For eight years, Jan Heller has been at the helm of AMU Press, also known as the Publishing House of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (‘NAMU’) whose purpose on the book market is quite unique – to ensure that specialised books are available even if they are of interest to just a narrow range of readers such as theatre and film makers and media scholars. NAMU’s edition portfolio includes books so specialised they are released in circulations as low as 150 copies – or, as Heller says, in homeopathic quantities. They are by no means boring tomes with tedious texts, though – NAMU makes sure their graphic designs are ingenious, fresh and occasionally a tiny bit crazy.
Many print publications are transformed into an online format straight away these days. Are you going in this direction?
This is a big topic for us. I often witness displays of technological optimism, as if online future was inevitable. This is not the case. One of the reasons is that, when it comes to scientific publications, no one really knows what online publishing of scientific papers will look like. I like to mention this story, whether or not it is appropriate for the occasion: an Oxford University Press representative spoke at a conference in London that was discussing the most avantgarde technologies, blockchain publishing and so on. Holding a printed book in his hand, he slammed it on the lectern and said: “That is all nice and well, but this is what a scholarly monograph looks like, and will for a long time to come.”
This conservative view is the reverse side of said techno-optimism. There are many reasons for this, such as vulnerability of data in online space where you have no control over it at all. American scholar, literary critic and philosopher Martin Puchner says that we must print anything and everything that we want to bestow on future generations. In addition, the Amazon case shows that even an already published text can be altered in an e-book reader. I’m referring to the case where a politically incorrect term in an Agatha Christie book was automatically replaced in all readers. This is also why NAMU will carefully choose its future path to digitalisation. At this point, we know that, as a public university, we will take open access route, i.e. unpaid, free access. We already have an idea of what it should be across the school, but NAMU is still a book publisher, and as such it is conservative.
Do you ever get requests from students to make a book available online?
It is good to always watch how students and other book consumers vote with their wallets. If I look at our official e-book sales figures, those are individual units sold annually, though the sales rose slightly to lower tens during the covid pandemic. For perspective, we sell some 7,000 printed books annually.
What genres are the best sellers?
The best sellers are translations of various compendia such as Film History by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. These remain at the top of the chart for years. Then there are original monographs by domestic authors. We speak of best sellers when we sell 300 copies per year. Michal Viewegh would probably laugh at these figures because his books sell in tens of thousands.
With that said, your best sellers such as Film History by Bordwell and Thompson are often in short supply. Film History currently sells for more than CZK 4,000 on Knihobot. Do you respond to these developments in any way? Do you take this into consideration when planning reprints?
Of course we do. We make sure to plan reprints with respect to demand on the market and across our school as well as to the economic situation of our publishing house. As far as Film History is concerned, I have good news for our readers. Since the Czech translation was published, the original publisher has released several reworked editions; I believe the sixth version is out now. This current version will be the basis for our new translated edition slated for release early next year. Aside from reflecting the authors’ own modifications to the original version, we will also do a thorough expert revision of the translation, sentence by sentence. This book will remain the standard of reference not only for FAMU students for a very long time to come, so it might as well be correct and reliable.
Who makes the decisions on what you will release, and based on what criteria?
We employ a two-stage approval process. It begins with a suggestion for NAMU to release a specific book, which literally anyone can submit. The suggestions are discussed by the editorial committees of our three Faculties, and various titles are approved or rejected for publication based on these expert discussions. I attend these meetings in person, though my vote only has an advisory capacity. The second approval stage is in the competence of the extended AMU editorial board, which meets twice a year to approve our house’s entire publishing plan.
Your house was founded in 1995 as an edition centre, releasing primarily textbooks and grant project output. Are you still regarded primarily as a textbook publisher, or has your scope grown?
When I was taking over at the publishing house in 2017, its publishing plan had already included monograph translations, original releases and also artistic monographs prepared mostly by teachers and other people involved with various AMU studios who publish their artistic output this way. These days, we print books by experts on media science, cinema, music… and they don’t necessarily have to come from AMU. I am pleased to say that we publish works by authors from Palacký University in Olomouc as well as certain institutes of the Academy of Sciences. They have chosen us because they like the way we take care of books, the special graphic treatment we give them, and so on. As far as translations are concerned, we release books relevant for each field. For example, we have this ‘grey zone’ of monographs that we all learned about yet nobody has really read them thoroughly.
What do you mean by special graphic treatment?
We love working with graphic designers associated, for example, with the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design who pursue somewhat more creative approaches to book graphic design. Our authors, who are in touch with the artistic environment, will often come up with their own design ideas for their books. I call this ‘breaking the rules creatively’. You can see this in our books. I can give you this image metaphor, if you will: a gentleman wearing a conservative blazer enters a barroom, unbuttons and opens it up a bit, and you get a glimpse of a beautiful, colourful, and a tiny bit crazy liner. This is our way of thinking, and not only in terms of graphic design but also the overall appearance of scientific monographs, including typography and the actual medium, that is to say deciding whether it’s appropriate to use illustrations, comic book elements and such… Simply put, we try to step out of purely textual, rectangular linearity.
What are the circulations of the various books you release?
We are talking homeopathic quantities, even within the context of the Czech book market. Our circulations range from 150 to maybe 1,000 copies, and we release approximately 25 titles annually.
Do you receive funding from AMU’s budget?
Yes, we do, and this is why I keep praising AMU leadership wherever I go. Each university supports its publishing house, and AMU gives us truly excellent terms. We wouldn’t survive one month without its support. The purpose of a university publisher is not to generate profit, but to market the texts that the school believes should be on the market. They may not sell out right away, but books are not fast-moving goods – they can easily stay on the market for five or ten years.
Who are the readers of your books?
They are students – though not only students by far – since we publish required academic literature. We have also built a customer base among the expert community; we bring our books to industry festivals such as the Summer Film School in Uherské Hradiště, the Czech amateur theatre festival in Hronov, and various musicology conferences.
You also organise workshops. What is their purpose?
One of our colleagues does this. She is a creative spirit capable of thinking it through and making it happen. When we want contact with an audience, just putting up a booth with books is not enough – it’s a good idea to offer programme to go with it. We have organised workshops, stage reading sessions, film screenings, improvised dancing performances and what not. We can come up with some ideas of our own, sometimes we take cues from the author or originator of the book, and more often than not this will result in a crazy idea – but that’s why we are here: to make it happen together.
What is it like to be the director of such a specific publishing house?
It’s great. Firstly, this is thanks to our people – NAMU genuinely has a great vibe. Over time, we have formed a team of people whose careers with us span from almost 30 years to less than a month. We get along really well, and the people here are the reason why I love going to work every morning.
What do you consider your biggest achievement, and what didn’t go that well?
I am the happiest when people who are genuinely at the top in their fields want to work with NAMU and release their books through us. What I find difficult is switching between multiple varied tasks that come up unexpectedly. By this, I mean everything from financial calculations and editorial work to explaining to authors what publishing books is really about, because their ideas can sometimes be really at odds with reality. Then there are details such as the fact that our team is small – a grand total of seven employees – so when a book shipment arrives, I put on my gloves and get to work.
As you said, you are paid from AMU’s budget. Can your editors tend towards being more lenient with authors from among AMU teachers at times, or are they perhaps afraid to alter their texts substantially or return them to be reworked?
This does not happen. We provide our authors with the best professional service we can. We make their texts into books, and editorial care is the focal point of our work. In turn, this requires a certain amount of trust on their part. We are a publishing house, not just a production agency where we would just take a manuscript and have it printed right away, without putting any work into it. This is not how a proper publishing house works.
Do authors ever wish to publish texts of lesser quality with you only to meet the criteria for grant project output?
This is out of the question because all publications, including ones supported by internal grants, are subject to approval of the editorial committee. Then the manuscript must be edited – our editors read the text and suggest changes. And then there is the review process with scientific publications. The purpose of this is to ensure that the publications we release to the market are of good quality and have the parameters of a scientific text. Reviewers must come from outside AMU. There may be authors who are not entirely open to discussing their texts, and when this is the case, it is my task to explain that the relationship between the author and the publisher is a partnership, that the two parties share the resources and the benefits – which are not just financial by far – at a reasonable ratio, and that they bear the responsibility for the outcome together.
What are your plans for NAMU for the future?
Digitalisation is obviously a big topic. We cannot avoid it. Other than that, we have no ‘cosmic’ goals. I think what we have managed to build is adequate to our institution’s magnitude and impact.