Tiny, independent, irregular – interview with Márton Simon

Márton Simon, Hungary’s next Versopolis poet, is one of the most successful and acclaimed authors of his generation. Simon, born in 1984, was first recognised by his first publications in the mid-2000s, as a member of the then up-and-coming Hungarian slam poetry movement. After several local and international publications, multiple successful poetry event series and six poetry books under his belt, Simon decided to be the next Hungarian author to leave the established publishing system and try something new. Was it a personal adventure, a political statement, a matter of economic rationality or something else that would not even cross our mind? Simon answers these questions to Ferenc Czinki.

What led you to start your own publishing company? To what degree did personal, professional and financial considerations play a role? Knowing the book market in Hungary, this seems to be both an exciting and a bold venture.

The main reason I decided to start a publishing company was that I wanted to try doing something I had been dissatisfied with for years, to see whether I could really do it differently, if not better. Unfortunately, for a long time, I no longer felt that my publisher wanted anything from me, and after a while I didn’t even think it mattered to anyone there whether or not I was one of their authors. I didn’t see any opportunity for progress, and I identified less and less with the catalogue. I had been one of the most read Hungarian authors for many years, without being rewarded with even minimal financial support. All the long-time colleagues with whom I was on good terms had long since quit. And this is just what comes to mind first, off the top of my head. I didn’t know the Hungarian book market, and I didn’t know anything about publishing. But I had been in contact with my readers for more than ten years. I had the channels to reach them, I saw how many of them there are and I knew how to target them relatively accurately. From that point of view, the venture was exciting, but by no means bold.

What kind of publishing profile did you envision for Okapi Press? It is important to note that this is not a private publishing house for your own books, but that Okapi actually operates as a publisher and releases works of other authors as well.

I pictured it as an indie publisher, tiny, independent, irregular. More of a creative project resulting in ‘text publications’ than a traditional publisher, because we have plenty of those. But poetry, for example, is something everyone hates to publish, and most are in the business to maximise profits. This doesn’t concern me – not because I don’t want to make a profit from, say, publishing my own volumes, which I know I will. It’s because I want to spend the money I make on ephemeral, exciting things, things that barely cover their own cost. We’ve now got two or three zines, Riso-printed, beautiful pieces. And we have our next publication in the pipeline, with four more planned. This is what my focus lies on.

Has enough time passed since the launch for the numbers to be worth looking at (sales, income-expenditure, etc.)? To what extent does this model, which to my knowledge is completely unique in Hungary, seem to be working?

It has worked so far, but we have really only published my own volume for the time being, of which I knew relatively precisely how many copies to print and how to promote and distribute. Now comes the hard part, as we need to build a following for this publishing project, we need some authors, it would be nice to have a recognisable brand, and it also would be beneficial to have some support from here and there to make more crazy publications. But to answer your question, the first edition of Hideg pizza is selling out now, with the second edition already on the shelves. I think that in itself is nice. We have nothing to be ashamed of in terms of copies sold. My conclusion from that is that I haven’t screwed up very badly yet.

We started in this business at about the same time, and although we no longer have to spend time sitting in the halls of editorial offices with our manuscripts, the scene has changed a lot – especially with the rise of online platforms and the changing habits of readers and book buyers. If you were about to publish your first volume now, how would you go about it, where would you start?

I would build a reader base, because no publisher in Hungary deals with that. Or, in case I had no desire for a readership, I would look for a secure livelihood so I don’t have to surrender to politics in order to avoid starvation. And at the same time, I would stick to the professional community, because literature comes from that and nothing else.

How have you as a reader and author been affected by the politicisation of publishing and book distribution in Hungary (Libri)? How would you explain the current state of affairs to someone who is not familiar with the situation in Hungary?

Literature has long been the most deeply politicised and divided art form in Hungary, and if I think back to the twenty years I’ve been publishing, there has been a constant war of polarisation and hatred between the sides. I’ve been somewhere on the left from the beginning, yet for a while I made it a priority to read right-wing authors, who don’t even seem to exist in the eyes of the left-wing canon. I gave this up when the Kulturkampf got to the point where it started destroying institutions, pouring money into the pockets of pure dilettantes and starving the opposition. This, you might say, discouraged me from peace-making. The situation is as simple as that, I can’t explain it any better.

Is the emergence of private publishing, smaller, independent, low-budget publishers a trend? If so, is this more a result of changing consumer habits, the obsolescence of the traditional publishing system or the cultural policy situation?

For us, it’s all three; I don’t know how it is elsewhere. I do hope this is the beginning of a happier, freer era in culture, of real, passionate innovation, independence and new possibilities. Cultural policy in our country is currently money-burning and theft disguised as ideology. Official Hungarian culture is a sad corpse stuffed with coins of small denominations. Everything that circumvents it is alive.

What are the current prospects for a poet of your age, with so many books and such a high profile in your country, on the international literary scene? Is there anything unique that contemporary Hungarian poetry can offer the international market? Or is such an opportunity even interesting for the authors? Over the last 40–50 years, it has traditionally been our prose writers who have had a significant European career.

There are almost none, but there still are tiny workshops and occasional meetings. Contemporary Hungarian poetry, I think, fits quite neatly into the international trends I see, I don’t perceive much uniqueness in this form. That said, it is important that we talk because our problems are similar, our times are shared and our perspectives are most clearly understood through poetry. I also do not know why we have not managed to produce at least one Hungarian poet to join the two Nobel Prize-winning Polish poets, but PR has never been our strong point.

How do you currently see the medium-term future of Okapi Press? Do you dare think three to five years ahead?

The five things I mentioned above will be accomplished, without a shadow of doubt. The rest I can’t guarantee, but as long as I perceive it as a challenge, I will keep doing it, sparing no time, money or effort. As will the other part of the team, the brilliant graphic designer Zoltán Visnyai. This is a passion project, irregular and clumsy, but the stakes are real, which is something I’ve been missing. This is what I have to be doing right now. We’ll find out everything else in 3–5 years.