Sheridan Marshall interviews Katharina Picandet, Rights Manager at Edition Nautilus, discussing the publishing house’s unique history and ethos, the challenges for contemporary publishing, and the stand-out titles on Nautilus’s list.
Sheridan Marshall: Edition Nautilus is fifty years old – Happy Birthday! Please can you tell us a little about the history of the publishing house?
Katharina Picandet: Thank you! The publishing house was founded more by accident than design, as it says in our official history. It all began when Lutz Schulenburg and the Frenchman Pierre Gallissaires started translating texts arising from the events of May ’68 that they themselves wanted to read and published them in German. Hanna Mittelstädt joined a short time later and the first ‘real’ books were published in 1973. So the publishing house had already existed for a while when someone pointed out in 1993 that Nautilus must have been twenty years old – since 1994, as a kind of belated April Fool’s joke, we have always celebrated on 1 April in years ending in ‘4’. Like a distinguished lady of a certain age, we make ourselves look somewhat younger than we are!
Initially, Schulenburg, Gallissaires and Mittelstädt published contemporary prose and poetry as well as texts by Dadaists, Surrealists and other forgotten outsiders alongside writings by council communists, anarchists and situationists. From 1980, the first autobiographies (by Jacques Mesrine and Charles Mingus), prose by young German-language authors, and crime novels were added to the programme. The edition of Franz Jung’s complete works was conducted alongside this and completed in 1997, after sixteen years and with fourteen volumes. But political non-fiction, fiction and crime fiction have been integral parts of the programme since the 1980s.
Pierre Gallissaires returned to France after a few years. Lutz Schulenburg died very suddenly on 1 May 2013, when the publishing house consisted of seven people. There was a transitional period, after which Hanna Mittelstädt handed over the publishing house to the employees in 2016, and since then we have been running the publishing house as a five-person collective.
How have you celebrated half a century of publishing achievements?
In March 2024 we had a reception at the Leipzig Book Fair and a smaller party in the city of Leipzig. Then in April there was a larger celebration in Hamburg, with a stage programme and live music, which was very nice. In 2023, ten years after Lutz Schulbenburg’s death, we published Hanna Mittelstadt’s ‘publishing house autobiography’, Arbeitet nie! (‘Never Work!’), about the first forty years of Nautilus. It was essentially a kind of anniversary publication. It is a very personal book, including a festive retrospective on all the highlights, big successes and flops, court cases, prizes, major projects, publishing adventures, etc.
Can you give us an overview of the list at Edition Nautilus? What is distinctive about Nautilus’ list as compared to that of other publishing houses?
The roots, the influences of the founding trio are still the same and we think you can see that. But obviously society has changed a lot since the seventies, including the book world: reading circles of left-wing students, university bookshops as a source of all kinds of knowledge, that was the humus on which many publishers and bookshops founded at the time were able to thrive, but of course that has changed dramatically. Books are no longer the primary source of political information; the revolution has become a little more distant in the imagination. Nevertheless, our ‘Nautilus Pamphlets’ series, which has been around for over twenty years, has been quite successful. It contains important discourse material, analyses and interventions on current sociopolitical debates, in German and internationally. There are books on feminist issues, racism, colonialism, urbanism, the world of work, disability, domestic violence… you name it! We have bought some titles from publishers such as La Fabrique or La Découverte in France, from publishers such as Verso or Pluto in the UK or AK Press in the USA or, conversely, licensed them to them, which perhaps describes the profile of the series quite well.
But in addition to the pamphlets, there are also biographies and autobiographies, e.g. by Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Nestor Machno, as well as political non-fiction outside this series. We also continue to publish fiction: global, political and poetic literature that inspires us. In crime fiction, we maintain the tradition of political noir, whether in historical crime novels or very contemporary political thrillers.
I would say that the biggest difference compared to other publishing houses with a similar programme is our collective structure, in that we try to live the political programme that we bring to the discourse ourselves. Certainly, some of our decisions take longer than in publishing houses where a publisher boss simply decides and everyone else follows instructions. And it certainly takes practice to work collectively – we never vote by majority, for example, but discuss until a real consensus is reached. But it is certainly worth it: we all know quite a lot about the others’ areas of expertise and can support and represent one another if necessary.
In crisis situations, such as after Lutz Schulenburg’s sudden death or during the pandemic-related closures, it was a huge advantage that basically everyone knows everything – not everyone has everything in their head, but everyone knows how to access all the information. The fact that we are so practiced at taking different wishes, needs, strengths and preferences into account, which is basically part of everyday life, is worth so much and an oasis of the right way to live amidst so much wrongdoing, I would say. We are probably far too spoiled for the normal capitalist business model by now and would struggle to work anywhere else…
Which Nautilus authors should we have on our ‘to-read’ lists for 2025?
All of them, of course! But to name just a few from the list: Jochen Schimmang has now published eight books (novels and collections of short stories) with us, so anyone who doesn’t know him should definitely look him up. It is not for nothing that he is described as the chronicler of the Federal Republic of Germany and has won so many prizes. His writing also has a great deal of contemporary and local colour which would appeal to an international audience. Or the historical crime novels by Robert Brack, all based on true cases, with the investigator Klara Schindler – much better than Babylon Berlin! We also did three books with Sven Recker, very different ones; the last one, Der Afrik (‘Afric’), is also based on a true story, the forced emigration from Baden to Algeria. Hardly anyone knows it, it is really interesting!
Which new books are you most excited about so far this year?
In 2025 we have a great collection of stories by Katharina Bendixen, who already has a good reputation as an author of books for children and young people. Here she has changed sides, so to speak, and produced a very impressive collection of stories about parenthood. We have called it ‘Parental Prose’; the book is so special that it needs its own genre designation. And in the non-fiction section, we have an impassioned essay by Lisa Bendiek with the lovely title ‘Lesbians are the better fathers’, in which she empirically demonstrates that children in queer families not only don’t have it worse, but that they are generally much better off than children from average ‘straight families’, and that the latter can certainly learn a lot from queer families. Her writing is lively, funny and knowledgeable – yet another book that has changed my view of the world.
What is the story of your own career at Edition Nautilus?
I was born in 1974, so I also celebrated my fiftieth birthday last year. And I’ve actually been with Nautilus for twenty-eight of those fifty years – hard to believe, isn’t it? I did an internship at Nautilus in the second semester of my studies when I was compiling the index for the volume of letters in the edition of Franz Jung’s collected works and realized that I hardly knew any of the names who were written about or mentioned there as correspondence partners, but they all seemed sooo interesting. So I started reading up on the Nautilus universe and then I was hooked. It really was a whole new world. And not just the texts, but also this way of working. I remember telling my parents when I was twenty-one or twenty-two that I now knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. My parents laughed, but I was right, at least until now. I completed my studies in Literature, Philosophy and History after the internship, but I kept in touch with Nautilus. When a position in sales became available a little later, I worked there part-time alongside my studies; then the press office became vacant and I had just finished university, so I did press work full-time for two years and editing on the side, and over time I focused on editing fiction and on the rights and licensing business. So that’s how it all happened!
Which authors do you most enjoy working with and why?
That’s an impossible question to answer, mean! Since we all decide on the projects together and we also talk to the vast majority of authors before we sign contracts, we never actually have to engage with people we would rather not have to deal with. Of course, there are very different characters, some are reliable and punctual, others uncertain, some unpredictable, but dealing with all these authors, translators and editors is enriching, interesting and fun. That’s the icing on the cake of publishing life!
How is Edition Nautilus responding to the fast-moving trends in digital publishing?
Although we are avant-garde in terms of content, we are definitely not at the forefront when it comes to digital development. We do produce almost all new publications as eBooks and gradually also the old backlist, and it also constitutes a growing share of sales, although really only in non-fiction and crime fiction. We will be entering the campus licensing business this year, but otherwise we are more likely to watch from the side to see what proves to be best practice. Then we can always join in.
To what extent does Nautilus engage with BookTok and other publishing trends on social media?
We also launched an appeal for support in the summer – Buy our books! – because sales had dropped so dramatically. It was very popular on social media, and we received really encouraging and touching feedback, as well as lots of book orders.
We haven’t joined BookTok yet and I have to say that I don’t (yet) see how that would be sensible or even possible with our books, our content and authors, and our profile, but perhaps that will become apparent. We’re not against it in principle, it’s more a question of resources. We have a growing number of followers on Instagram, and we have held several events with bookstagrammers. These are Zoom events to which we invite people personally (by real mail, with chocolate in the letter!), and then we present our new releases for an evening and have an author with us and send out reading copies. We’ve noticed that the little home stories from the publishing house are being clicked on and are obviously of interest. We also launched an appeal for support in the summer – Buy our books! – because sales had dropped so dramatically. It was very popular on social media, and we received really encouraging and touching feedback, as well as lots of book orders. We are trying to build a community or at least raise our profile via these channels. But whether this works out, and whether it translates into book sales in the long term, is not yet very clear.
How do you feel about the future of literary publishing in the 21st century?
There will continue to be people who really want to discover new things, think new thoughts, who need information and discussion, who want to learn about the possibilities of a better world and real alternatives – perhaps this is more necessary today than ever, and that’s what the Nautilus programme stands for!
As a trained optimist, I trust that the structures we need and have always been able to count on will persist to a certain extent. Perhaps they will become narrower, but I am confident that there will continue to be readers and books, and not just those for which a dubious AI predicts bestseller potential. There will continue to be people who really want to discover new things, think new thoughts, who need information and discussion, who want to learn about the possibilities of a better world and real alternatives – perhaps this is more necessary today than ever, and that’s what the Nautilus programme stands for!
But of course, the conditions are becoming increasingly difficult. Making books itself is becoming more expensive, paper, energy, rights; and the retail prices of books (fortunately we still have fixed publishing prices in Germany) have not risen in the same proportion. The margin has become smaller, but unfortunately so has the absolute number of copies sold. It is becoming increasingly difficult to get public attention for books. The manifold nature of the crisis is well known. But I still believe that new ways will be found. And a small collective may even have an advantage over the giant houses – we are more agile, more flexible, and also more adventurous.
Which events are you most looking forward to on the 2025 literary calendar?
The same ones as every year, actually: the fairs, the meetings with authors, the readings and book launches… I love it all.
If you could wave a magic wand and have three Nautilus titles translated into English this year, what would they be?!
Assuming this magic wand couldn’t be used for world peace, social justice or protecting the environment and could only fulfil publishing wishes, then I would wish for English translations of the following titles:
- Sven Recker’s novel Der Afrik (‘Afric’) – we are hopeful that the film rights will be sold, a radio play is already in production, the press reviews are great, and we are on the third edition. What is the world waiting for?
- Justin Steinfeld’s novel Califa (‘CLF’) – an utterly sensational find, a hitherto unknown manuscript by the Jewish author in exile, who fled Prague and then lived in England until his death. For years it was thought that he had just written one novel, and now this manuscript has come to light! The text was obviously influenced by the Korean War and develops the scenario of a nuclear war in Europe: half spy novel, half science fiction, half political thriller – yes, I know that sounds strange, but the book is big enough to have three halves!
- Franz-Maria Sonner’s Gregor Mendel begegnet dem Schicksal (‘Gregor Mendel Meets His Fate’) – a really beautiful, short novella about the Augustinian monk, Mendel, who was a contemporary of Darwin and conducted research into inherited characteristics, but who, unlike Darwin, focused not on evolutionary change, but on the persistence of characteristics across generations. Barely noticed during his lifetime, he was rediscovered and appropriated in the wake of the Nazis’ eugenics and ‘race theory’. This historical injustice is the starting point of Sonner’s little book, which is also a beautiful piece of nature writing, from the perspective of a naturalist in the nineteenth century.
Katharina Picandet photo (c) Anna Salomons
Edition Nautilus team photo (c) Andreas Hornoff
Edition Nautilus literary thriller with guaranteed translation funding support
Krumholz is a carefully crafted literary thriller that is sure to resonate with English-language readers.
The novel is based on a real crime committed in Switzerland in 1914, when a young woman was found brutally murdered in the woods near Krumbach in the canton of Lucerne. The perpetrator was sentenced to death by guillotine, becoming the last person to be executed in Lucerne before the death penalty was abolished there. Krumholz describes the lives of the deaf girl Agatha and her murderer, Torecht Innozenz Hilar.
Katharina Picandet studied German language and literature, history and philosophy in Hamburg and Bordeaux. She has worked for Edition Nautilus since 1996 and has been an editor since 2003. Katharina Picandet has been the publisher of Edition Nautilus since 2016.
Sheridan Marshall works as a translator from German into English, and as Editorial Consultant for New Books in German.
