... Venjin He and Heero Miketta on Xin, publishing, principles and German
... Venjin He and Heero Miketta on Xin, publishing, principles and German
: Youre right. Xin is totally Chinese. I am originally from South-China and even though I am now a European Union citizen from Finland, I wanted to bring in the values and beauty of Asian culture. Xin means heart in Mandarin Chinese and represents emotions, soul, mind... everything you need to be sincerely passionate about literature.
Xin Publishing is an imprint of Xin He Limited in London.
: The world is full of publishers. But the world is also full of restaurants, and still new ones open success depends on the quality of your food. We have some great dishes, and we didn´t want to give them to the established, big players on the market. The publishing world is about to change big deal, with a huge range of new possibilities, this is the time to add something new.
We are the one with this great Fantasy-world: Isrogant. We are proud providers of what we call Realistic Fantasy. You know, where you find fairies but it is possible for them to have bad teeth. Isrogant is a magical world full of mysteries, but it is also a realistic world that already has passed the Age of Enlightenment. Sword-swingers are existing, but not dominating.
Isrogant is not our only project, but for now the one we focus on. Especially in the English-speaking market, we have many other books going to the market these days. For example, Heero published one of his Martial Arts-books with Xin Publishing. It has been successful in Germany before, now we are going to conquer the UK- and US-market.
But you asked for motives. There are two main things: New authors and Europe. We want to open the door for young authors, and we want to cross borders. Both is a hard task, since our team is small and we are completely relying on freelance support. But that´s the goal.
: Even though my name has been many times mistaken for Finnish, I am German. It is very simple. When Venjin founded her Publishing company last year, Isrogant was what I could bring. Gerhard and me have been working on it for many years, and I have to admit: I like to see it published this way. Xin Publishing is small, but this way we keep the complete influence on how the world develops.
Were at our best writing in our mother tongue and of course would be happy to have our countrymen and family to be the first to read our books.
And yes, an English translation is scheduled. It´s just a matter of resources.
: Europe is growing together, and London is the biggest melting pot in Europe. I think a Chinese-Finnish person publishing German books from England kind of fits very well. Germany has the biggest book market in the continent, and with Gerhard and Heero we have two great German writers. There will soon be more, though. UK has a maximum availability for lingual resources in Europe and can offer us professional freelance translators. Same goes for proofreaders.
: Things are kept lean, fast, and efficient. We have outsourced most of the physical production such as the actual printing, binding, storage and distribution to local partners in Germany, the UK and the US (and probably in Finland). That gives us the time and space to focus on the actual publishing and the writing of our authors. So far the head of the German speaking parts of Xin Publishing somehow is me. I admit that this is not the best solution for the future, it keeps me away from writing if I work as an editor (Lektor) for Xin Publishing. And of course I can´t do this for my own books.
: Our main genre is Fantasy, followed by general fiction. Isrogant is our main core. We step out these lines from time to time though, as for some Martial Arts and travel books, there also is a children´s book that we couldn´t say no to, because it´s simpley lovely.
: As for Isrogant: We are working hard for the next books right now. The first reader and the first novel are on the market now, and already readers demand to read the sequels okay, our own fault for publishing the first part of a trilogy first.
Gerhard works on the Role Playing Game, too. We have a wonderful painter in Lithuania who is currently developing the first Isrogant comic, this will be great! The future looks exciting from here and we have received a lot of signs of interest from many different directions. That is very encouraging. In this very moment I am a bit scared about the huge feedback to our first press releases. There are a LOT of authors out there, with fabulous ideas, and I start being afraid we might disappoint many of them since our resources are not as big as the ones of established major players.
: We search for innovation, mixture, excitement and quality. We would like our authors to know what they write about, preferably about things theyve been through themselves. This might sound funny in the association of Fantasy stories, but in the end many situations, characters they all have to come from somewhere, right?
: Yes. We have already made a lot of research on the eBook market and this is one example where being international has widened our options. Audio books will have their moment for us, but that is not anytime soon.
: Thank you very much!
Who are Venjin He, Heero Miketta and Gerhard Ludwig?
