Kyiv confirms its status of book capital
For four days the Kyiv International Book Exhibit-Fair was swirling in the International Exhibit Center on the capital’s left bank. During the capital’s largest book forum hundreds of thousands of books were sold and over 100 exhibit events were held, including meetings with writers, new book launches, autograph sessions, roundtables etc. The only reason for the visitors’ complaints was that they could not attend all the events, so rich was the program.
The assortment met the most exigent tastes. Masterly editions of books for children and gift books for adults enjoyed the greatest demand. The books on Ukrainian history also found readers, senior pupils and students bought textbooks and popular science books. Ukrainian classical literature was invariably popular. The Day’s Library Series published by the Ukrainian Press Group also found readers. This time the attention of book-lovers was caught by the new publication, two-volume edition Extract-150, under Larysa Ivshyna’s overall editorship.
The book is a selection of the most significant publications carried by the newspaper, examples of high-quality journalism that reveal unique civic consciousness.
Incidentally, this book was awarded with a second degree diploma of the Best Book of Ukraine National Competition.
A real boom was caused by the book published by the Chernivitsi Publishing House Bukrek, From Ukrainian Olden Times, which won the Grand-prix of this year’s national competition Ukraine’s Best Book. The story of how it saw the light is quite interesting. The book’s compiler Petro Zhyhar found a book published in 1900 in the attic of his father’s house in Ternopil region. It was made of cards and the texts were written in Old Russian and Old French. The album is a real encyclopedia of Cossack life, an unmatched research of the history and folkways of the Zaporizhian Sich. In the new edition, the text is in the original language, followed by a translation into modern Ukrainian. After one of the central TV channels reported the publication, people literally stood in lines for the 300-hryvnia book, so the publishers had to bring it out of Chernivtsi by express.
“The book has already caused furore at the International Exhibit in the Russian Federation,” Daryna Maksymets, head of the Bukrek Publishing House, explained, “This publication may be given as a present not only in Ukraine, but over the world. We have completed its Polish translation and we are going to present it in Krakow. The translation of the book into English and French is also underway.”
Every day the stand of the RF exhibit’s honorary guest was surrounded by crowds of book-lovers. According to the school teacher Olena Hryzlova, there were books on display that one could hardly find in Kyiv, because, as a rule, most of books found here are se-cond-grade commercial books. Regrettably, most of the books that the teacher liked were exhibit items, not for sale.
The books from Cuba, Korean expositions and some other countries were not sold either. This was the se-cond year that the graphic artist Pavlo Tytulenko came to the Kyiv Book Fair with the sole purpose of buying books in Korean. He had to make do with merely gazing at the exhibit items, which the embassy employees allowed to hold in one’s hands. Perhaps, there is no sense for the embassy to bring here literature merely for one devotee, but one can sell it via the Internet. The same goes for Cuban books. For some reason, their stand became the young people’s favorite. “Cuba is a very po-pular and mysterious country for us,” a pedagogical college student, Dmytro Osaulenko, explained. He would eagerly buy Fidel Castro’s 24 hour interview, which was published in a 789-page book. It was republished by the Russians, and it was even sold at the Russian stand, but Osaulenko was looking specifically for the book in Spanish.
In spite of the crisis, over 180 publishers took part in the exhibit, 30 of them came from abroad. Back in early 2009 book market experts spoke about the inevitable crisis in the sphere of book-publishing, that sales would drop, because with the financial crisis customers would start to save on reading. However, analysts were reassuring us at the time, explaining that in a time of systemic economic upheavals literature acquires an extra impetus for development. The book fair seemed to confirm this. One-day books appeared to be outsiders, whereas the demand for serious scholarly research, classical literature and children’s books has not been lost yet.
“The exhibit is over, which means that the preparations for the next, se-venth, exhibit have started,” the head of the State Committee on Radio and Television Yurii Plaksiuk said, “During the exhibit we polled the visitors and participants of the event and asked them to share their remarks and proposals as for the organization of the book forum. Now we are processing the results of the survey. And we will continue to do everything to satisfy the needs and tastes of the readers, so that the exhibit will grow with each year passing.”
For reference: book publishing started to grow in 2000, in terms of the number of book titles, and in 2004, in terms of copies sold. The highest number of books and brochures in the past ten years was published in 2008, both in titles and copies.
As of July 1, 2010, 1,476 subjects have been involved in Ukraine’s book publishing, whereas 616 subjects produce publishing goods, 285 are engaged in distribution, and 2,335 combine several kinds of publishing.
Statistically, by July 5, 2010, 9,019 titles of books and brochures were published, with an overall pressrun of 16.8 million copies, including 5,997 titles of books and brochures in Ukrainian with a pressrun of 7,912,000 copies and 2,263 titles of books and brochures in Russian with a pressrun of 7,994,000 copies.
The rates of book publishing have increased in most of regions, both in terms of titles and pressrun. As before, the leaders of Ukrainian book publishing are Kyiv, in terms of titles, and Kharkiv in copies. On the whole, these two cities have published more than a half of all books and brochures released in Ukraine and nearly 77 percent in terms of pressrun. Kharkiv’s publishing houses, Klub Simeinoho Dozvillia, Folio and Vesta, are the leaders in terms of the number of published books and brochures.
