04 Aug Marie Vinter on Danish Publishing & Starting Vinter Forlag (S2 E19)
By Marleen Seegers, Co-Founder of 2 Seas Agency and Host of The Make Books Travel Podcast
August 4, 2021
Marie Vinter © Piet Simonsen
Welcome to another episode of the Make Books Travel podcast! Today I’m excited to welcome my first guest from Scandinavia, Marie Vinter from Denmark. Marie is founder and publisher of Vinter Forlag which she started last fall.
Among the different Scandinavian markets, Danish publishing has seen many changes in recent years. Imprints were discontinued, publishers merged or were bought by publishing groups, streaming saw an impressive and quite aggressive growth, and several new publishing houses were created, both independently like Vinter Forlag, and under the umbrella of publishing groups.
We’re taking a deep dive into the Danish publishing market, and we’ll discuss the impact of the pandemic of course, but we also talk about how Marie came to found her own publishing house (spoiler alert: it involves one of my favorite authors!), the rise of audio and much more…
Here are some of the questions I asked Marie:
- How did you end up founding your own company?
- At what point did you decide to go for it?
- What were the main challenges to get started?
- How did the Danish book market fare during the pandemic?
- We’ve witnessed quite a big shakeup of the Danish publishing market these last few years, with the launch of several new publishing houses, including yours. How, and why did this happen according to you?
- The audio market in Scandinavia is growing, does this also have an impact on the literary fiction genre or are audiobook listeners mostly interested in more commercial titles?
- Is Amazon, or perhaps another big online retailer, dominating online book sales?
Show Notes
- Marie’s book recommendations:
– The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
– Living Autobiography Book Series by Deborah Levy
- About Marie:
Marie Vinter’s publishing career spans more than 20 years working with both bestseller-driven publishers and smaller literary publishers. She began at Borgen Publishers, an independent art-loving publishing house, where she stayed for 10 years, first as editor of poetry and French literature, and then as editorial director and co-founder of commercial imprint S&S (publishing The Devil Wears Prada). From 2014-2019 Marie was senior editor at Rosinante, one of Denmark’s leading publishing houses, building their list and acquiring bestselling authors, such as Sally Rooney, Rachel Cusk, Maggie Nelson, Ottessa Moshfegh, Rebecca Solnit, Zadie Smith, and Leila Slimani.
In 2020, Marie founded Vinter Forlag, a new independent publishing house dedicated to translated literary fiction and essays. She has taken an active part in the literary scene as board member, festival organizer, co-founder of a magazine and a vibrant live scene, and is always on the lookout for new talented, female voices.
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