Calvaria’s essay «Ukrainian publishing business»
The speech by Kseniya Sladkevych for COUNTRY BRIEFINGS in frame Reader Development Conference (
• «The Ukrainian publishing business» is the business which is making with «the Ukrainian book».
• «The Ukrainian book» is the book in the Ukrainian language, published in .
• «The Ukrainian publisher» is the publisher which publishes the books in the Ukrainian language in .
At first: The potential of the Ukrainian book market is significant. Fifty millions people lives in . Ukrainians have high educational level. Ukrainians like to read. The book is traditional home rest for many-many people.
Summary: the Ukrainian book market is attractive to publishing business. BUT... Until recently the Ukrainian publishers in were the exotic phenomenon. Why???
Until recently, the economic and cultural policy of the Ukrainian authority de-facto promoted expansion of the Russian publishing business on the Ukrainian book market.
Therefore the Ukrainian publishing business is only at the initial stage of the development.
At second: Today the main competitor of the Ukrainian book in is the book in Russian. Therefore the Ukrainian publishers must to offer the reader more competitive product, than the Russian publisher.
The Ukrainian publisher must to make also significant efforts for expansion and developments of reader's groups and to use for this purpose non-standard methods and technologies.
A few examples
Calvaria Publishing House is one of the major and most successful Ukrainian publishing houses. «Calvaria» is publisher of the magazine for youth named «Chetver». «Chetver» is an element of a ways of promotion the Ukrainian book in the youth environment. This magazine became creative laboratory for young authors and an effective conductor of a reader's fashion in the student's environment. «Chetver» became also an epicentre of waves for information under-age fiction in .
For promotion foreign fiction in Ukrainian translations Calvaria Publishing House organizes literary events with the «fashionable» Ukrainian authors in different cities of .
Except for that «Calvaria» used «non-literary» places for promotion of the Ukrainian book. There are galleries, beauty salons, shops of fashionable clothes, etc.
As the Results
Constant and regular activity of the Ukrainian publishers in all directions has brought essential results:
- Annual sales for modern Ukrainian fiction have increased in ten-twelve times for last six years;
- Networks of bookshops and book supermarkets have started to develop in last year in cities;
- For last three years many new and very interesting literary names have appeared in : Deresh, Mednikova, Povaljaeva etc;
- Since 2006 the edition of the Ukrainian book became one of strategic directions of development of the largest Ukrainian Book Club which have 2 million members. This Club recently became a part of the DirectGroup Bertelsmann. In September 2005 Calvaria Publishing House has given to this Club book Club right for the Works of several modern Ukrainian authors;
- Recently publishers of many countries actively get licenses for the edition of works of the Ukrainian writers.
