The Unique Icelandic Christmas Bookflood: Interview with Pátt Valsson

Translation: Lilja Ragnheiður Einarsdóttir

Many Icelanders traditionally give each other books for Christmas, a custom that has kept book publishing enterprises afloat for decades. Authors seem to appear during advent with books to fill up stockings and now this season has come. It is therefore ideal to investigate this Icelandic phenomenon from a publisher’s perspective. 

Páll Valsson has had a long career in book publishing and has been head of publishing at Bjartur & Veröld since 2016. He claims the Icelandic book publication schedule arranged to be in time for Christmas is unique internationally. “No other nation is a match for us at this time of year” he mentioned to the journalist from the Student Paper. “That so many titles come out in our own language in such a small nation is unparalleled.”

Photo: Mandana Emad

“Better to live than die”

This yearly period is often called the Christmasbook flood in the book publishing industry but Páll is not very fond of the term. “When we talk of a flood it has negative connotations. But what could be negative about an outpouring of all kinds of titles?” In his view the only negative factor might be that the titles are too numerous. “This flood is not a great metaphor, we should find something else.”

Páll says that the Icelandic publishing industry stays alive as long as the tradition of gifting books for Christmas remains so he looks fondly to the holiday season. “We book publishers have nonetheless tried to get away from this mentality for a long time,” Páll explains that it is very stressful to place all bets on the holiday market. Despite the rise of year round sales of paperbacks and books aimed at travellers, Christmas is a true staple of book publishing industry. “Christmas keeps us afloat. It’s stressful but it’s better to live than die,” says Páll. Though it’s nerve wracking season for publishers it is always immensely enjoyable too and the yield is plentiful. “It’s so much fun to publish books, we are always on a bit of a high around this time of year. It also keeps us on track, it is very creative and rewarding work.”

Be prepared, it’s a battle

But what kind of books get the chance to participate in this phenomenon? Páll says that depends both on the author and the nature of the work. “It’s a very conservative market,” he says. Paperbacks don’t make it into Christmas presents and neither do translated works. Icelanders gift each other Icelandic books. “It is important for publishing houses to have variety,” says Páll who emphasises having books in every field. “But we have requirements,” he adds. “It has to be good.” Páll says that if a work moves him or his readers it is very likely to be moving to someone else. “That’s the measure we have. But I cannot only think of my own taste, that won’t do.” Those who are going to work in general book publishing need to publish books that appeal to the public.

New authors have a tougher time than the others and Páll explains that the business has evolved in such a way that writers essentially have to have written a few books before even being eligible to take part in the flood. “On the other hand this is the season when people are thinking about books and buying books so it is regrettable to think: why can’t this one take part too?” That’s why publishers try to prepare new authors for it to be a battle and temper expectations.

Mynd: Mandana Emad

Nothing is certain

Publishing a book can be a long and arduous process and sometimes publication dates need to be postponed for a year or even longer. Páll says authors have various reactions to this and sometimes need some convincing that they’re better off waiting. “Most of the time however we are successful because our shared goal is that the book is as good as it can be.” Of course it is also a financial issue because authors see that their potential income gets postponed by a year. Another option is to publish the book as a paperback in the spring but that mostly applies to crime novels and summer vacation books. 

“What’s changed in this business over the past decade is that there is much more discipline in submissions,” says Páll “In the past people were writing well into October, but that doesn’t happen much anymore.” Now authors try to be practically finished with their work in the spring and often finish a lot earlier than that. “The ideal situation is to reach an agreement so that the work is pretty much finished in the spring.” That way editors have the entire summer to fix and perfect, ruminate over specific sentences, but in the grand scheme of things the work is finished. “It is also just more fun, that way we can have more time to polish and amend which is what me and others in the business find to be the most enjoyable.”

A cause for celebration when someone else publishes a good book

With the emergence of smaller publishing houses, titles in the bookflood have increased and Páll rejoices in the good books from other publishers as the quality of submitted manuscript is on the rise. “I can maybe attribute this trend to the writing, we are getting a lot more good manuscripts. It used to be easier to group the manuscripts into those to be rejected and those to take a better look at. Now the latter pile becomes increasingly large - which is great of course but it creates the issue of us only publishing a fraction of the submitted material unfortunately.” It’s a natural progression for smaller publishers to come into the limelight and Páll sees this as a positive thing. “They are publishing a lot of very good works, for instance Una and Lesstofan,” and they are very necessary for the flourishing of the business.