About us

It is with great pleasure and gratitude that I look back on my first year as managing director of Mohr Siebeck. In doing so, I would like to highlight two examples that illustrate how we are continuing to strive and thrive 222 years following our foundation: digitalisation and strategy process.

That digital transformation stops at nothing is a vague generalisation. However, less generally and very clearly, it hit us in September 2022 – just two weeks after I started – when our website provider went bankrupt. Our IT department was thankfully able to keep the website up and running while we called for tenders and chose a new partner, who is now working away on a more modern website that retains and revitalises our classic design. And if a homepage is the public face of an organisation, then a Product Information Management system (PIM) is surely its beating heart. Replacing our current ageing, self-built system with one fitter for the future, and supplied by an external provider, is the next major digital project for 2024. As well as streamlining our internal workflows, it will also throw open the doors to many new opportunities for processing and distributing our products’ metadata.

Of course, this on-going digitalisation does not only affect our IT systems, it also influences our entire value chain, starting with our editorial work (through, for example, the increased use of data to identify new publication trends), before travelling along to our production processes (where, for instance, an XML-based workflow can prepare media-neutral content), and ending up at marketing and sales where it reveals further digital sales models and distribution channels.
On the other hand, though, digitalisation is not everything: some considerations, such as enabling various forms of open access – are in themselves not technical. In prioritising these and many other topics, the above-mentioned strategy process comes into play, true to the bon mot of leadership thinker Michael Porter: »The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.« Only – according to which criteria? The first step in deciding this was creating our mission statement, which defines us as a »beacon  of excellence« seeking out relevant research and lighting its path towards broad visibility.

Guided by this shared vision, we are now bringing together different perspectives from all our departments to identify what needs to change and what doesn’t. In this way, our authors and clients will continue to receive the best possible service in a dynamic and competitive environment. The extremely positive feedback from a recent survey of 2022 monograph authors provided us with both an incentive and a mandate to keep on accomplishing our mission.

Ove Kähler
Director

[ Written for the Mohr Kurier 3/2023 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]

What is the significance of traditions for how institutions function? In his ›Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition‹, the philosopher Karl Popper took this question and pointed out connections that have always been particularly important to me.
Traditions, he writes, are an important help in navigating a complex world. After critical examination to see whether they can suggest suitable behaviour for a specific situation, they enable us to build on the experiences of previous generations. Hence we do not always have to start again with Adam and Eve. The same applies to institutions (such as a publishing house). If they have been astutely set up and improved, they offer a good starting point even for new challenges. But for them to function like fortresses – to use Popper’s metaphor - depends above all on how well staffed they are. As I have been less interested in warfare than seafaring during my life, I prefer to imagine a ship which has been designed and built as well as possible, but whose safety depends above all on its crew.
So what does all this have to do with the present and future of a publishing house such as Mohr Siebeck? A great deal, I think.
The current handover of management from Henning Ziebritzki to Ove Kähler sees the first captain entering the bridge who began his publishing career elsewhere. He brings with him all the skills and abilities needed in the rapidly changing world of international publishing. But what he also brings as a historian and a life-long lover of books – and why we as shareholders have entrusted him with Mohr Siebeck’s helm – is a great sympathy for our special tradition: an understanding for the distinctive way of thinking and studying in the academic disciplines we curate and thus the authors we care for, an appreciation of the employees who make such support possible in the first place, and the shared will to do for the good of scholarship not just everything as cheaply as possible, but rather as well as possible. This entails taking risks and learning from inevitable mistakes.
Henning Ziebritzki circumspectly advanced this tradition in recent years, for which we thank him from the bottom of our hearts; we now commend it to Ove Kähler and wish him a good lookout and a hand’s breadth of water below the keel at all times!

Georg Siebeck
with fellow shareholders Amely von Kapff-Siebeck and Josephine Siebeck

[ Written for the Mohr Kurier 3/2022 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]

As some of you already know, I will be hanging up my hat as managing director of Mohr Siebeck later this year. This is at my own request and in grateful agreement with the shareholders of the publishing house, Dr. Georg Siebeck, Amely v. Kapff Siebeck and Josephine Siebeck. The reason for this step is that I would like to have more time for my personal interests and pursuits. It is all the easier for me to give up and hand over the position because the publishing house is in such a good place in terms of personnel and structure as well as economically: its stability has also grown out of the changes made in recent years to meet the challenges of the market. These include, in particular, the transfer of our warehouse and distribution to a service provider alongside the accelerated sale of digital products, especially via our own eLibrary, which contributed crucially to the result.

All of this was and is supported and shaped by a very competent, committed staff and a second level of management whose members are characterised by expertise, decisiveness and a willingness to take responsibility.

As a friend of institutions, organisations and rules, I am sceptical about any professional interpretation of individuality that does not take into account the working conditions to which it owes its potential to be effective. It does not have to be glorified as a service or serving – it is simply a matter of producing results with your work that seem plausible independently of yourself and, in the best case, remain sustainable for a while. In this sense, it has given me great pleasure to be able to work for Mohr Siebeck – because it embodies a history, a tradition and a programme that fully corresponds to my own intellectual interests and preferences. To what extent I have succeeded in this may be judged by others.

Whether you are among the staff at Mohr Siebeck, the many editors and authors at our publishing house, or the colleagues in the book industry I have had the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with – I would like to thank you all for the wonderful years in publishing.

My successor, Ove Kähler, most recently Vice President Operations at Brill, will step in on 1 September, and as soon as he has familiarised himself with the company, I will take my leave by the end of the year at the latest.

Henning Ziebritzki
Director

[ Written for the Mohr Kurier 2/2022 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]

Part of the programme director’s job is to be tirelessly on the lookout for ideas for new titles and to maintain a constant dialogue with others to this end. It is something that also applies to the publishing house as a whole – as a notorious reader of other publishers’ previews, I would be surprised and sceptical if I did not keep coming across new formats, new authors, new bigger projects that advanced the programmes familiar to me in unexpected new ways. A publishing house that does not permanently try to develop the programme that has shaped its profile to date would likely be doomed to failure – it would lose its live wire to the market, to the demands of the time, and to the tastes and interests of its readership. Publishing houses are not institutions for the execution of cultural criticism; they must not shy away from innovations, as long as they fit the programme and are good for business.

It is vital for us as an academic publishing house to reflect ongoing developments in the cultures of the disciplines within our programme – above all the constant differentiation, but also the changes that affect current approaches or publication formats. In philosophy, for example, our programme is being expanded to include the series Reality and Hermeneutics. Bonn Studies in the New Humanities, which aims to re-explore the obligations of objectivity.

This year we would also like Classical Studies to have its own – in the best case, permanent – presence in our programme. Because we have published many individual titles and series in this discipline over the years, we have decided to make it independent of the existing programme. Two international, primarily English-language series, whose announcements can be found on the following pages, will increase the visibility of Classical Studies at Mohr Siebeck: the first is Ancient Cultures of Sciences and Knowledge, a series that is partly based on our already well-established cooperation with scholars in this field, as well as Emotions in Antiquity, for which we have been able to win an advisory board that will tread new ground in working with us for the first time. Additional series are to follow.

And to ensure that the area is clearly cared for and given a face, Tobias Stäbler has been given responsibility as its programme director.

Henning Ziebritzki
Director

[ Written for the Mohr Kurier 1/2022 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]

An academic publisher’s program is more than just its showpiece. The titles which a publishing company publishes embody its intellectual tradition as well as its aspiration to help shape those subjects which have found a home in the company. An academic publishing program demands a clearly defined image: This means that the individual books also depict their inner context as well as that which exists between the various subject areas. This ideational coherence can exist formally in the quality of the publications but also thematically in the fact that a publishing company includes certain disciplines and influential authors and not others. Thus a good program also involves rejection, exclusion – otherwise the profile and the recognizability are missing. In the best case the program acquires such an appeal, such dignity and trustworthiness that an interested reader will buy one of its titles because he knows that the publisher vouches for quality. In addition, the publishing program can also be seen as an indication of economic stability, since even if it holds true for every publisher that a good program is not a sufficient condition for economic success – conversely you will be able to say that a publisher without a clearly well-maintained and consistently developed program will in the long run have no economic prospects.

We publish academic qualification papers as well as conference volumes, commentaries, multi-volume works, Festschrifts, monographs and scholarly essays on those subjects dealt with in our publishing house. Dissertations, initially of interest to specialists, are right beside biographies, which are aimed at a wider readership, because combined with the publishing program is the aspiration to consistently publish titles which arouse wider public interest because of their subject and their readily accessible language and which transcend the subject itself. We rely on readers to pick the title in question because of their interest in the subject and in the hope of reading for pleasure, and not primarily because this has been dealt with in a scholarly manner. In this preview there are several books of this genre, above all the biography of Paul Siebeck by Konrad Hammann. We are very grateful that the author, who was associated with us for many years, was on the whole able to complete his work before his death so that we are able to publish it. Highlighting further titles which give the impression of being a non-fiction work would mean neglecting others. Furthermore, it is ultimately the reception anyway which will decide which book reaches a wider readership and which does not, since the predictability of the success of books in an academic publishing company is limited. It is the market which decides, through reviewers, buyers and readers, if a book will be reviewed in a large newspaper, if it will be well received and will sell well.

Henning Ziebritzki
Director

[ Written for the Mohr Kurier 2/2021 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]

The programmes of academic publishing houses feature series. But unlike those of other publishers, Mohr Siebeck’s are not only formally or thematically grouped together. A series as published by an academic press is an expression of its special relationship to the academic world. For as a rule, a series represents an academic sub-discipline, such as public law or practical theology, or a larger cross-sectional field that is being dealt with in various areas of related research – in the case of our programme, this includes series such as Schriften zum Recht der Digitalisierung, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, or Oriental Religions in Antiquity. The purpose of a series is to bring together studies on an overarching theme that further pursue a fundamental problem in a high quality way. This can be in the form of monographs, but also anthologies with a strict focus, or the collected essays of important scholars. If a series is successfully designed, it can be read as a retrospective of its subject’s history, which not only provides information on the topics addressed, but also on the surrounding constellations of academic politics.

For the academic presentation of a series is – prominent exceptions confirm the rule – in the hands of academia itself: editors review manuscripts and thus make a selection: they sometimes make suggestions for revisions; and above all they actively solicit volumes which they assume will enhance the eminence of the series. In this way, the editorial board ensures the academic quality of the series entrusted to it by the publisher, and, if successful, reinforce one of the greatest intangible assets in scholarly circles: reputation and good name. If our publishing house nevertheless reserves the final decision on publication with a formal veto right for all series, this does not constitute an encroachment on the freedom of the editors, but rather expresses the fact that the publishing house bears the economic risk.

This year, our series Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum neuen Testament will be 70. Founded in 1950 under the aegis of Martin Hengel, WUNT has established itself as one of the leading forums worldwide for research on early Christianity and its environs. Hengel would probably have acknowledged his likeness adorning the Mohr Kurier with a charming and covertly self-ironic quip – and said that it is about things and not people. Which is only half the truth.

Henning Ziebritzki
Director

[ Written for the Mohr Kurier 2/2020 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]

Many of our authors and editors who have been guests at our headquarters in Wilhelmstraße will also have been familiar with our warehouse in Tübingen’s Christophstraße. It always made a strong impression that we as a publishing house also stored and distributed the books we produced. The storerooms were an integral part of the press and its identity not only for authors and editors, but for our staff and service providers, too – and that for almost a hundred years, the facility having been set up in 1923. It was at this time that Paul Siebeck’s sons and the publishing house's then managers, Oskar and Werner, bought the site in Christophstraße on which the former factory halls of the Württembergische Fleischwaren Fabrik stood. The buildings, originally used to process sausage and conserved meats, had been put to various other uses before they were converted for the new purpose of storing books – which they did up until last year when their contents were cleared and sent to Sigloch Distribution GmbH & Co. KG for dispatching.

And so as almost a century of history drew to a close, it was decided that a photographic record of the Christophstraße storerooms should be made. The commission went to Heidi Specker, an artist who holds the Professorship of Photography at the Institute for Graphic Design and Book Art in Leipzig, and whose work has been celebrated in a major solo exhibition at the Bonn Kunstmuseum. We were delighted when she agreed to embark on a photographic journey through the Christophstraße and Wilhelmstraße buildings to chronicle the entire publishing house as a work in progress. The result is neither a brochure containing pictures of things supposedly worth looking at or of parts of the buildings and their interiors usually considered attractive, nor is it a documentation aimed at representative completeness or informative correctness. Heidi Specker understood her task to depict as an independent artistic project from which, as so often in her work, a photobook was to be created, a photographic essay that she understands as part of her oeuvre. Initial images from the project graced the covers of last year’s Mohr Kuriers. The book itself is now finished and will be published this spring with the title Mohr Siebeck. Academic Publishing House by the Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König in Cologne.

We are pleased that the now-closed warehouse in Christophstraße has been captured in the form of a book – the storage medium that filled the shelves there for almost a century.

Henning Ziebritzki
Director

[ Written for the Mohr Kurier 1/2020 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]

Like many things in our contemporary world, metadata has a history that can be read as a process of specialisation which has become highly complex in its transition to the digital world. That which librarians, publishers, readers and users have to deal with today was originally organised alphabetically or by subject catalogues and presented in book form or on index cards.

The key has always been to give a printed work the right data in order to find it, in a library or a bookstore, which could then be quoted by others to verify they have located the correct title. Many »grey« titles that were published by small presses or were not distributed through book trade channels never appeared in the pertinent catalogues. Which in other words means that the all-​encompassing catalogue remained a bibliographic utopia.

With the advent of the online search engine, metadata has taken on a new meaning, becoming as important as the book itself in that it dictates how a title is perceived – what cannot be found on the net is increasingly regarded as non-​existent or irrelevant. The amount of metadata in the digital world is growing: images of covers, reading samples, and author biographies are as much a part of it as the author’s name, ORCID, the book’s title, the DOI of a contribution, price, availability, and delivery information. Which title an algorithm finds, how it is assessed and presented, all depends on the quality of the metadata.

For an academic publisher such as Mohr Siebeck, this means that our metadata has to be correct, up-​to-​date, complete, and easy for machines to read. This does not just apply to our homepage and e-​library. The metadata also has to be made available in the most important formats – ONIX for the book trade and MARC for libraries – and fed into the relevant catalogues. In many cases, this work is carried out by specialised discovery services that structure and compile metadata on specific areas of interest and research. We provide the basis for this task by completely reloading the metadata on our website each working day, guaranteeing our titles are both present and easy to find in the digital world.

Henning Ziebritzki
Director

[ Written for the Mohr Kurier 3/2019 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]

It is one of our publishing house’s traditional charac­teristics that the tasks of storing and distributing Mohr Siebeck books and journals have been kept under our own roof. Our main warehouse in Tübingen’s Christophstrasse has been home to a backlist of 6500-plus titles which has ensured its long-term availability, while a store at our main building in Wilhelmstrasse has housed our latest releases and bestselling titles. For us as a publishing house, a book that started as an academic idea and is then physically present in the publishing house is a constant symbolic reminder of how it has been created.

But as pleasing as this may be – and it is a ­symbolism that certainly appeals to me – the warehouse and its operation have grown long in the tooth. Modern warehousing demands, the two separate storage areas, and a marked increase in production to over 400 titles a year have all put a strain on the space available and led to ever more complex logistics. Added to this is the fact that there is not a digital merchandise management system linking the warehouse and distribution processes into the software that adjacent departments such as production, marketing and sales, and customer service work with.

At the end of the day, the question had to be asked whether it is necessary for a publisher to have its own warehouse when book-related services like typesetting, printing and binding have all long since been bought in from specialised providers. Having thoroughly considered all these matters last year, we decided to entrust a service provider with the storage and distribution of our books.

We are now pleased to announce that from July the 1st, 2019, Sigloch Distribution GmbH & Co KG, one of the best addresses for publishing logistics, will be working with us in these areas. The whole ordering process will remain in the hands of our own customer service department, ensuring that you as customer can still get in touch with us personally and directly.

Henning Ziebritzki
Director

[ Written for the Mohr Kurier 2/2019 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]

While many other publishing houses use service providers to sell their digital content to libraries and other institutional customers, early in 2016 Mohr Siebeck made the decision to take on this task itself. We were convinced that we would be able to react better to the needs and wishes of our customers if we were in direct contact with them about digital deliveries.

With our new eLibrary, the result of our thoughts and efforts has now gone online. One special feature of this service is that the eLibrary has been completely integrated in our homepage under www.mohrsiebeck.com. Our customers and readers therefore have one-stop internet access to both our website and the new eLibrary – a solution that demands complex interplay between various technical systems such as, among others, our online-shop, the editorial system of the homepage, the online library for the use of digital content, and our newsletter. This complexity is also the reason for the start-up difficulties we experienced. These problems have now been sorted, and we would like to thank all our customers for their patience and forbearance. However, in case further glitches occur, we would be very grateful for alerts via support@mohrsiebeck.com

For the humanities we undertake to publish, their content and communication, there is an exponentially increasing tendency that is sure to determine progress in the near future: quod non est in internet, non est in mundo academio. One or two of our authors and editors will view this development, as I do, with ambivalence because of the pros and cons each advancement brings with it. As a publishing house providing services to academia though, our purpose and aim is to harness the associated potential and opportunities that such developments represent. And it is for this reason that we look forward to being able to make new offers through the eLibrary in the form of, for example, digital book bundles, which, we hope, will ­interest our customers and readers worldwide.

Alongside tolle, lege, we now also invite you to log in and read.

Henning Ziebritzki
Director

[ Written for the Preview 3/2018 ]

Academic books take time. They are not written quickly, but are the result of long-term deliberation and devising of concepts, intensive reading, other research undertaken at least partly in archives, and preparatory work in the form of essays or lectures.

It is often a fellowship or a residency in the intellectually stimulating atmosphere of a research institute that finally allows such works to come to fruition. This applies in particular to larger projects such as monographs, biographies, editions of complete works, translations and commentaries.

But composing commissioned essays for handbooks and collected volumes takes time too, of which the author also has to be given enough; generally about a year. It is for this reason that when we discuss larger projects, mapping them out and agreeing on them together with our editors, we are prepared to take the time it takes to create these academic works.

In contrast, and because it is in the best interests of authors and their careers, submitted manuscripts, especially for the likes of doctorates and conference volumes, are published as quickly as possible. That said, it can also happen here that several years pass between the first point of contact and the date of submission.

Books we are to publish in 2018 therefore owe much to preparation done years, in some cases even decades, in advance. In turn, many other volumes currently in the pipeline will not appear for several years. An added unknown factor is that of the unsolicited manuscript yet to arrive - though without a doubt we will once again manage to publish by autumn something first received in the spring.

The task of scheduling the program becomes more complicated still when manuscripts are not handed in on time – a frequent occurrence when unforeseen hurdles in the form of practical problems arise, or because the academic author is, naturally enough, very much tied to meeting the immediate demands of everyday university and scholarly life, or because new findings made by the author see the focus of interest shift to other subjects and themes. 

Delays in submitting manuscripts for single-author books only affect the press’s annual plan. Where potential for conflict can arise and the situation can become a delicate one is when the slowest author in a team working on the likes of a commentary, guide, or collection dictates the pace of the whole undertaking. Here, the worst case scenario is when a manuscript is delivered so late that all other punctually submitted contributions have to be updated. But even this is not an insurmountable problem if all those involved have the publication of the volume at heart – or the editor is not bashful about putting a firm diplomatic word in the right ear at the right time. 

This means that our staff have to be kitted out with a diverse set of essential skills. Most important is that we remain faithful to our authors by being patient and understanding when there are delays. In the vast majority of cases, it is the author who is existentially concerned with the completion of the work and its publication. Whoever is responsible for the program in question must therefore have sure instincts and the tact to know just when and how they ought to intervene. Such a move is in everyone’s interest where the publication of a multi-authored work is at stake. Though here, too, the principle of waiting for the slowest still applies. Academic books keep their own time – and publishers can only be assured of economic success if program managers succeed in maintaining a stockpile of projects.

As soon as a manuscript is ready for typesetting or printing, a new phase begins, the pace quickens and things change in a flash.  Authors, program and production managers are then united in the common aim of producing and publishing the book as swiftly as possible – something we gladly and repeatedly pull out all the stops to do as a service for our authors and editors. 

Henning Ziebritzki
Director

[ Written for the Preview 1/2018 ]

Besides authors, editors and editorial departments, producing a publication involves external service providers such as printers and setters. And at the interface coordinating the whole process between these parties is the production department. While a production manager ten years ago was almost exclusively occupied with calculating books, scheduling their production, and controlling costs and deadlines, the working day has since – in keeping with changes in the publishing industry – been transformed. Mohr Siebeck’s production managers no longer only master business and typography challenges, but also need to understand questions about technology and content. The development of e-books having to be sold alongside print products confronts publishing with the task of preparing and keeping a stock of media-neutral content. But what does this mean for authors and readers?

Each medium places special demands on the content that is to be published. It is not easy, for example, to generate bookmarks, automatic references and registers for an e-book from a normal print product setting file. These functions, which are what give electronic books their added value, have to be individually populated. In order to generate various products from a unified database in the future, Mohr Siebeck is currently installing an XML-based content management system. A structured database like this stores content centrally in a media-neutral format and allows it to be adapted to the relevant output medium through automated processes.

The introduction of these new structures has created new challenges for a traditional academic publisher. The partial automation accelerates preparation in production and enables a steadily increasing number of new titles to be published. On the other hand, the reader can expect a product with highbrow content that is easy to read and take in whatever the edition’s form. Above all though, our main concern is that each author whose work we are entrusted with publishing should receive the best possible individual support during production.

Is standardisation of complex academic texts at all possible, and, if so, at which point in the production process should it be applied? Gauging this is the production manager’s main task. The structure of the text is appraised and the manuscript prepared so that it fits into the specified layout. Individual features – for example, offsetting or complicated tables – are identified and highlighted because each peculiarity in the manuscript blocks setting automation and often leads to reworking by the setter, the production manager, or sometimes even the author. By supplying document templates which automatically store structural characteristics when a text is being written, the author can be actively involved in the process early on.  The result is a well-structured basis for producing content efficiently in visually appealing print and digital forms.

Finding the right mix of standardisation, automation and individuality is the key to a publication’s economic success. The production manager decides on the basis of the text and the data situation what is possible and what makes sense as to which path can be taken. For each single project, the optimum balance is sought anew. After all, each work is and remains unique.

Jana Trispel
Head of Production

[ Written for the Preview 1/2017 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]

For a publishing house of our size, we are very internationally-orientated with export sales of around 40 percent. And almost 15 percent of our turnover is generated in the Asiatic region. For that reason, my colleague, Laszlo Simon-Nanko, and I travelled to Asia for the SBL International Meeting, and to meet with our customers in Seoul, Tokyo and Peking.

Our first stop was South Korea where German public law is seen as a role model and is widely read, and where Korean theology professors discuss in perfect German the most important new publications from our exegetical series. On the South Korean academic book market, the tendering policy of the libraries has led to price wars and consolidation in the trade. But at the end of the day, rather than offering a few more discount points, it is the personal contact to academics, attending exhibitions and having the right sales strategy that lead to success.

In Japan, we enjoy long-standing and trusting business partnerships, are firmly grounded in the academic environment there and are well-equipped for it. It is gratifying that the external and internal quality of our books are highly valued in Japan, that publications on German law and Max Weber are big sellers, and that in a small Christian book shop in Tokyo there are more of our titles on the shelves than in the relevant specialist book shops in German university towns.

The academic merit of our books presents us with the opportunity to become noted and respected in China. The market there is dominated by large English-language natural science publishers, and Mohr Siebeck has yet to become established, identify and claim niches for itself as well as to develop and cement business contacts here. I was impressed by the Chinese importers and how despite currency exchange control, censorship and limited internet access they manage to find what they are looking for and make our digital content available to scholars.

And what was the lasting impression after almost three weeks in Asia? The insight that this market is only accessible through contact to local brokers, be they agents or traders, who can overcome language, cultural and market-specific barriers. Other than in the German market, we are barely able to directly reach readers of our publications, but rather are dependent on the advertising and selling skills of the local agents and traders.

The conviction also remains that this and future visits, maintaining and sustaining contacts, and providing publications fitting to the market will further enhance our position in Asia. Plus there is the wonderful realisation that our law, theology and Jewish studies, philosophy, sociology and history publications are greatly appreciated – and this because outstanding authors entrust us with their publications, which are then internationally received, but also because German law, philosophy and theology are highly regard in Asia. This is a source of encouragement to us not only in light of our publishing house's future, but also because it means that scholarship from Germany and in the German language is and remains a benchmark in these fields.

Katharina Stichling
Head of Marketing & Sales

[ Written for the Mohr Kurier 3/2016 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]

"Do you read the manuscripts at all anymore then?" or "Do you not have to read an awful lot?". When it comes to the job of the editor, these are two very contrary, typical questions. The publishing editor is indeed a quiet quick and avid reader. In academic publishing, things go above and beyond that though, reaching into the realms of program planning, evaluations and consultation. Our authors are specialists in their respective fields and trust us with the publication of their research findings. For these, we seek out the right place in our publishing program, arrange the reviewing, make revision recommendations and take care of the formalities.

Many of our customers are also professional readers who put their trust in us as an academic publisher to procure relevant research literature: then what we publish has undergone a selection and review process, has often been assessed from several angles and held to be important, and has subsequently been frequently revised. So it is that we provide guidance in the increasingly complex world of academic publishing and are also often able to broker new contacts within the scholarly community.

Young authors especially are advised intensively and helped on the way through the jungle of series, evaluations, promotion regulations, deadlines, grants and subsidies. Why is it worth publishing in a renowned series and waiting for the result of that extra assessment? What makes a book title good? Why are indices important? For big as well as small questions, it matters to have a personal contact partner.

Editors are professional optimists. They are convinced of the importance of a book project, refuse to let go and, along with marketing, campaign on its behalf even after publication. It is always exciting for program planners to follow which expectations are fulfilled (or which are not). And it is fascinating when sales from the back-list mirror current political affairs and, for example, following events last autumn, titles such as Karl R. Popper's "The Open Society and its Enemies" or "Violence and Social Orders" by Douglas North, John J. Wallis and Barry R. Weingast are increasingly bought (and read?).

This spring, two new publications in the history and philosophy program tell in completely different ways of the editorial and program work in various historical constellations: Angelika Königseder reports impressively in her book on the history of the Walter de Gruyter press during National Socialism of the constraints and lures of academic publishing under the Nazis. Reinhard Mehring analyses in "Heidegger's Big Politics. The Semantic Revolution of the Collected Works" the conception of Heidegger's Collected Works and describes the dealings between author and publisher.

Even if academic publishers – the catchwords are copyright or VG Wort (the German collecting society) - currently find themselves in turbulent cultural-political waters, cultural pessimism has no place in editorial work. It is much too important that we continue with our authors to produce good and relevant books and journals to serve scholarly research.

Dr. Stephanie Warnke-De Nobili
Chief Editor History, Philosophy & Social Sciences

[ Written for the Mohr Kurier 2016/1 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]

As you may have noticed in the last Mohr Kurier, the traditional column has undergone something of a facelift and in the future we will use it to offer you insights into various aspects of life at Mohr Siebeck and our work here.

Marketing is our messenger in the world and the first of its three main tasks is to keep you informed of new publications. Because our program is becoming increasingly international, we offer all information in German and English and are thus able to reach readers and customers around the globe with our advertising. And as more and more books and journals have been made available electronically, so too has our advertising material been digitalized. With the Mohr Kurier's counterpart the eKurier, we are able to send out up-to-date, interest-specific e-mails about our latest releases. The website, which as you may have noticed was recently redesigned and is now online with a wider range of functions, has replaced the complete print catalog. Print and electronic advertising will continue to complement one another in the future meaning you still have the chance to leaf through the Mohr Kurier and jot down notes in its margins. There is much to be said for electronic versions however, their being more immediate, available anywhere, searchable and individually processable.

Secondly, the on-going process of digitalization and the accompanying flood of information mean that it is becoming more and more important to raise the online profile of our publications. Our strategy therefore places new emphasis on ensuring that search engines such as Google find our books and journals easily and that these are promptly indexed in the burgeoning number of specialist research data bases. Over and above this, we will continue to attend symposiums to guarantee that our publications remain highly visible in the real world and not just the virtual one.

Our third aim is to augment and reflect Mohr Siebeck's corporate identity in our advertising material. Mohr Siebeck is synonymous with high-class academic books and journals containing high-class content, the specific form of which has been subject to steady and fitting change for the past 200 years. The time has now come to fuse these developments together with our website and the Mohr Kurier. The four mainstays of theology, philosophy, law, and economics that defined our 20th century publications have evolved into nine independent areas, now represented by three inter-related thematic pillars. Law, rendering the most titles, theology as one of our oldest disciplines and newcomer history are set apart by the fact that each is represented by specialist editors.

Marketing is adjusting to fit today's information consumption habits and the new forms of advertising retain the high quality appearance and content our readers and customers expect. The aims I mention are a means to the end of selling our books and journals and disseminating our authors' works. Marketing is accordingly distribution-oriented. Just how this works will be the subject of a future column.


Mohr Siebeck and Marketing

Every now and again, we will be reporting here on various aspects of life at Mohr Siebeck.

In marketing, we aim to produce precise, high-quality print and, increasingly, electronic information on new publications in order to enhance their online visibility. At the same time, this material should clearly reflect Mohr Siebeck's established identity. You have perhaps already discovered the influence of these three elements on our recently newly-designed homepage with its improved functionality.
 
The aims I mention are a means to the end of selling our books and journals and spreading our authors' works. Marketing is accordingly distribution-orientated. Just how this works will be the subject of a future column.

Katharina  Stichling
Head of Marketing & Sales

[ Written for the Mohr Kurier 2015/3 and translated by Elizabeth Wener. ]