Interview with Claudette Halkes and Annemarieke Piers from Snor Publishers

I came across the Dutch publishing house Snor a long time ago, via the lovely blog Bloesem, and I had bookmarked their site for ages without ever sitting down to look properly. When Claudette and Annemarieke emailed me a few weeks ago, I finally went through the whole catalogue, and it was hard to choose which titles to write about. There are simply so many lovely books. Fortunately a number of them are also published in English and German, so let us start with those.

Cheerful in 3½ Months is a small fun book that gives you one tip per day to make you smile. Cycling in Holland is a very Dutch piece of practical loveliness, with maps, advice, and tiny illustrations of cake stops. Spot On is a sticker-and-photograph book of looking-game pages that work beautifully for travel. The whole list shares a sensibility — useful, charming, slightly homemade in feel, never twee.

In our short interview, Claudette and Annemarieke talked about how they choose the people they work with (slowly, by trusting their gut), how they think about price (a Snor book should feel like a small treat that anyone can afford), and how they manage to keep the catalogue feeling personal even as the press has grown. They also told me that the office, in Utrecht, is full of plants and cake.

What stood out for me was their answer to the question of what unites a Snor book. They said simply: something to enjoy with your hands. A sticker, a fold, a little ritual on a page. That tactile quality is, I think, why their books are so habit-forming.

Worth following — and worth ordering a small stack of, especially around a birthday.