“Untapped potential for authors and publishers.” That’s the sweet spot where digital and global meet, that so many publishers, from indie authors to small presses to corporate giants, seem still not to get, and that marks out SAGA Egmont as in a class of its own.
It was back in March 2020 that TNPS was reporting on how Denmark’s SAGA had become Spain’s largest audiobook publisher. We opened that story with a reminder that SAGA famously insists that all publisher’s books must be present in all sales channels to maximise the author’s visibility and earnings – a policy studiously avoided by some of its bigger global rivals.
Last month I opened another post on SAGA with,
The bigger picture here is how a publisher in Denmark, a “minor-language” country with a population barely bigger than some US cities, has managed to become a significant global player on par with corporate publishers in “international-language” countries, by embracing the digital advantage rather than treating digital as an afterthought.
This week comes more news from SAGA, ramming home the TNPS message, as SAGA becomes the biggest audiobook publisher in Germany, one of the world’s biggest publishing markets.
SAGA, the digital arm of Copenhagen-based Lindhardt og Ringhof, has acquired audiobook publisher Audiobuch Verlag oHG, its fifth publisher acquisition.
SAGA has over 80,000 digital titles in more than 30 languages in its catalogue, which now includes over 5,000 German-language audiobooks.
Hereon, Audiobuch will be run from Copenhagen “in cooperation with the Freiburg staff”, led by Editorial Director Thilde Pfeifer, who said:
Audiobuch’s catalogue is diverse, commercially strong and of high award-winning quality. The publisher has won the Deutscher Hörbuchpreis and Deutscher Buchpreis several times.
Okay, so that’s the mandatory press release bonhomie out of the way. Now let’s move on to the all-important bigger picture, for which we can stay with the press release, and the words of Lasse Horne, SAGA Egmont’s Publishing Director:
With the acquisition we consolidate our strong position in the German audiobook market. We still have great ambitions for SAGA worldwide and Germany is one of Europe’s most important book markets. We expect significant growth here as digitalisation accelerates and streaming becomes more widespread.
For SAGA Egmont parent company Lindhardt og Ringhof, CEO Lars Boesgaard said:
The publishing industry has experienced a great tailwind in recent years. Here in the first half of 2021 alone, the Swedish book market grew by 10 percent, and this development only further boosts Lindhardt og Ringhof’s digital ambitions internationally. We have several other interesting things in our sights.
Rest assured TNPS will be watching out for those “several other interesting things”. But let us end this post with a final quote from SAGA Publishing Director Lasse Horne:
We will be publishing many of Audiobuch’s authors internationally in the future. There is a lot of untapped potential here for the authors and the publisher.
“Untapped potential for authors and publishers.” That’s the sweet spot where digital and global meet, that so many publishers, from indie authors to small presses to corporate giants, seem still not to get, and that marks out SAGA Egmont as in a class of its own.
