I hear a book – BOK365.no
SATURDAY: Halldór Guðmundsson about the big turnaround in the Icelandic book market.
It has long been an important part of Icelanders’ self-understanding that they are a book people. Nor can it be favored that we have a long litter tradition in the mother tongue which is every reason to be proud of. But the book market itself arose sent, and was for a long time very little. At the beginning of the 19th century, it was a single printing house in Iceland, and perhaps ten books a year were printed. The vast majority of Icelandic books and magazines were produced in Copenhagen and sent to Iceland by ship, and for two or three winter months no one could sail here. When the subscribers of the Icelandic Literary Society’s most serious magazine «Skírnir» read the section with news from abroad, they could count on being up to six months old.
It was after the First World War and the sovereignty in 1918 that it gradually began to emerge which could be called a domestic book market. But books remained difficult and in the interwar years it took an ordinary worker at least an hour long working day to be able to buy a new Icelandic novel. It got better during World War II as the British, and later also the American, soldiers brought money into the country and the Christmas book market grew. Due to scarcity during the war, books became the most popular Christmas gift. This was also the case in the first decades after the war; a book market which was much linked to the Christmas season, but still different in relation to the population – like so much else in our country.
Quit MacLean
But in the last to the decades of the twentieth century, a revolution took place: the Fund for the Writers’ Salary was established, and shortly after a Fund for Translations. The printing house was to a greater extent automated, IT technology was used for rate and change, the publishers became more professional and preoccupied with recycling paperbacks and book clubs. The number of titles published in Icelandic annually almost tripled between 1975 and 2000, from 500 to 1300. And perhaps most interesting: Icelandic literature flourished like never before, driven and funny narrators reached a wide audience and even began to gain a foothold in the country. Icelandic authors replaced Alistair MacLean at the top of the bestseller list, where his books had lain for decades.
The publishers in Iceland were comfortable and not free of hubris (signed included) and hoped that it would just continue like this in the new century, as did the first decade. But little by little it became quieter around the book market. It was stable for a few years at first, but then it got smaller, year after year, until it had shrunk by almost a third in 2018. That same year, there was a small revolution in the market that publishers were not prepared for when Swedish Storytel did sit entrance. This can be illustrated with very striking figures: In 2017, nine audiobook titles were published in Icelandic, in 2018 the number was 168.
Audiobook explosion
It had been an attempt at a larger audiobook production in Iceland before, and one was cheaply aware that digitalisation made this simpler and more than it had been an ordinary novel filled with CDs. But none of the major players really dared to invest in it. It was thought, not without reason, that the Audio Library for the Blind – which, thanks to the legislation, got all its titles almost for free – was too easily accessible to most people to make room for the development of a real market.
But that was not the case. The Icelandic department of Storytel has grown by almost 50 percent every year since 2018. Last year, 2021, they got over 700 new Icelandic audiobooks – many of them of course older titles – into its streaming service, increasing its turnover to 1.3 billion Icelandic kroner (approx. NOK 90 million), and has thus become the largest player in the Icelandic book market; one can probably assume that they have more than 40,000 subscribers. This also leads to a large growth for the Icelandic book market as a whole. In 2019, the trend reversed, sales of printed books stopped shrinking, and actually increased in 2020.
Met skepticism
Three factors have been important in this context for Storytel. A good but at the same time relatively cheap production of digital audio books, a streaming service with a subscription system, and of course the price: The monthly subscription costs 2900 Icelandic kroner (approx. 200 NOK), for unlimited listening time with a selection of 4000 Icelandic titles in addition to the foreign ones. This is equivalent to half what a new, hardcover Icelandic novel costs and amounts to about an hourly wage for an Icelandic worker.
Storytel initially understood understandably skepticism among publishers and authors in Iceland, and the Danish Competition Authority was critical of their planned acquisition of a majority stake in Forlagið, the country’s largest book publisher, which therefore did not materialize. But now that every third book that is “consumed” in Iceland is not actually read, but listened to, most publishers and authors make the work available to the Swedish streaming service. The collaboration works well on the whole, although most players could probably wish that more power services were active in Iceland. Since, despite a population, has proven to be reasonably large, it would not be surprising if more would do the experiment.
New, female author voices
There is no direct connection between the development of the book market and the development of fiction. It is nevertheless interesting to add that in recent years there has been a lot of life in Icelandic literature, just as it was in the last period at the end of the 20th century – not least thanks to new, female voices that Norwegian readers should also add brand. to.
María Elísabet Bragadóttir made her debut in 2020 with a collection of short stories that contained a few fantastic stories, Anna Hafþórsdóttir published a family and love novel with the strength of underlying drama which was our surprise, Kamilla Einarsdóttir has published contemporary novels carried by a deeply sarcastic and incredibly funny narrator , Fríða Ísberg came with her first novel this autumn: Marking, a partly dystopian tale of high topicality that has already been sold to 14 countries, including Norway, and Júlía Margrét Einarsdóttir published perhaps the season’s most ambitious novel, God is looking for Salome. Just to name a few of the new names that make their mark on contemporary Icelandic literature. Some of them belong to an exciting group of writers who call themselves Svikaskáld, who have recently published a novel they have written together.
Who knows, maybe the audiobook revolution will also strengthen a new genre: books, which are written directly for the audiobook format and thus pick up the thread from the best of the Icelandic literary tradition: the art of storytelling.
Halldór Guðmundsson