Storytel-president should retain the slim books – Västerbotten Courier

Culture Telegram Audiobook company Storytel buy Norstedts Publishing Group for $ 152 million. Storytels CEO Jonas Tellander ensures that the venerable publishing house Norstedts will continue to give out smaller titles.

The purchase includes Norstedts, Raben & amp; Sjogren and Norstedts maps. Storytel will now go through Norstedts and Raben & amp; Sjogren issue to see what titles can be converted to audio books.

– My focus is that the user experience will be as good as possible, and where the content is very important. What I get here is the possibility that we give out more audio books and great stories that people can listen to so that they become even more satisfied with business services, he said.

Storytel plan no obvious changes in the Norstedts future publication .

– all publishers, regardless of whether it is 200 or 10 years old, peeking out how to have a good mix of literature that is entertaining and easy to digest, and often tops the sales charts, combined with a little narrower literature for ideas forward, he says, and continues:

– We will continue to work on with the business model you have, and so you have to take it step by step and see what works well.

“good prospects”

Nordstedts CEO Otto Sjöberg, who compares the deal with when Amazon founder Jeff Bezoz bought the Washington Post three years ago, believes that the publisher now will have a greater focus on development.

– Storytel is an entrepreneur driven company that is born of the new platforms, which has also affected the way the book’s narrative is consumed. This combined with Sweden’s oldest publishing house, with the incredible craftsmanship and attention to the editorial, I give very good position to succeed in the future, says Otto Sjoberg said.

TT: Have you received assurances that supply is not affected?

– Guarantees can never have, but the new owners have great respect for what we have done.

Norstedts, one of Sweden’s oldest publishing houses . Among their authors are David Lagercrantz, Agneta Pleijel, Jonas Gardell, Kristina Sandberg, Torgny Lindgren, P. O. Enquist and several Nobel Prize winners.

“Spotify for books”

Storytel, founded in 2005 bought the Danish bokströmningstjänsten Mofibo for $ 125 million earlier this year. In 2015 went Storytel together with Massolit publishers, which is an amalgamation of Ica publishing, B Wahlström and Damm publishing companies.

Anna-Maria Rimm, PhD in Literature at Uppsala University, notes that it is a sign of the times that just a digital player buys a traditional publishing company instead of the other way around.

– Storytel is a success story and audio books is getting better and better in Sweden. Storytel also knocked out most of its competitors in the niche. There one can immediately observe is that we now have a small independent player in the market and we get even a larger company which works in several stages of production, distribution and sales, says Rimm said.