Sixth Edition of the Author-Publisher Dialogues with Geert Mak and Léonor de Récondo

The Author-Publisher Dialogues is an annual event, organised by the Federation of European Publishers at the European Parliament, where authors and publishers talk about the true nature of their relationship.

The sixth edition was sponsored again by MEP Mary Honeyball (UK, S&D) and took place on Wednesday 23 November 2016 in Strasbourg. The event was successful and extremely well attended by the MEPs and their collaborators.

MEP Mary Honeyball - © Photos - Roberta Balduzzi

Participants shared insights of Dutch author Geert Mak and his publisher Mizzi van der Pluijm (Atlas Contact) collaboration. Mizzi reminded that the role played by the publishers is «to lay the cards on the table and encourage discussions». Geert compared publishers to «football coaches», «social workers and psychologists», bringing together at the same time a good taste, intuition and sense of business". Questioned about the future, considered that as far as «there will be someone who wants to write», publishers will always be needed and Geert explained that the e-book is still experimental, whereas «the book is a vector of dreams; reading a book is like driving a good car».

Geert Mak and Mizzi van der Pluijm - © Photos - Roberta Balduzzi

The second tandem author-publisher was composed by the publisher Sabine Wespieser (Sabine Wespieser Editeur) and her author Léonor de Récondo. 

Léonor de Récondo and Sabine Wespieser - © Photos - Roberta Balduzzi

Sabine Wespieser pointed out that her job consists in «making an emotional choice», «accepting the responsibility to find the largest possible number of readers for the authors». According to Léonor de Recondo, «a book is something magic»; «writing a book is emotional; to do it freely, you need to feel confident, and to be understood ». Furthermore, Sabine Wespieser declared that «booksellers are our first allies inside a bookshop, where we can find what we were not looking for, in contrast with what you can find on Amazon».

Léonor de Récondo and Sabine Wespieser © Photos - Roberta Balduzzi

Both authors and publishers have brilliantly demonstrated that publishing is about interaction and that this special author-publisher’s relationship is essential in the creative process. They have insisted on the importance to have a balance copyright to support their joint works and their ambition to find audiences for their books. They have reminded the importance to support bookshops that are a wonderful place to discover new books and authors.

We look forward to the seventh edition which will take place in Brussels in November 2017.

Watch all the photos of the event here. © Photos - Roberta Balduzzi

With the support of SOFIA:

Journalist and historian Geert Mak was born in 1946. He started in Amsterdam as editor of the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, worked for years at the foreign desk of the VPRO broadcasting company and as city-reporter of the NRC Handelsblad daily. As from 1992 he has dedicated himself increasingly to the writing of books. ’In Europe’, his voyage through the continent and through the twentieth-century Europe, became a classic all over Europe, with 350.000 copies sold in the Netherlands and translations in German, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, French, English and Polish. In 2008, he was awarded with the Leipziger Buchpreis für Europäischen Verständigung. His books are translated in more than twenty languages.

Born in 1976, Léonor de Récondo performed all over Europe as a baroque violinist. In October 2010, she published her first novel "La Grâce du cyprès blanc", published by Le Temps qu’il fait. With Sabine Wespieser Editeur, she published "Rêves oubliés" (2012) and "Pietra vivain" (2013). "Amours", published in January 2015, won the Prix des Libraires 2015 and the Grand Prix RTL/Lire 2015.

For more information, contact rbalduzzi@fep-fee.eu or call us at 003227701110