The largest publishing group in the Netherlands falls into the hands of the American Simon & Schuster

Publishing group Veen Bosch & Keuning (VBK) becomes the property of the American publishing giant Simon & Schuster. This was announced on Monday afternoon. It is the first time that a major Dutch publishing house has come into foreign hands.

VBK, known for the literary publishers AtlasContact (Geert Mak, Adriaan van Dis) and Ambo|Anthos (Sally Rooney, Auke Hulst) and the general publisher Luitingh-Sijthoff (Dan Brown, Jill Mansell), is the largest publishing group in the Netherlands. 1,500 new titles are published every year. The company (280 jobs, 87 million euros in turnover and 2.7 million euros in profit in 2022) also owns audiobook producer Thinium and e-book platform Bookchoice.

The current owners are investment fund Walvis Participaties of John Fentener van Vlissingen, “a consortium of private investors” and VBK employees, according to a spokesperson. The publisher does not want to disclose anything about the transaction amount.

Private equity

Simon & Schuster (S&S), which celebrates its centenary this year, is one of the five largest publishing groups in the United States. Every year it publishes 1,300 new titles in 200 countries. Together with Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette and MacMillan, it controls more than 80 percent of the US market. In 2022, the American judge blocked a takeover of S&S by Penguin Random House, because it would create too much market concentration. After this, S&S was bought last year for 1.62 billion dollars (1.5 billion euros) by private equity fund KKR. It is reported that 1 billion of this is a loan to the publishing group. Penguin Random House had offered $2.2 billion.

According to general manager Geneviève Waldmann, the added value of the takeover of the Dutch VBK consists, among other things, of access to international markets. The idea is that works by Dutch-language authors can be published more easily in countries where S&S already has publishing houses, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and India. Conversely, this is the first time that S&S has acquired a non-English publishing house. S&S’s ambition is to gain better access to the European market.

The takeover will be followed with great attention in the Dutch book trade, especially due to the involvement of KKR, which is known as an aggressive investor – a book about the company published in 1989 was entitled Barbarians at the gate. In the Netherlands, KKR is accused of stripping department store chain V&D. It currently owns bicycle manufacturer Accell, the Roompot holiday parks and, since the end of April, the optical chain Hans Anders.

Future-proof

One of the questions regarding VBK is whether there will be more emphasis on the profitability of separate business units. For example, Kosmos Uitgevers is successful with lifestyle books, while literary publishers have a much less easy time in the Netherlands. In August, VBK stated that AtlasContact was “not future-proof” due to disappointing revenues. Publishing director Caroline Reeders had to leave.

Another question is whether the combination with S&S titles will make VBK so large that it can put more pressure on printers and bookstores for better margins.

According to Waldmann, the partnership is intended “for the long term.” She emphasizes that VBK retains “independence” and “decision-making power” over titles to be published. She expects “efficiency improvements in the field of digitalization”. She also thinks that translations will be completed more quickly and she hopes to be able to expand the audiobook branch.

The acquisition responds to the trend that Dutch readers are increasingly reading English-language books. VBK will now probably be able to publish S&S’s English-language titles in the Netherlands without Dutch competition. Conversely, Dutch publishers have been looking for years for ways to make it easier to release Dutch work on the international market. Waldmann: “We would like to offer our writers a larger and international platform.”

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