The publishing industry has undergone many changes over the last few years, many of which can be attributed to the disruptions brought about by digital technologies. Alongside the rise of self-/ indie- publishing we are also seeing new types of publisher emerge, publishers who are turning traditional models and methods on their head and finding new ways of doing things.  In our ‘New Publisher’ series we interview some of them about their approaches and what they hope to achieve by doing things differently.

Ramon Dodd  speaks to Nikola Richter, founder of the Berlin based digital publisher Mikrotext. 

New platforms, new distributors, new genres … digital publishing has redefined the way we create and consume literature in the twenty-first century. Not only has the ‘how’ been redefined, the ‘what’ has too: what we read and write and what we define as literature are evolving.

Based in Berlin, Mikrotext has found their niche publishing shorter works of contemporary fiction and non-fiction in eBook format. It’s first publication featured Facebook updates from Aboud Saeed – described as the ‘Syrian Bukowski’ – who was posting from Syria in the midst of the turmoil.

Mikrotext’s founder, Nikola Richter is an author and editor and curator of the Net Culture strand of Berlin Festival. We caught up with her to find out more about Mikrotext and to get her views on the state of digital publishing in Germany.

1. When did you decide to start Mikrotext?

I’ve always been into blogging and publishing but in 2012 a British Council scholarship gave me the opportunity to dive deeper into digital publishing. Soon after, in January 2013 I set up Mikrotext and the very first edition came out in March that year. We published an essay by philosopher Alexander Kluge, and status updates from the young Syrian writer, Aboud Saeed. It was so successful we edited a print version of his eBook and published it in English: The Smartest Guy on Facebook.

2. Which genres of work is Mikrotext publishing?

New forms of writing that develop on or with the web – unique digital realities. I’ve mentioned Aboud Saeed’s Facebook status updates. Aboud does not regard himself as a Facebooker, but as a writer, and his works are considered to be literary short texts and prose. We’ve also published an essay on genesis (The Magpie Experiment by Jan Kuhlbrodt) which started as a blog. The most experimental eBook so far was a collection of spam mail received by the Munich essayist, Thomas Palzer, Spam Poetry. But we’re also interested in other short prose, such as short stories, novellas and essays. The eBooks we publish are in our editions are thematically-linked, and contemporary issues such as ‘freedom on the web’ and ‘how to deal with creation and autonomy’. The upcoming topic is surveillance – and will comprise a novella and an essay.

3. Why focus on shorter works?

Reading habits have changed dramatically in the digital age and at any one time we can be reading several articles in multiple open browser windows, switching from text to text, device to device. Often when we open a new page, we scroll about looking for keywords and to check how long the articles is. Sometimes we read only part of an article or sections that are not necessarily connected. With Mikrotext, we wanted to recreate a proper concentrated reading experience on the screen, and I think the eBook allows this: it’s not browser-based and there is nothing to distract you from reading. Some of the available eBooks however don’t offer quality shorter texts, and by this I mean, texts that are longer than a newspaper article but shorter than a novel – shorter works of prose and non-fiction that can be read on a journey, on the tube, or while waiting at the doctor, that can be carried around and are available when you want or need them.

4. What’s happening in the German eBook market? Does it reflect the experience of other European countries such as the United Kingdom?

I think it is very difficult to compare reading habits in different languages and countries. Germany is one of the biggest book markets in the world with a huge number of books being published each year per capita. There is a vast readership and a prolific landscape of bookshops, despite Amazon. From what I know, the developments in the US and Great Britain are strongly linked due to language, economics and politics. The epublishing situation in other European countries is totally different. At a book fair, a Polish publisher told me that the eBook is virtually non-existent, though some are experimenting with access-free education online. In France, publisher Moyen-Courrier, has started to publish new journalism from American magazines. Here in Germany things have been moving very quickly since the start of 2013. In Berlin, you’ll now find ten or more epublishers, plus several epublishing start-ups, and my guess is that Berlin will become Europe’s international epublishing city. Amazon recently launched its Amazon Kindle Singles in German – pretty late timing considering the number of domestic publishing houses which are already up and running. I think the indie publishers had good timing!

5. What’s the future of digital publishing in Germany?

We still have a long way to go. The readership is still very traditional. Smartphones, tablets and ereaders are quite common, but only the latter are used for reading. There is a big lobby in Germany defending the ‘Haptik’ of a book (loosely translated as look and feel), and promoting the belief that text is only readable (and valuable, for buying and reviewing) when it is printed on paper.

6. What does epublishing offer writers and readers of short fiction and non-fiction that traditional publishing doesn’t?

Due to its nature, epublishing can react more quickly to topics and developments in current affairs. Also, a text can be reworked much more easily without throwing away tons of paper. Then there’s the distribution – once it goes online, an eBook is global. It’s also important to say that epublishers also care about the texts they publish and they choose and edit with the same care as traditional publishers might. Epublishing is proper publishing but it is using the ways of the web.

7. What should authors know about epublishing before they decide to publish?

Just read eBooks and see what’s out there! You’ll find out all you need to know about just how professional things are becoming, and the possibilities in typography, distribution, multimedia, social reading and more.

You can find out more about Mikrotext on their website: www.mikrotext.de; Twitter: @mkrtxt; and Facebook.

Other interviews in our ‘New Publisher Series’:

Tom Chivers of Penned in the Margins 

Matthew Crockatt of And Other Stories

Scott Pack at The Friday Project

An email exchange between Stevie Ronnie and Liam Owen reflecting on the making of Four Years from Now, Walking with My Daughter. An animation by Liam Owen inspired by Stevie Ronnie’s poem of the same name.

SR: So Liam, you’re not a big reader of poetry. What made you think about making an animation from my poem?

LO: That is certainly true, I am in fact not a great reader of anything. I struggle with words but have a love affair with imagery.

When I heard your poem I could automatically visualise each line, each moment, I was walking in the same place. This is not common with me but your poem inspired me, and as soon as you had finished reading it I knew I HAD to make it into a animation, I had to bring it to life.

Growing up together in the same wonderful place and meeting your beautiful first baby daughter who inspired you to write the poem in the first place of course helped.

I am interested to know what you thought when I first asked permission to turn it into an animation and how you thought the process was going to work?

SR: I was over the moon when you asked to work on the poem. I was pleased that it inspired you and that you wanted to animate it – knowing your style and work, I knew you’d do a great job. I wasn’t sure how much input you’d need from me but suspected that you’d just get on with it as there was already a connection there throughout mutual relationship with the setting of the poem. I expect I might have had to be more involved if it had been someone else. Collaboration is always different, in my experience and it’s impossible to know how things are going to pan out until you get started.

For me there was a real opportunity to add to my portfolio and to reach a wider audience with the work. Poetry doesn’t get far in the world (the readership is very small). It works well with short film though as poems tend to say a lot in a little space and the animation has reached a much wider audience than the poem ever will in book form. I’d say the Internet has a lot to do with the recent rise in popularity of video poetry. Short works well on the web and there’s a potentially massive audience out there, even for poetry!

Did it change the way you think about poetry at all? Less scary? Would you work with poems again?

LO: I think it’s about the accessibility of poetry that is key. I have never really gone looking for it before and like you said the readership is small so to have a friend who is heavily involved gave me the route in. To be honest I have not expanded upon this route but from reading and listening to your work and others you are associated with has defiantly changed my perception. Of course like with most arts it’s only some that create the spark, lots just go right over my head, but when someone writes something I can connect with, it can visually sing in my head, which is very exciting.

I think of poetry as like pure concentrated fruit juice where every intense drip of flavour is squeezed out so even though its short it’s still full of flavour. I suppose lots of words don’t always mean lots of detail? This short form of writing works really well with animated shorts for obvious reasons and as I am always looking out for great stories I really hope I can do more work with poets and writers in the future.

One of the areas that I felt I could have expanded on was the use of words and the timings and connections between these words and different lines. I feel like my animation is a very simple linear play on your words and I am sure you are doing more with the words than I realised.

Visualising these play with words is something that interests me for future collaborations, is there other areas within animation and moving imagery that you would like to explore?

SR: Aye, I’m definitely interested in working within the various forms of video poetry that are currently emerging (and growing in popularity). As well as the benefits of reaching a wider audience, the format has endless possibilities in terms of enhancing the poem.

I like your description of poetry as ‘pure concentrated fruit juice’. I think there’s a lot to that analogy that rings true for me in the way I think about writing poems. And you are right too about the detail coming from what is missing. I think the reader connects more strongly with a poem if they create the details in their own head. I have a poem called Mammy’s Dress that begins “There’s comfort in the fading of her dress / each picnic folded into each pelt / of rain that’s laundered it simple – / like infinity accepted as true.” Once, after I’d spoken it out loud, a member of the audience came up to me and said that his mother also owned this same dress. If you look over my words I don’t describe the dress at all. He’d invented it himself and therefore he owned the image. I’m convinced that this personal ownership of the image by the reader / listener / viewer is part of the reason that poetry can be so memorable and moving. Perhaps the skill is in deciding what to leave out.

Ambiguity is important in poetry – the same word can mean several different things. Often in a good poem, there’s a tension between the littoral interpretation of the words and their other possible meanings. This can create layers of meaning to a piece, adding depth and creating something which repays re-reading. Adding a visual element to the poem means that there’s another device that can add layers of meaning to the words. I’d like to play with this idea – how far can the visuals be pushed from the words without it breaking.

The great thing about moving images is their hypnotic quality and the number of digital platforms that are available for distributing moving image works. Screen based media is definitely the predominant form of communication in our age and I think there’s an opportunity for literature to embrace this by crossing into new digital forms. Animation should be able to work particularly well with poetry as both forms seem to be comfortable with the impossible.