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Humanitarian sciences in Siberia

2020 year, number

RUSSIAN REGIONAL BOOK PUBLISHING ON THE 2020: INFRASTRUCTURE, RESOURCES, PROBLEMS

I.V. LIZUNOVA, A.S. METELKOV
State Public Scientific Technical Library of the SB RAS, 15, Voshod str., Novosibirsk, 630102, Russian Federation
Keywords: regional book publishing, regional book distribution, small-circulation literature, publishing project, Internet environment, crowdfunding

Abstract

Modern regional book publishing has been formed under the influence of trends of monopoly, monocentrism, and concentration of publishing business in the central part of the country. It has specific features and develops in a specific thematic niche. Hundreds of publishing organizations form the infrastructure of regional book publishing, but only dozens of them are stable and relatively successful. The most regional publishing houses are small and medium-sized, low-budget, unprofitable and kulturträger without their own printing facilities and promotion channels. The main problems of regional book publishing are a shortage of financial, printing and human resources, unstable state support, undeveloped local book distribution networks, inaccessibility of large capital bookselling networks, lack of quality content, and low prestige of regional publishers in comparison with metropolitan ones, low purchasing ability of local readers. Regional publishing houses have almost no chance of achieving self-sufficiency under such conditions. The main sources of funding publishing houses are state and private foundations, sponsorship, crowdfunding, and book publishing at the authors’ expense. All these types of support are focused primarily on non-commercial publishing projects, which constitute the overwhelming majority in the regions. The range of regional publishing projects that can potentially be profitable is not so wide: first of all, it includes various local lore literature, as well as literature of a narrow audience orientation, in particular, educational and scientific books. The distribution of published books is also a significant problem. One of the most relevant solutions to this problem is active involvement of publishers in the modern communication space, formed both in the Internet environment and off-line, and constant direct contact with potential readers.