In mercifully unpolitical news from Sweden, Bonnier—Stockholm’s 15-nation powerhouse media corporation, which includes Bonnier Publishing—has established a division called Bonnier Books Ventures devoted to new content platforms.
As part of that division, Bonnier quietly launched self-publishing platform Type & Tell in September 2015. Type & Tell has been growing ever since—you can see the Swedish edition up and running. Executives in the London offices tell us that the response to the Swedish beta has been so strong that they’ll be launching an English edition of the site in March (to coincide with London Book Fair).
One of the things you’ll notice is a highly granular approach to services: a lot of them, and individually priced. On the Svenska site, for example (with prices in Swedish kronor, of course), the selection of services includes a separation of marketing for print and digital (and individual services, such as mailing 10 review copies), distribution, book cover design, author photos, interior design, format conversions, camera-ready advertisement production, digital ad production, catalog listings, newsletter mentions, Swedish library system reviews, metadata optimization, and more. Not for nothing is smörgåsbord a Swedish word.
Bottom line: The key here is that à la carte approach. Here’s the reason: Type & Tell authors get 100 percent royalties. The revenue to the company is in that big array of service packages, not in sales, and the site’s folks talk to us of working “alongside retail channels,” not head-to-head. We think Bonnier, rightly well regarded internationally, may be making a savvy move for a publisher: capitalizing on its capabilities. Type & Tell’s push is to get indie authors to create both print and ebook editions of their books and to utilize the enormous production, marketing, and media-networking capabilities the company uses for its own output. Keep an eye on this one.
Update: Type & Tell closed its UK operations in Nov. 2017, just eight months after launching. In 2018 it was shunted to Bonnier-owned Adlibris.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
