lot of people belonging to the art world. Especially in this period, with the cutbacks at the cultural budget, there is a lot of activity going on, everybody is keeping updated on it, which is very good. And since last two weeks we have our ne w company website and Nai Publishers Facebook and Twitter.
What’s your opinion about collaborative models of content’s creation?
We’re a traditional publisher and we’re not very familiar with these kind of practices. We’d like to edit the content, streamline it, make it consistent and uniform. But I think it’s a wonderful option for collections of essays, which otherwise would not be open to the public.
While working as a publisher did you see changes in sales and revenues?
Two or three years ago we saw our sales going down dramatically, especially in the USA. However, last year, despite the crisis, sales went up again. I think you can find out why if you look at the Frankfurt Book Fair: just before the crisis started, everybody was already in crisis, therefore bookshops were really careful in ordering books, that’s why sales went down. Then it arrived the period of the actual crisis and this time it was the public to be careful about money. Clearly it depends on what kind of books you publish, because sometimes they are thought for a very specialized audience while other times they are more widely accessible.
Bookshops are in crisis and the little ones are closing down. They are a really important sales’ channel, that’s why we are now concentrating more on the webshop, so that people can order directly our books from there. In addition, webshops are more advantageous from a financial point of view, because you don’t have to do discounts like with traditional bookshops.
Do you think there are some threats to your business in terms of piracy and illegal reproduction?
We sold our rights to some publishers from China and they said they will print our books in thousand copies. I don’t believe them but I wanted to try anyway. I might be very naive, but I think if they want to reproduce the books in such amount, much of the quality will be lost. I believe people really want the books for their quality and they will still buy the original ones. Of course photocopies are a good thing for students, but it’s not the same thing.
Illegal reproduction can be a great problem if you’re really dipendent on a large number of sales, but the books we produce have relative low print-runs. The problem is still not solved for e-books: if one buys an ebook for 14.50€, then he can give it to all his friend for free. That would be more of a threat than the physical reproduction of our books.