Meet Christiane Bartelsen

For GROW participant Christiane Bartelsen, the warm welcome she received from her new colleagues has helped her feel at home in a new country and a new company. Bartelsen, 42, recently made the switch from Carlsen Verlag in Hamburg where she's worked for ten years, to Bonnier Group Agency in Stockholm. At both companies, she works selling foreign rights. "At Carlsen, I am also responsible for the acquisition of industrial clients for whom we produce special editions with logo imprints, for example, Mercedes Benz and Vattenfall," she says.

Although Bartelsen is working with many of the same issues in both Sweden and Germany, the experience in Stockholm  includes some major differences as well, "starting from the division of the work within the agency - by book genres instead of countries, to the administration of the information about foreign publishers," she says. Another difference is the really close contact the agency has to the authors, which at Carlsen stays with the editors, she says.

At Carlsen, Bartelsen is responsible for Sweden, among other countries, which was part of her motivation for applying to GROW - she wanted to get an insider's view of Bonnier in its home country and see how things work at Bonnier Group Agency. "It's really interesting to see how rights are handled in the agency and to get in touch with other genres, like illustrated nonfiction or adult fiction," she says. "I also have the opportunity  to handle original titles like a graphic novel which is at the same time a real novel  with one page text, one page graphic novel. Or a children's novel series with manga illustrations."

One of the things Bartelsen likes about Bonnier Group Agency is that people don't make a fuss about their knowledge. "They just share it and are interested in hearing how it works in your home company," she says. "Sometimes you learn a lot about a company by watching the atmosphere closely, and I can sense less of a  hierarchy and a lot of openness here. I am sure there will be a lot of new aspects of the rights selling business that I will bring back home."