This is a really cool idea, and I hope it not only gains a lot of traction and readers, but expands rapidly to include many more partnerships and titles.

Frisch & Co. Launches International E-Book Publisher, Partners with Germany’s Suhrkamp Verlag

BERLIN/NEW YORK, October 2012—Frisch & Co. today announced the launch of its e-book publishing program, which will publish contemporary foreign fiction in English-language translation for e-book reading devices. For its initial titles, Frisch & Co. is partnering with Berlin-based Suhrkamp Verlag—venerable publisher of Hermann Hesse, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, and many other modern German-language luminaries. The companies will collaborate to select and publish two new titles from Suhrkamp’s list each year. Frisch & Co. is currently seeking partners in other countries.

Frisch & Co.’s first two titles are Anna Kim’s haunting and poetic novel The Anatomy of a Night and Uwe Tellkamp’s award-winning epic The Tower. Both titles will be released for the first time in English in late-Spring 2013 and will be available through online e-book retailers and on Frisch & Co.’s website.

“There are so many truly fascinating stories, and great writers, that English-only readers simply don’t have the opportunity to discover,” said E.J. Van Lanen, Publisher and former Editor and co-founder of Open Letter Books. “The goal of Frisch & Co’s publishing program is to share some of these stories, and we’re trying to reach readers where they increasingly are: on their tablets, phones, and e-book readers.”

The Pew Internet & American Life Project estimates that 25% of American adults currently own a tablet device, and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) estimate U.S. trade publisher e-book revenues of $1.97 billion (or 16% of total trade dollars) for 2011, up from $838 million and 6.7% in 2010. Adult fiction currently comprises 31% of sales within the category. With its list of prominent and emerging international authors from prestigious international publishers, its single-minded focus on the e-book category, and competitive pricing, Frisch & Co. is well-positioned to benefit from these trends.

“I’m really thrilled about this project,” said Nora Mercurio, Rights Manager at Suhrkamp Verlag, “since in my eyes it represents the perfect merger of the important values Suhrkamp stands for—tradition, high literary quality, the preference of stable partnership over one-time licensing, and an open-mindedness about the future, in this case digitalization.”

In addition to publishing its books through major online retailers, Frisch & Co. will sell its e-books in DRM-free .epub format on its website.

About the books:

Translated into fifteen languages, Uwe Tellkamp’s bestselling The Tower won the 2008 Deutscher Buchpreis—awarded annually to the best German-language novel—the Deutscher Nationalpreis (2009), and the Literaturpreis der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (2009). The Tower paints an epic panorama of the waning days of the German Democratic Republic.

Suicide is spreading like an epidemic in Anna Kim’s third novel, The Anatomy of a Night, which follows the twists and turns of eleven people’s lives in a poor and largely isolated village in the eastern part of Greenland. Precisely observed and beautifully written, The Anatomy of a Night announces a major new voice in German literature.

For more information on Frisch & Co., visit , or contact E.J. Van Lanen (vanlanen [at] frischand.co).

Back in 2004, Michael started the report to find out how good of a job he was doing in reviewing books from around the world. At the time, Complete Review contained 1,200 reviews, two-thirds of which were books originally written in English.

Every 100 reviews (which happens about every six months or less—how does he do this?!) he posts an update to this report looking at the makeup of the most recent batch of reviews. He’s now up to 2,200 reviews total, and of the past 100, only 21 were written in English, whereas 23 were originally written in French. He also added a couple new languages, and has now reviewed books from 50 different languages. He also posted a with all the relevant data. Interestingly, books originally written in English now make up 50% of the 2,200 reviews—a much smaller percentage than the 66% it was back four years ago.

In the meantime, maybe someone will come up with a better phrase than “international literature,” which is about as precise a moniker as “ethnic food.”

First off, she’s completely right. The term “international literature” may imply “exotic,” but is totally bland. And it appears everywhere on this website, in the info about Open Letter, etc. So is there something better?

Mysteries can be subcategorized into thrillers, psycho-thrillers, noir, crime, detective, etc. Even chick-lit can be either craptastic or shiteous.

But “literary fiction”? “International Literary Fiction”? That means almost any book-like object containing words written someplace in the world.

It doesn’t help that Barnes & Noble totally confuses the matter by using “fiction” and “literature” interchangeably. (Insert James Frey joke here.) Still, good, solid, long-lasting, thought-provoking literature should have more descriptive phrases for itself.

So, anyone out there have any suggestions?