German Self-Publishing, Where Innovation Meets Angst

Publishing Perspectives

In Germany old publishing habits die hard. But the country’s burgeoning self-publishing industry is challenging the status quo.
Max Franke, head of Business Development and Communications at epubli, the Berlin-based print-on-demand and self-publishing provider of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, offers his views on digitization in Germany and about the associated difficulties the German book publishing industry has to face.
It’s more or less the consensus that German publishers won’t face transition exactly as American ones did. Unlike in America, book publishing and trade in Germany relies on safeguards that protect them from the disruptive forces of digitization (e.g. fixed book prices to protect brick-and-mortar bookstores from Amazon and the like) and Germans’ gusto for the look and feel of a physical book prevents readers from switching to e-books.


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