When Bonnier’s Cappelen merged with the Egmontowned publisher Damm in June 2007, publishingdirector Tom Harald Jenssen stated that the new publishing company would broaden and strengthen the management of authors’ rights. And the company continues to focus on these two objectives.

‘We publish more than 1000 titles a year, for all age groups and in all genres, from fact to fiction. And we will maintain our broad publication programme by keeping the focus on our author relations,’ Tom Harald Jenssen explains.

A well-developed network of booksellers, zero VAT, state procurement schemes and fixed book prices help to ensure the breadth of the publication programme. And asked to speak candidly, the publishing director reveals that he does not see the same signs of crisis that publishing companies in other countries do.

‘The system has produced good results but it still needs to be defended and legitimised. We cannot take fixed prices and zero VAT for granted, even though they have helped give Norway a leading position in terms of both reading and book sales,’ explains Tom Harald Jenssen. ‘Fixed prices for bestsellers, for instance, will help us to continue publishing a broad portfolio of titles in the future. Books will experience price pressure no matter what, and margins will decrease even as we are required to offer new books on new platforms. But I foresee no crisis.’

From publisher to cultural enterprise
Although books are Cappelen Damm’s core product, the publisher describes itself as a cultural and knowledge enterprise. This is no coincidence. The company’s goal is to be on all platforms customers visit. To this end, the company owns Oslo’s largest bookstore chain, Tanum, and has stakes in webshops and distribution companies.

Earlier this year Cappelen Damm launched a website, digitalbok. no, a Norwegian e-book shop. But Tom Harald Jenssen does not hesitate to predict that the primary business for many years to come will be based on print media. ‘We predict that in five years, Gutenberg will still be alive and healthy. The bulk of the revenue generated by our publication programme will be based on print products,’ Tom Harald Jenssen says.

‘However, three areas stand out as areas of digital growth. Political focus is on educational materials, an area where digitalisation is a target of investment. So we believe that the digital market will account for a significant portion of revenue from educational products. International digital editions will be able to generate added value for non-fiction books. And finally we have the children’s market. We will see far more digital elements there, in the form of video clips, games and so on. You could say that more digital products will emerge in areas where this makes sense, but for the vast majority of our publications, a digital version adds nothing substantially new to the product.’

Aren’t you afraid that the publishing industry will suffer the same fate as the music business?
‘Music is an international industry where it’s easy to copy individual works. The book industry has a far stronger national focus, and although theoretically you can also copy an e-book, it’s far harder than copying an mp3 file. The book industry is governed by other sorts of relations. Despite the development of new channels and types of books, the author’s daily work is the same. Authors still need to work closely with a book publisher, and they acknowledge the process that takes place during this collaboration. That’s why it’s not unusual for editors to take authors with them when they switch to a different publishing company,’ explains Tom Harald Jenssen, establishing that author-publisher relations are the key to earnings in future. ‘Whether a book is produced the Gutenberg way or as an e-book does not need to challenge our business model.’