Volante Launches The Idea Project – Kicks Off with a Book Magazine
Volante, in partnership with EFN, will soon launch a ’book magazine’ focused on the most important and groundbreaking ideas.
With this partnership, Volante is expanding its tradition as Sweden’s leading platform for books about smart thinking and big ideas. The books will feature contributions from international thought leaders alongside texts from Swedish authors.
”I have internally called this The Idea Project. It’s not really new to us, but there is reason to continue what we started almost fifteen years ago with Volante förlag,” says Publishing Director Tobias Nielsén.
What is a ”book magazine”? The ambition is to achieve a blend of The Economist, The Atlantic, The Annual Question anthologies and McSweeney’s Quarterly. It will be a publication in a book format but with the structure and logic of a magazine—bringing together diverse articles, essays, and thought pieces that are engaging, varied, and curated to provide a comprehensive view on a wide range of topics. The book magazine will be published four times a year, allowing readers to dive deep into new themes each quarter.
Each issue will be sold wherever books are available and distributed to Handelsbanken customers, with the first issue planned for release in February 2025.
”Since its inception, Volante has been about identifying, developing, and disseminating the best ideas. This collaboration gives us a new way of doing that,” continues Tobias Nielsén.
EFN is a knowledge and media company under the Foundation Office of Handelsbanken, one of the major banks in Sweden founded in 1871. The foundation also funds hundreds of research projects, especially in Sweden, and there will be a special focus on these researchers in the partnership.
The head of the book magazine project is Magnus Nytell, a former executive at Bonnierförlagen and Nextory. The working group is led by Tobias Nielsén (Volante) with contributions from Johan Anderberg (author and journalist), Johanna Bysell (Volante), and Stefan Hilding (former publisher at Norstedts).
”EFN’s aim is to contribute to the dissemination of knowledge, primarily in the field of economics. Helping make smart thinkers and talented writers accessible in Swedish is both much needed and fun,” says Magnus Nytell, publisher of the publication and EFN’s lead on the collaboration with Volante.
Author and journalist Johan Anderberg is the editor of the book magazine. He adds, ”Many of the ideas, concepts, and mental models shaping developments from Silicon Valley to European universities—in business and politics—are not currently available to a Swedish audience in Swedish. There is a knowledge gap here that we intend to fill. Providing these ideas in Swedish is important, as the language will be richer if there are translations that can create common references, whether for economic terms or concepts describing research breakthroughs.”
From Volante, the Senior Editors Ulrika Bergwall and Johan Wirfält are also part of the working group.
”We are delighted to be working with Volante as a publisher. Their vision of contributing to a wiser and more enjoyable world aligns perfectly with what we want to achieve in this project. Since the beginning, they have been important in Sweden for discovering and spreading significant books and thinkers,” says Magnus Nytell.