Best books of the globe (57 nations presented their produce) reigned supreme during five days at All-Russia Exhibition Center. This was the most event-rich Moscow International Book Fair (MIBF) in its entire history of 37 years. There was more than usual space in Pavilion 75 – not that the number of visitors decreased, but Russian participants were not so numerous, as only a third out of roughly 5,000 national publishing houses sent their representatives to the capital.
In addition, an alternative New Square show opened in the courtyard of the Polytechnic Museum. This space was offered to bookmen free of charge and small publishers of intellectual literature (O.G.I., Ad marginem, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Ves mir, Ivan Limbach, Novoe izdatelstvo and others) made their way there. While leasing a stand in Pavilion 75 would cost about 2,000 euro, here the cost varied between 500 and 1,000 rubles. Unlike the publishing giants, these publishers are not concerned solely over the profit making. The alternative fair organizers at the Polytechnic Museum thus formulated their goal: reviving a free spirit of small bookstores which were widespread in Moscow in mid 1990’s. Today the culture of small intellectual venues is almost completely lost and a way to the bright future is open only for strong commercial ventures. The MIBF organizers do not grudge against the New Square as they do not regard it as their competitor.
“September is the time of books; this is a tradition created by our fair, – says Gennady Kuzminov, head of the MIBF press center. – Now others harness the wave of the autumn interest in the book and we don’t mind. On the other hand, it’s hard to agree with the New Square marketers who assure that genuine producers of intellectual literature are solely small publishers. This is only part of the truth. These books are also published by Exmo, AST, Rosman or Azbuka. Simply this does not catch the eye given their stake on a mass market. Somebody introduced preferential treatment of small publishers at New Square. Excellent! But I am sure that should a large publisher apply for participation, they’ll charge it a pretty penny.”
Strong and invincible pirates
Exmo with its 80-million yearly print run and the annual turnover of 6 billion rubles has gained a firm foothold on top of the publishing pyramid. “Fifth Ocean” (AST) has a slightly poorer showing. Following far behind are Prosveschenie (49 million copies and the turnover of R3 billion) and Drofa (17 million books and a 1.5-billion-ruble turnover). This data was announced at the sectoral conference Book Market – 2011.
A report delivered by Exmo CEO Oleg Novikov on the current situation and future prospects of the book publishing industry contained lucid statistics: compared to the previous year, the market sagged by 11% in H1 in volume terms and by 7% in money terms. Among the reasons is the globally flagging interest in reading, piracy in the Internet and the closure of bookshops. Forecasts are not encouraging either. “Until we overpower the pirates or increase the number of reading compatriots, nothing positive can be expected,” stated Novikov. Many publishers sustained their budget by book reprinting, but now this reliable source of income generation is gone – everything is available in the Internet for free.
Legal resources are far behind the pirate ones and without the backing from the government it is impossible to win the fight against piracy. Creating an international copyright register is long overdue.
The sign of our time is everybody publishing everything! There is almost no thematic division among the publishers and there was definitely none at the fair. In the words of Natalia Yumasheva from the Moscow House of Book, demand for fiction is 8% down, whereas textbooks and children’s books sell well. Children’s books could be seen at every step, including the stands of the moguls.
The Dead Tree Business
The authors of stories and novels most often formed duets to communicate with their readers: Zakhar Prilepin – Anton Utkin, Olga Slavnikova – Alexander Ilichevsky, Dmitry Bykov – Tatiana Moskvina. Not all dialogues were poignant, but this did not embarrass the public, beholding their idols with much affection. Viktor Erofeev was a soloist, having presented two out of six volumes, to be published by Ripol publishing house, in the Author’s Parlor. In the breaks of the signing session we managed to talk to Viktor about the e-book, whether modern-day publishers encourage creativity, and about the evolution of his attitude towards MIBF.
“I like the Moscow Book Fair; it has always been good and year after year it changes for the better – from the state of chaos towards civility,” says Mr Erofeev. “I am now sitting at the stand of the Ripol publishing house and looking around I can easily imagine myself somewhere in Taiwan or in Frankfurt. The MIBF decoration is turning somewhat global and featureless. We are moving towards civility, losing our original provinciality on the way and obviously it is necessary to experience this transformation in order to put oneself into shape. My books are in a strange way distributed among the smart readers and here you can meet people from different cities and it’s very rewarding to talk with them. As regards the book publishers, in this country they are mainly enthusiasts. Producing meat or toilet paper is also important, but when someone publishes books, this gradually changes his mind and inner being. Many publishers have excellent business acumen, but when they come across some extraordinary talent, there is a glow in their eyes. The Western publisher is cooler in his approach to books. They find and publish many outstanding things, but the enthusiasm of our book publishers is an integral part of our Russian soul. The coming of e-books is inevitable and fighting against them is as futile as fighting against a wind mill. It will gradually take root like a TV set or a PC. And the hoax that Russia is the last stronghold of the printed book is utter rubbish. Europe is much more conservative and economizing while we more readily embrace all kind of novelties. Yet my readership has not scrapped paper books – that’s for sure.”
The MIBF Organization Committee takes pride in the diversity and richness of its program, but not everybody thinks it an advantage. This is how German Sadulaev answered the said questions, for example:
“I am not a major expert in fairs though I’ve been to many. It’s great to see so many publishing houses come together to display their books; it’s always rewarding to see keen interest in literature. Yet the Moscow forum organizers have not clearly defined their format: either this should be a reader’s fair and then a wide choice of books at affordable prices are to be available, or this is a venue for professionals where negotiations between publishers, authors and literary agents are to be held. And when everything is mixed up, there is a mess with an obscure outcome. As regards the contemporary publisher, I’d say he has a negative impact on creativity. I hear from such publishers that nobody is interested in my books which do not sell and pile up in great quantities. I’ve never sought glory or money; these are not my incentives in writing. I write because I feel an inner urge. Russia lacks the culture of a book market today. Not only my books, but also other outstanding novels do not sell well. Who is to blame? I don’t know. This is just how things stand and you can do nothing about it. According to baron Ungern, one of the characters invented by my most favorite writer Leonid Yuzefovich, Destiny Matters.
That the book is changing its format does not confound Mr. Sadulaev. True, paper pages have some special magic, but the e-text has the right to existence as well. Most important is for people to read.
“Frankly, even if they stop reading I do not care,” he says. “This can be awful, but probably not so bad. We’ve long been immersed in the world of books and do not know what the surrounding world is all about. Man has invented a bookish world and we don’t know what will open to our eyes if we quit reading. We are scouts by nature, exploring this reality using many different ways. I feel the bookish world is coming to its end. Books have existed in oral tradition, in manuscripts and in print. Ramayana has not lost its significance thanks to numerous rendition modes. But if this sacred text won’t be heard, seen or read, what happens then?”
As a matter of fact, a round table of experts in Internet continents called The Dead Tree Business was held within the fair. Such an offensive definition addressed paper media made of timber. Meanwhile electronic book readers are not spun out of thin air either and the pumping of crude from the depth of the earth upsets ecological balance no less than the felling of trees. A big question is what manufacture does more harm – paper and pulp or polymeric production – not to mention the fact that converting the entire wealth of human thought to a digital form and storing it on digital media is a very risky undertaking, for all the vulnerability of paper.
Poet Danila Davydov believes MIBF is going downhill – the number of intellectual publishing houses is waning while the number of popular and entertaining business products is rapidly increasing. Yet the main calling of the book has been education and enlightenment. Not in vain is the largest non-science publisher Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie and some other publishers like the Russian State University for the Humanities are not among this year’s participants. MIBF was once the only book fair in Moscow, but now other projects have appeared: Moscow Book Festival and Intellectual Non-Fiction Literature Fair that originated at the New Square Polytechnic Museum. Against this backdrop MIBF looks like a bourgeois and deeply pro-governmental event.
“Nevertheless even here you may find some isles of freedom and good books which can be bought and studied. During two days at the fair I purchased 30 remarkable books,” said Mr. Davydov. “You should thoroughly prepare your visit to MIBF, or you’ll leave it as befuddled as though you watched TV. As for the e-book, it will certainly strike root here as elsewhere. I support it because it will overpower the mass culture. Another text by Marinina or Dontsova, low quality sci-fi or detective stories will be downloaded and quickly deleted while high literature won’t escape the paper. It will be marginal, to be sure, and a patchwork will have the print run of 200 copies, but it will be a limited edition on exquisite paper. Look at stamp-collecting. When a bar code was invented, stamps were no longer needed. Yet all nations go on putting them out for the sake of stamp collectors. And the community of book lovers is much more numerous so paper books will always exist.”
Man of letters Lev Danilkin perceives the fair as a giant store which is not a must-visit place. Unless it was necessary for him to present his book about Yuri Gagarin at the Young Guard stand, he would hardly be present at MIBF.
“MIBF is too a pompous, semiofficial and partly outdated event,” says Mr Danilkin. “But being here is an exciting experience anyway because of the special literary environment. For the Young Guard (Molodaya Gvardia) publisher this is definitely the event of the year.”
Today’s publisher does not stimulate the writer with royalties which are absolutely inadequate to the author’s exertion and efforts. But Lev Danilkin writes about the objects and people he likes and he’d write his books even free of charge. While promoting the e-reader, he himself does not have one. Admitting that this is a handy gadget, he is content with paper books.
Book in Hand
The eight-volume edition of Andrey Platonov was named the Book of the Year and Vremya publishing house received Grand Prix from Rospechat – a Faberge-styled egg from precious stones with a small golden book inside. Thanks to this publisher, the writer’s fullest collection including, apart from The Sea of Youth, Dzhan, The River Potudan and other famous stories, also dramas, journalism, essays, critique, rendered Russian and Bashkir fairy-tales, correspondence and early poems with comments (compiler: Natalia Kornienko). Platonov’s works were not published during his lifetime. He made his living wiping the streets or as a backstage worker and wrote deeply moving prose at nights. For a scene with a hammering bear in Foundation Pit, Brodsky called Platonov the first serious surrealist depicting the nation which large became a victim of its own language, capable of begetting a huge fiction world.
All the winners of other numerous nominations were awarded bronze Book in Hand statuettes. Olga Slavnikova’s novel Light Head was named the winner of the Prose of the Year nomination while Alexander Kushner’s On This Side of the Mysterious Line collection of poems won in the Poetry of the Year nomination.
Now the Federal Press Agency is launching a new solid award for best translation from Russian into foreign languages. One of its sponsors is the Italian publisher Feltrinelli which was the first to publish Doctor Zhivago.
And the recently introduced Italian-Russian literary award Raduga (Rainbow) for young authors went to Sergey Shergunov (5,000 euro) and translator Marina Kozlova (2,500 euro).
Tatiana Kovaleva, Diana Machulina, Elena Garevskaya,
Culture newspaper with a special report for the Russkiy Mir portal
