Business shifting from Asia to Europe
A huge increase in interest in photography has led to a rise in the publication and sale of photography books in recent years. Print broker Marteinn Jónasson provides insight into his work in the latest episode of Augnablik í iðnaði (A Moment in the Industry).
Marteinn Jónasson is a business graduate with diverse experience in publishing. He ran his own publishing company, worked in newspaper publishing, and at the magazine publisher Birtíngur, but a turning point came when he started working at the printing company Oddi in 2007. “I then moved to the other side of the table and have been on that side ever since.” He took on the task of managing sales of printed works in the American market in 2009 and moved to the United States in early 2010. “I worked for Oddi for the first few years, and then I founded my own print brokerage company,” he says, explaining that the reason was that Oddi stopped producing hardcover books. “I had to move the printing to Eastern Europe; this was in 2016-2017.”
Icelandic publishers are experts
This was a niche in the market that has, in fact, always revolved around specialized bookbinding. A very large part of the Icelandic market focuses on text-based works, novels, and the like. Few photography and art books are published in Iceland. These are very specialized works. My clients and Oddi's were very rarely large publishing houses; they were mostly galleries, museums, companies publishing anniversary books or special editions. Often, the clients are unfamiliar with print materials and need a lot of help; they don't know what a signature or an endpaper is.” He says the Icelandic market is completely different, and Icelandic publishers are experts in book production. “There's a big difference between dealing with them and with designers who may have designed brochures and websites but never a book.”
Social media expands the market
Marteinn has established himself quite well in the niche as a print broker for photography and art books. “What happens with the advent of Instagram and the fact that we all have a camera in our pocket is that general interest in photography increases. There is a plethora of images online, and the need for photography books grows—the need to highlight stories and to curate good content. The publishing and sale of photography books have increased.”
“You can have any color you want, as long as it's black”
Marteinn prints widely across Europe and says he now gets clients who previously printed in Asia due to shipping problems on that continent and higher costs. He says the advantages of printing in Iceland were the expertise of the professionals at the printing company and the flexibility offered. “Some of my clients get crazy ideas about bookbinding. At Oddi, they never said, 'This isn't possible.' They asked, 'Okay, how do we do this?' This is difficult in Eastern Europe. It's like they sometimes say in Bosnia: You can have any color you want for an old Ford car, as long as it's black! There are fine printing companies that can do something in that direction for you, but everything is much more cumbersome,” says Marteinn, adding that a buyer of printed works needs to have extensive knowledge of book printing and bookbinding to get the best service for the client. Listen to more about book printing in Europe, the importance of specialized knowledge, rising paper prices, and the competitive position of Icelandic printing companies in the conversation between Grímur Kolbeinsson and Marteinn Jónasson.
