“A Japanese collector orders from us once or twice a year, and we also have a regular customer from France, whose collection of 4,000 titles is surely among the largest in the world,” he said. Through direct contact with customers, the Schacks have been able to expand their enterprise overseas. But the internet has played an increasingly vital role in their business. In German-speaking countries, the Schacks’ wares are distributed to wholesale dealers or delivered directly to book stores. “My work as a publisher has become a kind of vicarious satisfaction for an artistic career that never quite materialized,” he said. So the Schacks now work together with 10 to 15 illustrators at a time. “I, like so many others growing up, used to sketch simple little flip-animations in all my school books,” he said.īut he soon realized he didn’t have the talent to become a full-time animator himself.
Schack founded the family publishing house in 1998 with his brother Michael. “With some of our books, we had some fun with black humour and let it run free,” he said with a smile. One of Schack’s titles, for instance, promises to tell the “real” story of the Frog King. “Flip books are not intended to convey deep psychoanalytic truths,” said Schack, explaining that the animations, instead, are meant to deliver quick, concise messages in an entertaining fashion.īut flip books still have the ability to surprise and delight. The Leipzig-based publisher has about 300 titles on offer, many of which are imported from countries as far afield as the United States, Spain, Italy, Argentina and Turkey. “The flip book is the progenitor of interactive entertainment,” said Holger Schack, the 43-year-old owner of “Schacks Verlag,” a publisher offering the broadest selection of flip books in Germany. While one hand holds the book, the other thumb flips rapidly through the pages, creating the effect of a short stop-motion film.
The fun lasts only a few seconds – these tiny books need little time to tell a story that can often include a surprising or curious end.