By Peter Budig

Licences are the cherry on the cake at this publisher of children’s books – all the more so when the cake itself is already a hit and extremely popular with the public at large. Then the cherry on the cake really comes into its own! WAS IST WAS, the children’s book brand that made Tessloff Verlag big and still represents its core business today, is well represented in the licensing business. Ninety-one per cent of all 8 to 12-year-olds as well as 97% of all mothers are familiar with the book series with the square logo (2020 figures). 

WAS IST WAS once began life as a licence itself. Ragnar Tessloff, founder of the German publishing company, came across a series of informative books for children called the How and Why Wonder Books in a New York bookshop. Sensing an opportunity, the publisher acquired the German rights at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1959 and developed the series further. Since the late 1980s, the successful Tessloff publishing house has been part of the Nuremberg-based media company Müller Medien, and consequently moved from Hamburg to Nuremberg at the end of the 1980s.

First international licences: the WAS IST WAS book series conquers the world

Helga Uhlemann, who has been with the publishing company for over 30 years, is in charge of Licensing & International Business at Tessloff. The obvious licence for the WAS IST WAS book series is the international, non-German market. Dinosaurs was one of the very first successful volumes and still sells extremely well today. Planets and Space Travel, Whales and Dolphins, Ancient Rome, Planet Earth – these are topics that every child is interested in, no matter where they might live. There are now around 130 WAS IST WAS titles in Germany; selected titles are licensed in 75 countries and 37 languages. The steadiest markets for the WAS IST WAS books are Hungary, China, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Netherlands. Over 100 million copies of the entertaining classic science and history books have already been sold. 

However, in recent years, the texts and illustrations in these traditional children’s books have had to be rewritten and redesigned. “Children who are digital natives have a very different reading style. Not from top left to bottom right. They want to be guided; they need stimuli, questions, little info boxes, accompanied by strong images,” Janine Wölfel, press officer, explains. The experienced and well-rehearsed Tessloff team, the proof-readers, graphic designers, picture editors – a good 60 permanent employees and many loyal freelancers – are constantly reinventing the ways they communicate knowledge so that the books never fail to capture young readers’ attention.

The famous logo also adorns other book series

The company has also concluded licensing agreements with other publishers in the German-speaking world, such as the Berlin-based comic specialists Egmont, who are reviving well-established WAS ISTWAS topics in their own way. In their tried and tested picture story form, The Best Pet of the Cretaceous Period and The Pharaoh's Gift are the names of German-language comics bearing the WAS IST WAS logo. The pocket-sized non-fiction books published by Carlsen Verlag target a younger age group (from six and up). In them, the funny goblin from the Pixi books teaches children about various topics. Children can learn facts about the natural world, the perennially popular topic of dinosaurs, outer space, building sites, farms and so on and so forth. The WAS IST WAS games published by Kosmos, which the long-established Stuttgart-based publisher of games, guidebooks, young adult and children’s books issues under licence on ever new topics (the Earth, horses, the world, football, etc.), have become classics. All these formats comply with the ideology of Tessloff Verlag, which Managing Director Katja Meinecke-Meurer explains thus: “We want to impart knowledge to children and young people.”

WAS IST WAS helps promote sustainability

One special feature of the licensing business are the WAS IST WAS books and brochures for customers that promote specific issues. WAS IST WAS, for example, has created a brochure with the OFFSHORE WINDENERGIE foundation. It explains “how climate-friendly electricity is generated with the ‘power of the wind’”. The topic of sustainability is close to the heart of the entire publishing company, not just in the books it’s currently producing, but as “a process that’ll never be complete”, says Katja Meinecke-Meurer. What also belongs to this series of special sales editions is the book Der BioBauernhof (about organic farming) that Tessloff produced with Naturland in Nordrhein-Westfalen, an organisation for organic farmers in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Another brochure on electronic waste was produced with the EAR foundation from the Deutsche Recycling Service GmbH, a company specialising in the disposal of electrical goods, packaging and batteries. “We think in terms of content; communicating knowledge to build a more sustainable world is our mission,” Helga Uhlemann says.

Contacts for licensing partners in non-book genres are often established at trade fairs

Licences are also granted in other genres, ones in which neither books nor the transfer of knowledge play a role: product boxes for children’s toy shops, dinosaurs in a chocolate egg (which then trigger a radio play via a code), and a joint project with the WEPA Group Foundation, in which 11 information boards were produced for the tree diversity trail on the Lattenberg mountain in the Sauerland region of Germany. The children’s shampoo from the drugstore dm’s own brand range Balea also bore the famous logo from Tessloff Verlag for a while. Finally, let’s not forget the CRAZE WAS IST WAS science advent calendar – with experiments for children. There are virtually no limits to creative ideas in the licensing world!

Uhlemann, a well-connected business administration graduate, doesn’t have to go round knocking on doors to achieve her goals for the company. She makes a lot of contacts at trade fairs, most recently at BRANDmate (a “symbiosis of trade fair, congress and festival”). The relatively new B2B trade fair with a cross-industry platform was launched in Offenbach in 2022 and will take place in Essen on 25 and 26 June next summer. The Spielwarenmesse in Nuremberg is also a good place to meet customers, and not just from the toy and YA book sectors, as Uhlemann has discovered. 

WAS IST WAS books that can be used with the BOOKii listening pen, a gadget that combines reading and listening, have also been published. The sensor on the tip of the pen reads a code on the pages of the book. This code is linked to various audio files: voices, sounds and explanatory stories relating to the book. In turn, Galakto is an audio product from Tiny Monster GmbH in Berlin: a so-called token – a chip with audio content and stories – is inserted into the smart, colourful Galakto player. WAS IST WAS tokens are available on topics such as planets and space travel, dinosaurs and cars.

The world of licensing – the sky’s the limit when it comes to ideas

At the very top of the Tessloff universe in Nuremberg is a room that showcases the company’s treasures: historical books that re-awaken childhood memories in visitors, side by side with brand new ones that somehow look the same and yet are completely different. Helga Uhlemann has her own licence area here: the shelves there are filled with familiar and well-known products as well as completely astonishing ideas. The world of licensing apparently knows no bounds. 

About the author:

Peter Budig studied Protestant theology, history and political science. He worked as a freelance journalist, ran the editorial department of a large advertising paper in Nuremberg for over 10 years and was the editor of the wonderful Nürnberger Abendzeitung newspaper. Since 2014, he has been a freelance journalist, author and copywriter again. In all respects, storytelling is his preferred way of communicating information.