This book has cheery endpapers, classical typography, and a binding that has been well done. The panel found the box, like the text on the back cover, pointless. But that is the publisher’s aim: to be distinctive, to create an identity around the publication, to redefine what it means to be a publisher and to place the author at the centre. The soft-cover edition – the less expensive variant – had a gigantic print run of 160,000. The book caught the attention of adolescents for whom this luxury edition isn’t even that pricey, and the publisher organizes gatherings for the target audience: reading clubs for readers aged 18-30.

This publisher’s output is a case of few and far between, but they put much effort into a marketing campaign on social media – a publishing concept that has proved effective with the target group. The aim is to use the digital highway to create a very large and loyal group of readers who feel an affinity with the authors. With this idiosyncratic style of bookselling the publisher is trying – successfully – to claim a corner of the market. Here the way the books themselves are designed and produced serves not only their subject but also the innovative publishing strategy. And that was something the panel found highly laudable.