While facing some of the universal challenges of publishing — like piracy and declining reading habits — the Ukrainian book industry has some extra problems: publishers lack investment, there are not enough bookstores, and most readers still prefer Russian over Ukrainian-language books.
These problems are especially acute in view of Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine, both physical in the country’s east, and cultural — on TV, social media, in music, film and yes, literature. In publishing, Russia also gets a share of Ukraine’s market when Ukrainians buy Russian books.
Since some restrictions on Russian book imports came into force in 2017, Ukrainian publishers started to replace Russian-language translations of foreign fiction and non-fiction with Ukrainian-language analogs. But they still lack resources to produce scientific and technical books translated into Ukrainian.
“Ukraine remains dependent on Russian publishing, because it still does not produce quality literature for specialists — mostly books by Western authors translated into Russian,” Oleksandr Afonin, president of the Ukrainian Association of Publishers and Book Distributors, told the Kyiv Post.
As for the original books by Ukrainian authors, publishers produce quite a few, but circulation sizes remain small. The state Ukrainian Book Institute first started to promote the country’s literature outwardly at international book fairs in 2018 and launches a reading promotion program inside the country this year.
Most of the internal promotion of Ukrainian literature has been done by the publishers, festivals and non-governmental organizations. In one such NGO-funded tour called “Merezhyvo,” over a dozen Ukrainian writers visited frontier towns around the country in pairs to read their works for local audiences.
Up-and-coming writer Myroslav Laiuk visited Izmail and Kiliya in Odesa Oblast near the border with Romania, where he says people sometimes didn’t speak or understand Ukrainian.
“Many locals saw a living writer for the first time. Not just someone abstract from a textbook, but an actual person whom they could ask anything,” Laiuk told the Kyiv Post.
Projects like this are a great way to promote Ukrainian literature inside the country, he says, but then sees a barrier that could make such promotion pointless.
“But there are no bookshops in small towns. Even if locals wanted a Ukrainian book — how can they find it?” Laiuk asks.
Great hope & stagnation
2018 was a record year for Ukrainian-language books — publishers in Ukraine released a total of 38.1 million copies of 16,857 titles, according to the country’s Book Chamber.
But that doesn’t mean the Ukrainian book industry is doing well. In fact, it still hasn’t reached the circulation numbers for books in all languages published in 2013, the year before the crisis in Ukraine. It’s 20 million short of 2013’s 69.6 million.
“There is stable stagnation, no breakthroughs,” says Afonin. “The industry exists with operating assets that do not exceed $140 million, with no capital investments.”
In contrast, the book market in nearby Poland made over $650 million in 2017, its worst year in half a decade, according to Biblioteka Analiz magazine.
But the share of Ukrainian-language books published in Ukraine has increased every year since the EuroMaidan Revolution, the popular uprising that drove Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, 2014.
The obvious reason is the rising demand for everything Ukrainian in the country that fought for its national identity in the streets of Kyiv and continues to do so on the frontline of Russia’s war in the east of the country.
Old and new Ukrainian publishers felt determined and optimistic to fill that demand, says Laiuk, who publishes with The Old Lion Publishing House that became most active after the revolution.
“There was a revival after the EuroMaidan for small and medium-sized businesses, generally,” he says. “It has something to do with great hope, an understanding that we’re architects of our own fortunes.”
Visitors browse the stalls at the International Book Arsenal Festival in Kyiv on May 26, 2019. Book Arsenal is one of the two largest literary events in Ukraine. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
Russian grey market
The government moved further to tip the scales in favor of Ukrainian books in 2017 when it imposed restrictions on the import of Russian printed products. Since then, all books from Russia must be inspected for anti-Ukrainian content by a special committee before legal entry.
The requirements for the committee’s licensing made book imports from Russia a longer and more complicated process. In 2018, imports fell to $3.4 million from $20.1 million in 2013. The Ukrainian publishers used the situation to increase their own sales.
The publishers welcomed the policy, calling it an “impetus” for the foreign-language books translated into Ukrainian that could now replace Russian translations. They could now “expand their assortment and grow actively,” Ilona Zamotna, director of Nash Format publishing, told the Chytomo media site.
But things didn’t go so smoothly. A grey market for Russian-language literature developed in Ukraine: border guards reported an increase in smuggled books from Russia and publishers say more Russian-language books now get pirated inside Ukraine.
This reflects a demand for Russian-language literature that didn’t go anywhere: according to a 2018 poll by Chytomo and the Razumkov Center, 28.3 percent of readers in Ukraine prefer books in Russian compared to 24.2 percent of readers in Ukrainian. 45.3 percent either prefer the original language of the book or don’t have language preferences.
Still, the share of Russian-language readers decreased compared to 2013: then 53 percent of readers preferred books in Russian versus 26 percent of Ukrainian-language readers. And 21 percent did not have language preferences or preferred to read in the original language.
Naturally, the publishers call for law enforcement to fight smuggling and piracy because they say these problems cause the greatest harm to the industry. Oleksandr Krasovitsky, director of Folio Publishing House, told Chytomo that the grey market amounts to about 22–24 percent of all sales.
A way forward
In 2019, the import of Russian books to Ukraine will decrease further, because new sanctions against Russian entities come into force, including against several major Russian publishers and online bookstores.
Laiuk says that, while it’s pointless to ban physical book imports in the internet age, the bans carry a somewhat symbolic meaning.
“We all read on the internet. We can get anything in seconds — forbidden, damned, anything you like. But it’s just inappropriate for Ukraine to have certain books while there’s war,” Laiuk says.
Afonin says that the new wave of restrictions also won’t have much effect — pirated and smuggled books will again compensate for the restricted literature. They will continue to harm the industry and won’t contribute to the state budget since customs and value-added taxes won’t get paid for these books.
“Besides anti-Ukrainian books, the sanctioned Eskmo publishing house releases a vast array of highly artistic and scientific literature. And people still look for these books for their self-education, work or research,” Afonin says.
Afonin is still against the idea of canceling the existing restrictions on Russian imports. But for the Ukrainian book industry to become more independent, he says the state should rather create the conditions for it to grow its own potential.
Besides the promotion of reading by the Book Institute, Afonin says that the state should stimulate investment into the publishing industry by adopting laws on patronage of the industry, meaning that such investments will not be taxed. There should also be a special lending system for the publishing industry, Afonin says, with interest rates under 10 percent.
A crucial part of the publishing industry is bookstores, but their numbers have decreased significantly, says Afonin. To ensure their existence, Afonin suggests they should be considered social institutions, meaning that they will be freed from some taxes.
President Volodymyr Zelensky and members of his Servant of the People party have not yet announced any strategies on developing the publishing industry. Members of Servant of the People will most likely form the majority of the new government after the first session of the new parliament on Aug. 29.
Afonin says he hopes for positive changes from the new government.
“I don’t expect any step back, because we have nowhere to go back,” Afonin says.
