Marie Tomičić. Image: Olika Förlag
Editor’s Note: As major publishing firms hire expert sustainability directors and formulate strategies, many smaller publishing houses struggle to find affordable, practical approaches to the climate crisis. Sweden’s Olika Förlag is a small press being recognized this summer for having developed just such a response. In this invitational column, we’ve asked Olika’s co-founder Marie Tomičić to describe this effort and to offer pointers to other small presses.—Porter Anderson
By Marie Tomičić, Olika Förlag
‘Do We Want To Publish Books at the Expense of the Planet?’
When we were asked to participate in the We Don’t Have Time broadcast from the United Nations’ Bonn Climate Change Conference in June, we were happy. It was so nice to speak for an audience that was really interested.
We Don’t Have Time calls itself the world’s largest media platform with a mission to democratize knowledge about climate solutions and inspire climate action. It was started by Ingmar Rentzog, a Swedish entrepreneur. And we, a Swedish publisher, focused on how small companies can be powerful contributors to the green transition. In Sweden, companies with 10 or fewer employees make up 97 percent of all companies.
Despite our struggle here at Olika, I encourage everyone to start to take steps.
“Between 2021 and 2023 we have reduced Olika’s carbon emissions by 34 percent. We’re proud of that. but we still have a long way ahead of us.”Marie Tomičić, Olika Förlag
We now have set a target for ourselves of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2040—and by 2030, we mean to have reduced our emissions by 80 percent. Between 2021 and 2023 we have reduced Olika’s carbon emissions by 34 percent. We’re proud of that. but we still have a long way ahead of us.
Our hope is that bigger actors like our printing house and our distributor and everyone in the production process will start to do their jobs to get their numbers down. We can only affect so much.
The Olika story started in 2007 when we published our first two titles, one of them being Here Comes Johanna the Inventor! which we still print. We were frustrated with gender stereotypes that were reproduced in children’s books. Those values are still present and we have added more, like equality and discrimination at large.
Seventeen years later, we’ve published around 300 titles, and keep going at a pace of 10 to 15 titles a year. The number of our employees has varied, from seven to three. Today we’re organized in a network—a small core combined with experts in every field, like digital marketing, tech, design, etc.
Starting With the Paper
Printing in Sweden was too expensive when we began, and it still is.
In 2007, a majority of Swedish publishers printed their books in China, and there was a discussion on child labor there. We did not want to contribute to that. Instead, we wanted control and insight, and we decided to print in Latvia, one of our neighboring countries. We found a small printing house to partner with, and their skills and commitment were important since none of us had any experience in publishing or printing.
We also decided to only use paper branded with FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), since it was the only certification we knew about. A few years later as our knowledge increased, we chose paper with the Scandinavian Svanen [Swan] certification, equivalent to the “EU flower” certification and one of the strongest green labels in Sweden. This change was fairly easy, the only challenge was the price, because certified paper is always more expensive than non-certified paper.
This meant that our books have been consistently higher priced compared to our competitors, putting the pressure on us to communicate the values of each book, hoping that customers will find it worth paying for.
However, one thing that bothered us was that the printing house itself was not Svanen certified. We started to print in other and bigger Svanen-certified printing houses, but it was not the same as it is to have one company as a partner. We lost the advantages of an efficient working relationship and the opportunity to build trust, helping each other create new solutions whenever needed. So we changed back to a smaller printing house instead, and encouraged them to get Svanen certification.
We started this work in 2015, working actively to connect the Svanen administration with the printing house. And three years later, the printer gained its Svanen certification.
Next, the Carbon Footprint
This was not enough. The alarm on the climate crisis grew louder and louder, making us question what we did.
Did we want to publish books at the expense of the planet? No. We had to do more. This led us to Climate Hero, a small company helping people calculate their own carbon footprints.
When we asked, Climate Hero said they didn’t offer the service to companies. But after a while, they decided to give it a try. As a small publisher, we like to work with other small companies, and especially those with a passion for what they do.
In 2021, we started putting the numbers for our activity 2020 into a big Excel sheet, calculating our climate footprint. I won’t lie, it was a challenging process and mainly because it was so difficult to get the numbers from our distributor, printing house, landlord, and so on. No one had those figures, and we spent a lot of time emailing, calling, asking them, often without response, simply because they hadn’t thought about this.
“To plant trees is not the solution. It will be 30 years before a tree can accumulate the same amount of carbon dioxide it can handle if we just leave it alive today.”Marie Tomičić, Olika Förlag
Climate Hero encouraged us to keep asking, and urged us to see it as part of our extended climate work—a process to make our partners become aware and start to work on their own carbon footprints. In the meantime, we had to use average estimates according to the international way of counting our carbon footprint. But those are always a lot higher than the actual figures, making our footprint higher than it probably was.
When we changed our distributor last year, we urged it to start to calculate its emissions. We put our partner Climate Hero in contact with this distributor, they’re now working together. We’ve put as much pressure as we did on our printing partner, and this year, our distributor will start their process of calculating their carbon footprint.
We also ask our authors and illustrators to calculate their own emissions, using an easy digital form. Besides making the effort to hunt down the data we need and put it all together every year, we’ve changed our process from printing on new paper to recycled paper. This was an important outcome of our carbon footprint calculations.
The more we learned, the more obvious it got: Why do we cut down the trees to create paper when we can recycle the paper we already have?
To plant trees is not the solution. It will be 30 years before a tree can accumulate the same amount of carbon dioxide it can handle if we just leave it alive today. To us, this was new knowledge and from that day, we’ve printed only on recycled paper.
Assessing the Effort
Was it hard? Yes and no. It all comes down to values.
“Small companies can move fast, and try new things on a small scale, and that’s the strength of being a minor player in the industry.”Marie Tomičić, Olika Förlag
If you want to do good things with your books, there’s no other way than to change. And a lot of satisfaction comes from taking these steps, although it requires energy and focus.
We might think that it’s easier for big companies to change, but I think the opposite. Before starting Olika, I did my PhD in business administration on organizational change, and one of the lessons after meeting many big companies is that they resist change. Usually bigger companies are not value-driven but money-driven, and change is costly. A majority of them change only when they have to.
But if you connect the change to your brand, it might produce income, since many customers like companies that show and take real responsibility. Small companies can move fast, and try new things on a small scale, and that’s the strength of being a minor player in the industry.
Four Pointers for Small Publishers on Climate Change
Based on our process and what we know today, here’s some advice for those who want to start calculating or reducing their carbon footprint. And we’re happy to share our knowledge. We’re only an email away.
- Find a partner—passionate and an expert in what it’s doing, not merely a consultant making calculations for money. Where there’s passion, there’s energy, advice, a good mood, and solutions. And you’ll need all of that.
- Check with other publishers and see how and what they do. Inspire and copy. When it comes to climate solutions, the knowledge must be free because we need to solve it together, as in changing to recycled paper, for example.
- Set goals. It helps you feel that you’re getting closer, even when you’re frustrated. Every action counts and will keep you motivated. Share what you do, be transparent and proud that you act, although you haven’t yet come as far as you want to.
- Communicate, educate, and help customers see the value of what you are doing. Be honest and transparent. Don’t pretend to be better than you are. It’s hard work to make the green transition, but also rewarding to be part of this huge worldwide change process.
At a lake near Linköping in Sweden. Image – Getty iStockphoto: Makarov
Marie Tomičić is one of the founders of the Swedish publishing house Olika (meaning “different”). For 17 years Olika has published children’s books challenging stereotypes, with a mission to create an inclusive and equal society. Olika describes its work as using a ‘norm-creative’ approach to change and work closely and actively with the authors and illustrators of every book. Before indulging in the publishing industry, Tomičić did her PhD in business administration and organizational change, and was a researcher and lecturer focusing on change processes in mergers and acquisitions. She lives in Linköping in the middle of Sweden, with her kids. When not working or hanging out with the family, she loves to spend time with her horse.
More from Publishing Perspectives on issues in the publishing and the climate crisis is here, more on sustainability in publishing is here, more on international publishing is here, more on independent publishers is here, more on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion is here, more from us on Olika is here, and more on the Swedish book publishing industry is here.