Impression of the non/fiction fair

Few book fairs could pull off the title “International Book Fair for Sophisticated Literature and Non-fiction”, or non/fiction for short. It sounds elitist, and even a bit daunting – but Russian readers clearly don’t see it that way.  The non/fiction fair is already in its 11th year and takes place at the Central House of Artists across from an amusement park and several hundred metres from the Oktyabriskaya metro station.  This year, the fair drew over 280 exhibitors from 18 countries from 2 to 6 December. Just a few years ago the fair was an insider tip among those living in Moscow; now the aisles are full of visitors.  France, Poland, Norway and many other countries are represented with national stands. The Germans also have a Collective Stand, at which around 128 publishers and institutions display around 350 titles. Mirza Hayit, sales director of the Haufe Mediengruppe and Wolfgang Bertrams, managing director of the Mayersche Buchhandlung, were also among those who travelled to the fair from Germany.

Tatjana Simon and Olga Ditsch of BIZ Moscow

Tatjana Simon and Olga Ditsch of the German Book Information Centre (BIZ) in Moscow are responsible for the stand. “There is a lot of interest here in German-language literature, but it is difficult for the readers to access it”, says Tatjana Simon. This is also the reason why the fair is generally so popular among the public in Moscow: For many connoisseurs of good literature, it is an important source, if not the most important source, for new reading material. That’s because the Achilles heel of the Russian book market is distribution. Independent bookstores are scarce and the majority of book chains belong to publishers, including the two giants of the Russian market, Eksmo and AST, which each have a market share of around 15 per cent. In these publishers’ bookstores, competition naturally only exists in a very basic form, if at all. Alongside the innumerable small independents in Moscow, there are also the largest bookstores Moskva, Biblio Globus and Top Kniga. But all of them put together can scarcely satisfy the hunger of readers – elaborate displays and other marketing tools are hardly necessary for luring readers into the salesrooms, which are filled to the ceiling with books. “Most publishers think that the Internet and Google Book Search could solve this distribution problem”, says Svetlana Zorina, editor-in-chief of the trade publication “Knishnaya Industriya”. But to this point, neither Google nor Amazon are showing an interest in the Russian market – even though Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos says himself that his long-term goal is to offer the world’s largest selection of books. One event hosted by the BIZ Moscow and the Goethe Institute attempted to take account of the Achilles heel of distribution, posing the question “Can the Internet save the Russian book market?” More on this in an upcoming blog post….

The relationship could be described as one between a dwarf and a giant. And this is not only true of the size of the countries involved. In the last ten years, just a few titles have been translated from Czech into Russian! The Czech presentation attempts to take a step toward improving this situation. Seven new translations were presented to coincide with the fair, including “The Wall” by Petr Sís.

A great deal of energy has been invested by the two power women of Svět knihy — organiser of the presentation, which is financed by Czech Ministry of Culture — Dana Kalinová, managing director, and Jana Chalupová, advertising and PR. Twenty authors also travelled to the fair. Many of them, like Jáchym Topol or Michal Viewegh, have long been available in German translation, but not in Russian…

Dana Kalinová and Jana Chalupová

All the more pleasing was the fact that the interest from the public was great and the stand active. As a result, organisers could determine which titles could potentially be attractive and which would be of less interest. The employees of seventeen Czech publishing houses were in attendance. According to Dana Kalinová, they had promising discussions with their Russian partners. It will, however, be a long-term project.

16 illustrators

It wouldn’t be a Czech presentation without children’s books. Sixteen Czech illustrators were featured, along with their work, right in the foyer of the main hall. In the children’s area one floor higher there were all sorts of things to experience. A workshop of the project “Orbis pictus aneb…” – an exhibition presented as one continuous creative process. The authors Petr Nikl and Ondřej Smeykal led workshops for children and adults to encourage their creativity and imagination. Lucie Seifertová presented the world’s longest pop-up book: A History of the Brave Czech Nation and a Few Insignificant World Events. Perhaps it also qualifies as the longest title of a picture book?

Alexander Royfe CEO Litres

Alexander Royfe, CEO of LitRes, is convinced that Russia has what it takes to surpass the USA in all things related to e-books. “Russia has very good technology at its command and does not restrict the user. While the USA is focused only on formats like PDF or EPUB, we offer everything here – and completely free of Digital Rights Management.”  Royfe accepts the inevitable consequences that come along with this. “Pirated versions of our bestsellers are downloadable within three hours at the most – the number of pirates is too great to put up a resistance”. But embracing the concept of making everything as easy as possible for the users has worked well for Royfe thus far. A few weeks ago, he presented himself at the Frankfurt Book Fair as a winner of the Russian distribution debacle with www.litres.ru. “Distribution practically doesn’t exist in Russia and the Internet is the only solution for the book trade”, says Royfe. On top of that, print is expensive. It is simply too expensive for the average reader to buy the new Umberto Eco in hardcover for 500 roubles.

The website, which offers e-books are available in all formats and accepts all imaginable methods of payment, be it via SMS or credit card, now has 250,000 registered users. Readers can pay at special cash points in Moscow.  The content being sold is multimedia in nature and the texts, audio and video files have their own editorial staffs. Just a week ago, games were added the list of offerings. Royfe believes that the recipe for success lies in the combination of 40 employees on his team: book people meet techies – and they even understand each other. Royfe himself is a trained radio engineer who worked for the Moscow magazine “Book Review” for years as a journalist before starting at publicant.ru, the pioneer in the e-book trade, and then moving to LitRes in 2008 as CEO. Today LitRes is Russia’s leading e-content retailer.

He especially uses the non/fiction book fair to communicate with his customers – the big names of the Russian book market like AST, Eksmo or Prosveshenie. LitRes provides them with technology services, like converting from print into e-book, and also with complete marketing services. Royfe also meets his authors here. LitRes’ portfolio boasts around three times as many agreements with authors as with publishers. The business model in this field is a traditional one: contracts, including author advances, are only concluded with the best authors.

Wolfgang Bertrams (left) and Mirza Hayit (right)

“Can the Internet save the Russian book trade?” In light of the debates surrounding the Google Settlement, this question sounds almost heretical. Not so to Russian ears evidently. A panel discussion was organised by the German Book Information Centre (BIZ) Moscow and by the Goethe Institute to provide an international perspective. The event was attended by Wolfgang Bertrams of the Mayersche Buchhandlung, Alexander Ivanov from the Russian publisher “Ad Marginem”, and representatives of Russian bookstores and Internet portals.

"Can the Internet save the Russian book market?": A question of great interest to the public

Mirza Hayit of the Haufe Mediengruppe was invited to provide the German publishing perspective and confirmed what for Russian readers is a part of everyday life:  “The distribution process and the availability of books is appallingly bad and completely centred in Moscow and St. Petersburg.” Internet bookstores like the Russian replica of Amazon, Ozon.ru, are the ones who stand to gain from this. In the first quarter of 2009, Ozon was able to defy the ubiquitous recession, increasing its sales by a third. Yet Mirza Hayit remains sceptical: “The field of e-publishing could be an opportunity, but when I look at the infrastructure for Internet access outside of the urban centres, I realise this will probably still take awhile. Overall confidence in the Internet book trade does not seem to be very pronounced on the part of publishers and it also falls flat, according to Ozon, because publishers are not ready to grant extended payment terms”. Internet use in Russia is concentrated in the urban centres: There are more than 40 million Internet users, around 12 million of whom live in and around Moscow. In June 2009, 9.35 million private households had broadband access.

In Germany, the digital future is already the present. While a specialist publisher / media group like Haufe still made 90 per cent of its sales via print in 1990, that number is just 50 per cent in 2009. The rest is brought in through online activities, software, and also by offering seminars. Mirza Hayit estimates that in 2020, every second euro of profit will come from the online field. “Print will remain, but there will not be any growth here.”

His German colleague Wolfgang Bertrams estimates that Mayersche has a 10 to 15 per cent market share on the Internet. Mayersche has also profited in the business-to-business field, particularly by offering its own e-book distribution. Mayersche is Germany’s third largest bookstore chain (after DBH and Thalia), with 1,000 employees and its own logistics. Nevertheless, Bertrams is sceptical about what the future holds: “The Internet is a problem for the retail book trade in Germany” – and not the thing that will save it…

Knizhnoe Obozrenie

“In the 1990s, Russians were still tremendously interested in politics and the history of their country. Today, the number one title on the non-fiction bestseller list is, “A simple way to a slim figure – Lose the weight for good””. The words of Alexander Nabokov, editor of the industry magazine Knizhnoe Obozrenie, are sobering. And the list continues with how to earn a lot of money, how to quit smoking, how to raise children. With this, Russia has begun to conform to average western taste, which Nabokov qualifies as an improvement: “We have crossed this threshold of the great upheavals (of the “dark ‘90s”)”. Even so, coming in at number five on the bestseller list is Mikhail Kasyanov’s book “Without Putin”. In it, the former premier accuses Vladimir Putin, the acting president, of being a putschist. Around two months ago, Kasyanov participated – along with around 700 people – in a day of remembrance for journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered three years ago. Thus the thesis of political disenchantment cannot be completely right. The role of the Internet relating to freedom of opinion and the promotion of a civil society is debatable – where the number of blogs continues to grow steadily.

In the case of fiction, sentimental prose ranks first and foremost — escapism with Anna Gavalda or Stephenie Meyer. But crime novels, from the pens of Daria Dontsova or Alexandra Marinina, for example, are also very popular. And challenging literature by Vladimir Sorokin, Victor Pelevin or Lyudmila Ulitskaya is also in demand.

Alexander Nabokow, Knizhnoe Obozrenie

With a circulation of 8,000, Knizhnoe Obozrenie is one of the two leading publishing trade publications, along with Knizhnaya Industriya.

Svetlana Zorina of the industry magazine "Book Industry"/ Knizhnaya Industriya

Seventy per cent of its revenue comes from subscriptions — the rest from advertising. Knizhnoe Obozrenie is the only medium that publishes regular bestseller lists based on sales voluntarily submitted by four large bookstore chains and around 15 independent bookstores.

Unfortunately, there is no English-language source for information on the Russian book market thus far. Svetlana Zorina from the young trade newspaper competitor Knizhnaya Industriya believes that Russian literature could generally do with some more promotion abroad. To date, Russia still lacks a means of addressing foreign cultural politics like other countries have in the form of the British Council (GB) or the Goethe Institute. The government initiative “Russkiy Mir” was started in 2007 under Putin. But in the meantime, the project seems to have lost its way to some extent and to concentrate primarily on promoting the Russian language. “Russian literature does not have a big presence abroad”, according to Svetlana Zorina, and the reasons vary. For one thing, there is no focused plan of action – more than three different institutions, including Russkiy Mir, along with the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communication, and the private London-based Academia Rossica foundation, are active in this field. Furthermore, the interest of Russian publishers in licensing books has been small thus far – one of the largest publishers, AST, recently announced that licensing would account for only around 4 per cent of its total sales. Svetlana Zorina hopes for a time when Russian publishers will invest more to promote their titles at international book fairs and, for instance, offer English-language abstracts.

I also hope for more discoveries like “Journey to Petushki” by Venedikt Erofeev — that would be simply wonderful…