A Good Mix for Young Readers

Mix is the newest publishing house within Bonnierförlagen. The target group is readers 17-27 years old, making Mix the largest publisher in Sweden to focus on crossover literature: books for young adults (YA) and adults alike.

“We hope to minimize the gap we see between adult and YA books,” says Titti Persson, senior editor at Mix. “We’ve also seen that this type of literature is selling more in the U.S. But there it’s a lot of crossover between children’s and YA books that adults are reading. We want to come at it from the other direction.”

Catharina Wrååk, editorial director for Mix, says she joined the team because it was on offer she couldn’t refuse.

“As a publisher I’ve long had two dreams: to work with a digital list and to have the possibility of highlighting the short story format,” says Wrååk. “I’m convinced there’s a lot of interest that has been underappreciated. It’s a matter of reaching readers.”

Mix will publish both newly written books and reprints, classics and current authors, Swedish and foreign, print and digital. The first print book, Isaac Marion’s zombie novel Warm Bodies (Varma kroppar in the translation by Kristoffer Leandoer), is planned for a spring 2012 release. After that, the publisher will put out between six and 12 print books per year.

The publisher will also be testing a new concept with digital short stories. Some 70 short stories will be published before the end of 2011, with some 40 available from online book retailers Adlibris and Bokus starting in mid September. The short stories will be divided by genre, by writers such as Johan Unenge, Malin Isaksson, Johan Theorin, HP Lovecraft, Aase Berg, Alejandro Leiva Wenger and Edgar Allan Poe.

“The hope is that we’ll be creating the literature of the future,” says Wrååk. “The written word is more important than ever, but the reading and writing have moved to a new room – and publishers and authors need to find it. Mix will be a fast-moving publisher with the possibility of trying and testing, with a clearly young and aware target group.”

Wrååk and Persson have long experience in publishing and are both authors as well. You can read an interview with Wrååk at the Bonnier Carlsen blog (in Swedish). And you can read more about Persson here (in Swedish as well).