When Lithuania, Poland, and the Czech Republic broke free of totalitarian rule in the late 80’s and early 90’s, poetic manifestoes blossomed and independent publishers proliferated. Hundreds of small presses sold almost 25 million books after Lithuanian Independence in 1991, up from a fraction of that put out by the six state-owned publishers previously. A calmer political climate and entrance into the EU in 2004 have stabilized the Eastern European industry and the only poetry book on the Lithuanian list these days is a posthumous collection from a popular novelist/TV personality (see the debut Lithuanian list at right). Despite the opening economies, markets are still small (a title selling 6,000 copies in two months makes a bestseller in Lithuania) and distribution creative.
Book clubs, the all but forgotten channel stateside, make sense in Eastern Europe, particularly in Lithuania and the Ukraine where isolated country towns often lack a proper bookstore. Lithuania’s first club, Knygu klubas, appeared in 2003, according to Aušrinė Jonikaitė of Books from Lithuania, and another, Versus aureus skaitytoju klubas, opened this year. Both are publisher-owned with the purpose of spreading their lists and growing rapidly.
And multi-nationals are taking note. Foreign companies own most of the daily press in the Czech Republic and the Euromedia Group owns its main book distributor, Slovansky dum. Euromedia’s Bertelsmann also runs the Family Leisure book club in the Ukraine where it enjoyed double digit growth last year. It’s not a bad position to be in considering distribution could use a boost there. “Book distribution is the weakest link in the [Czech] industry,” according to Jaroslav Cisar, editor-in-chief of the largest Czech book industry publication, Grand Biblio. “About 50 companies work in a relatively small territory. Many of them cover only a very small part of our country or offer only a narrow choice of book titles.” He estimates that the vast majority tends to buy in bookstores and supermarkets with a growing internet and book club segment. Though statistics on the book trade are scarce in the region, Cisar provides a rough breakdown of where Czech readers buy their books.
Perhaps ready for a book club or two of its own, Latvia faces similar distribution woes with its population as well as its wholesalers and booksellers concentrated in the city of Riga and the rest scattered throughout the provinces. Delivery to small towns and remote areas remains relatively weak, and due to the taboo on book trade statistics, it’s hard to know how many real bookstores even exist. Catering to two mostly separate audiences, Russian and Latvian, poses another stumbling block that the media is gradually overcoming, mostly through analogous free daily newspapers printed in both languages.
With 30% of households connected to the internet, more Polish readers (about 5%) are buying books from the country’s two major virtual outlets, Merlin.pl and Empik.pl. Last year, Poland discovered Amazon as well, but traditional bookstores still attract the majority of book buyers at an estimated 2,520 outlets that sell about 42% of all books (see chart in the full issue here). Even though the total number of libraries, at this point 8,700, has been decreasing since the beginning of the 90’s, the number of borrowers continues to increase.
Other international neighbors are paying attention to the region as well, evidenced by Lithuania’s position as honored guest last month at the Turin Book Fair.
—
