Information for Editors

  • The selection process for books that we review in NBG is entirely independent.
  • For each round of reviews, we start with approximately 150 titles. At our first editorial meeting we select around seventy of these to send to our experienced team of reviewers.
  • Our reviewers are translators, academics, editors and agents – all extremely well-read and with a good feel for the market.
  • At our second editorial meeting, our committee discusses the reviews and selects 20-30 titles for the issue.
  • Our Editorial Committee comprises some regular members, including translators, literary agents and booksellers, as well as representatives from the Austrian, German and Swiss cultural institutes in London.
  • Different guest members are invited to join the committee each time, and include publishers, literary agents, booksellers and translators.

The Editorial Committee for our 40th issue, July 2016

  • We have juries in both London and the United States. The American jury consists of literary scouts, editors, critics and booksellers, as well members of the German Book Office and Goethe-Institut in New York.
  • Our only guiding principle when selecting the books is quality: we are looking for outstanding works and voices, books which should have a chance even in the tricky British and American market and internationally.
  • All fiction books featured in New Books in German in the past five years and bought by an English-language publisher are guaranteed a grant. Non-Fiction books by German and Swiss authors are guaranteed a grant

If you would be interested in finding out more about the background of the journal, or have questions about its work today and its ideas for the future, please contact the Project Director, Sarah Harrington Hemens, at: nbg-london@goethe.de

 

US Jury