This week, Vrij Nederland is launching the book: Don’t always choose the side of power. At the same time, Follow the Money sells the film rights to their book Sywerts millions. And De Correspondent announces its first foreign translation. Publishing books is proving to be a good publishing strategy for more and more journalistic brands. What are the advantages of books compared to (online) articles? And how do you go about publishing books?
When Ward Wijndelts started at Vrij Nederland, several editors and collaborators were writing books, often based on their stories for Vrij Nederland. Those books were all published by publishers outside WPG, the publisher of Vrij Nederland. “At the time I thought: what if we publish those books ourselves? Vrij Nederland has a rich history in book publishing. More than a hundred titles have been published by Uitgeverij Vrij Nederland in the past,” says Wijndelts.
The book: Don’t always side with the power will be released on June 15, 2022 and is a plea for better parliamentary journalism that is free from insiders, prejudice and favoritism. The book was written by Kim van Keken and Dieuwertje Kuijpers. After the summer, Vrij Nederland expects to publish three more new books.
Logical extension of the brand
For Vrij Nederland, books are a logical extension of the brand. Wijndelts: “We want to provide fuel for your opinion and ensure that the major issues of our time are discussed. These issues sometimes require a firm approach, which can be expressed in a series of stories. And sometimes they also lead to a book.”
Ward Wijndelts thinks the carrier of the story – when you think of UN you think of a magazine – is of secondary importance. “We want you to read, listen, watch, experience us. Through which channels? I like to leave that to the customer. We now also offer our product, quality journalism, in this way. Each book is also recorded, and you can of course buy it as an e-book. That’s how it should be as far as I’m concerned.”
Follow the Money sells movie rights
Follow the money has published two books this year. De Blauwe Fabel, about KLM and Sywerts Miljoenen, about Van Lienden’s face masks deal. Both books topped the bestsellers list.
At Follow the Money, the champagne will be uncorked this week. The publisher sold the movie rights to the book: Sywerts Millions. “We also sell the option for the fictional film adaptation to the film company Levitate,” explains publisher Jan-Willem Sanders. “That would never have been possible without first releasing the book. So books also open new doors.”
A wider audience for FTM
Sanders is very pleased with the success of both books. “By publishing books, we can reach an even wider audience for our studies than we do online.”
He says that the FTM authors can also provide much more background in a book. “Long-term files come into their own better when written down in a book,” says Sanders. “Our journalists do a lot of research within their files and they regularly come across interesting things that they can’t all put online. A book offers that space.”
Long shelf life of stories
Books also have a longer lifespan than magazines. Wijndelts: “Some good stories deserve a longer shelf life. You have to give those stories a book. Because you know that a subject will be around for years to come, because you know that a book publication often generates a different kind of attention than a series of magazine articles. It is easier for book authors to join a talk show, books are reviewed, books are in bookstores, books are nice.”
Update files online
Jan-Willem Sander thinks the great thing about books is that they produce work of lasting value. “Our book about KLM, The Blue Fable, is a good example of this. Author Ties Joosten outlines how the airline has been dependent on state aid since it was founded more than 100 years ago and he explains why the business model is unsustainable. If you want to understand the very current issues surrounding Schiphol and KLM, you should read this book.”
The book has made an impact, says Sanders. “Various columnists and articles have recently used De Blauwe Fabel to interpret the news. Members of parliament also stood with the book Sywerts Miljoenen in their hand during the debate about the mouth caps deal. And soon the film about the story will follow.”
Downside to books
Is there also a disadvantage to booking? Yes, says Sanders. “Obviously, with new developments, we can update our online files faster than publishing a new print. You could say that online articles have a longer shelf life in that sense than books.
The Correspondent across the border
The correspondent has been successfully publishing books for three years. One of the most famous successes is the book Most people are good by Rutger Bregman, of which more than 545,000 copies were sold. The book has also been translated into 41 countries. “Many of the developments described in our books don’t stop at the border. That is why we are happy that our books are published abroad,” writes Milou Klein Lankhorst, publisher of De Correspondent on the website. “And although our books have been translated into many languages, we have never published a translated book ourselves. But that is about to change. We want to publish a translation from English simply because it has blown our socks off. The book is called: What We Owe The Future by William MacAskill, a great thinker in the field of effective altruism. His latest book is a plea for the high-profile ‘long-termism’: the view that positively influencing the long-term future is an important moral priority of our time.” The Correspondent expects to publish the book in 2023.
Sell to own supporters
The 37,000 members of follow the Money are very important to the success of the book publishing company. Sanders explains: “Classic book publishers are in fact B2B companies. Their customers are bookstores and online retailers, such as Bol.com. But not the reader.
Readers immediately know what to expect from our books; qualitative in-depth investigative journalism that is well written. Readers can follow authors and topics on our own platform and via newsletters, and we notice that these followers form a good basis for the first sales weeks.”
FTM authors have already been approached by publishers
Publishing books was a logical step for Follow the money in expanding their brand. Sanders: “Our authors have also been approached by classic book publishers with the offer of a book contract. But then you get the situation that an FTM author is going to write a book about a subject that he or she has already researched for us. Much of the content has already been published online with us. It then makes much more sense to publish stories themselves, especially if authors already have that ambition.”
External book editor
Ward Wijndelts works for the books of Vrij Nederland with a freelance book editor, Willemijn Lindhout, who also supervises authors of De Correspondent. “She taught me that a book can easily arise from journalistic stories. But it helps enormously if you approach the story from the beginning as a book, rather than writing a series of articles that then have to be molded into a book. Then you have too much overlap. You want a solid, clear story with a lot of coherence,” Wijndelts explains.
Publisher friends
It helps Vrij Nederland to be part of WPG, a publisher that houses various book publishers in addition to magazines. Commercially, Wijndelts is advised by Joost van den Ossenblok. He is the non-fiction publisher at AW Bruna, one of the publishing houses at WPG. “That collaboration is very nice. I can fire any book idea at him, and he accurately assesses whether it has commercial potential. I only offer the author a contract when we both feel that the content and commercial opportunities are promising.”
Wijndelts uses the standard author contracts that are used by most publishers. The distribution of books, ebooks and audiobooks all goes through the Centraal Boekhuis. Vrij Nederland is represented at the purchasing fairs by colleagues from AW Bruna.
Arrange everything yourself
Follow the Money uses its own contracts in which the advances and royalties are higher than with the standard contracts. They also do all the distribution themselves. And for logistics there is a collaboration with the Centraal Boekhuis. Sanders: “As a company, we know very well how best to reach our readers with our articles. We can also use the same methods for the sale of books. We also do the contact with the bookshops ourselves. This was completely new to us, but it helps a lot that the stores already knew Follow the Money. As a result, the threshold for purchasing books was much lower.