Despite a population of only five million and a strange language spoken nowhere else, Finland has long published an impressive amount of books. Currently, about 14000 Finnish-language titles reach the shelves every year - most of them non-fiction. And of these the overwhelming majority - about 12000 - are original Finnish language works and not translations. In 2005, only seventeen percent of books published in Finland were translations. Even in the 1930s, most of these Finnish translations were from English.
Finland has been putting out books since the 1600s but as in other countries, the industry really took off in the 1980s as new technology made it so much easier to publish new novels and factual investigations. Finland now produces, every year, about three books for every thousand people in the country. Only Iceland beats it, publishing almost six books per thousand Icelanders.
'Finland has a long tradition of reading books,' says Sakari Laiho, the president of the Finnish Book Publishers Association. 'Respect for education and books is deep in our history. Our independence - our national awakening - was all to do with our intellectuals.'
In the nineteenth century, when the 'national awakening' took place, Finland was far more literate than many southern European countries. In order to be confirmed, you had to, in theory, master some very basic reading of the Bible. However, it is now non-fiction and children's books which dominate the Finnish publishing industry. Fiction for adults and encyclopedias are a very small fraction of what is published in the Finnish language as young people, in particular, learn English and increasingly purchase English-language books.
Of course, actually getting your book published is a rather different process in Finland from in America or elsewhere in Europe. There are a small number of commercial publishers such as WSOY and Otava. In addition, there are various highly specialist outfits such as Puntsi (which concentrates and the Sami and issues relating to northern Finland) or the Finnish Literature Society, which focusses on academic books, usually about Finnish culture and identity.
For popular books, in many countries, publishers receive so many submissions that they only look at authors recommended to them by literary agents. This means that it's basically vital for a budding novelist to impress an agent. In Finland, with a small number of writers, this is not so.
'Until recently there were no agents in Finland,' explains Laiho. 'And now there's just one. He's just established himself. The publisher's themselves have their own quality control.'
Of course, with only five million speakers of Finnish and almost no industry in exporting Finnish language books, it is much more difficult to get a book published in Finnish than it would be in English or even French. While you might be able to find a publisher to print your book on everyday cooking in eighteenth century England, an equivalent book about Finland (in Finnish) would struggle to find somebody to shoulder the financial burden. The same goes for areas such as poetry, which don't sell well in any country.
Accordingly, 'vanity publishing' is not as much of a dirty word in Finland as it is elsewhere. Whereas American bookshops or libraries might automatically reject a self-published book (assuming that, if it's any good and has any popular appeal at all, it would find some kind of publisher) this is not so in Finland.
'In Finland, a self-published book may well be of low quality but sometimes it's not,' remarks Laiho. 'The authors have to market their own books to the bookshops and the libraries. The shops don't automatically assume it will be of low quality . . . It's very difficult to publish a book in Finnish because the audience is so small. So if it's of limited appeal - even if it's high quality - sometimes people self-publish.'
'There is very little money in publishing a book in Finnish even if it is published by a commercial publisher!' stressed Laiho. 'Most authors are just happy to say that they've published a book.'
Based in Tampere, Mediapinta is a 'Vanity Publisher' which specialises in precisely these kinds of obscure books. Their current list of books, all in Finnish, include a history of wine production, a history of the marketplace in Tampere and somebody's diaries from the Winter War. The publisher produces books in all genres. And some of its tomes are available in Oulu city library. Though the publisher helps, the authors - having paid for them - promote their own books, selling them in CD Rom as well book format. In some cases, they even ply them in the streets. But the Finnish publishing industry is slowly beginning to change.
'For a start, there are more and more people in Finland who don't speak Finnish. So, we are publishing more and more English-language books and trying to internationalise by publishing in English,' Laiho says. 'Also, the internet is having a big effect.'
Google-Book, which places chapters from books online, has not reached into Finland 'but it's only a matter of time,' worries Laiho. 'And we are preparing for this. It's both good and bad. It's a new way of promoting books but there was a very violent side to how it started.'
It started in 2004 with what critrics called 'massive copyright infringement' which led to lawsuits. But there is seemingly no stopping the scanned sections of books which Google Book allows you to access. The vast majority of these books are in English, a policy which critics accuse of 'language imperialism' through creating an online emphasis on the English language. And the internet is, of course, ensuring that fewer and fewer Finns automatically turn to books for information.
'It's not going to go away!' remarks Laiho. He is braced for big changes in the world of Finnish book publishing.
