What does it mean to be a reflecting mirror of society and the cultural field you work in?
And what happens to a publishing house's identity when it has, by its own admission, no house style?
For this episode of Book Making as an Art Form, I spoke with Eelco van Welie, director and publisher of nai010 publishers, a Rotterdam-based publishing house behind over 2,200 titles in architecture, art, photography, and design.
Under his leadership since 2005, nai010 has become one of the most internationally orientated independent publishers in the Netherlands.
This episode is dedicated to Esther Scholten, long-time director of the Best Dutch Book Designs, who passed away this summer. It was originally planned as a conversation with her, marking 100 years of the competition. I'm grateful to Eelco for stepping into that space.
We trace how NAi Publishers, born from the Netherlands Architecture Institute, merged with the Rotterdam design publisher 010 to become nai010. "Rotterdam style," as Eelco puts it, with no fuss about the name.
We talk about the moment, over a decade ago, when digitisation seemed set to make books obsolete, and how that pushed nai010 to ask fundamental questions about its purpose. Out of that came their guiding idea: "from print run to reach," the belief that a book's real reach comes from everything built around it.
As Eelco puts it: "I think it's the function of a publishing house to be, on the one hand, like a reflecting mirror of society and the cultural field in which we work."
We also talk about nai010's evolving position on AI, as both a tool that can help, and a force publishing has a duty to guard against.
A generous conversation about what it means to keep betting on the book as a physical, meaningful, and accountable object.
Images: Anastasija Piroženko & Birte Lemmen
Photography for the books you make
A book’s life beyond its print run also depends on how people first encounter it, including through the photographs that introduce it online. Alongside hosting Book Making as an Art Form, I photograph books for publishers, designers, artists and cultural institutions, showing the paper, binding and details that make each publication distinctive.
For those publishing several titles each year, The Book Photographer Circle offers an ongoing photography partnership built around your publishing programme.
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