says michael krger the outgoing head of the munichbased hanser publishing house who has the reputation of being one of germanys last great publishing figures many people no longer view book publishers as a stronghold of culture but merely as a transshipment point for cultural products says his successor jo lendle the current head of the colognebased dumont publishing house even publishing executives not known for their pessimism like kiepenhauer witsch publisher helge malchow expect continued decline in the industry in the coming years others say that sales could even drop by more than 20 percent in the coming years for decades the publishing business was pretty much the same says malchow it is now entering a crisis for the first time and everything will look different after that for years careful calculations allowed a marriage of intellect and money to persevere publishing houses sought to assure they could generate enough bestsellers that could be used to ensure profits and to subsidize the more sophisticated books favored by editors and publishers that also ensured a publishing houses cachet and literary reputation its a system that has guaranteed diversity in the books published for decades the publishing industry produces more than 90000 new books a year in germany the suhrkamp publishing group alone publishes about 460 new titles each written edited and expensively produced with an enormous amount of thought going into them its the very culture that suhrkamp is famous for in germany but it also sells only 500 copies of some titlesthe dead writers society with this approach the company has about 30 million 39 million in annual sales and a work force of about 110 employees its overhead is high compared with other publishing houses especially in light of a wretched return on sales estimated at about 05 percent a significant portion of profits is not derived from new releases but from the sale of books on the socalled backlist bestsellers by the likes of hermann hesse bertolt brecht and max frisch this dead writerss society is like a life insurance policy for suhrkamp but once an author has been dead 70 years the works enter into the public domain hesse died 51 years ago and brecht has been dead for 57 years in other words these revenue sources are finite nevertheless suhrkamps reputation remains unbroken three suhrkamp titles were on the shortlist for the german book prize last fall and one of the best books rainald goetzs johann holtrop wasnt even on the list but as illustrious as all of this seems it still doesnt do much for the bottom line the past from which suhrkamp and other publishing houses are just awakening was a luxury situation that depended largely on one circumstance that success was not possible without publishers without publishers readers would have nothing to read and without publishers authors couldnt be authors thats changing nowadays publishers are suddenly expected to explain and even prove their achievements and how they make money it is