Crisis in a new reading

Demand for business literature in Russia is falling — in February, according to various publishing houses, sales fell by 10–28% year-on-year in real terms. But certain categories, on the contrary, are growing rapidly: in particular, sales of books on crisis management increased by 68% in units, LitRes notes. Wildberries talk about the popularity of books about investing. Market participants attribute increased reader interest in the topic to attempts to navigate business through economic turbulence.

Sales of business literature continue to fall, interviewed participants in the book market told Kommersant. So, LitRes noted that in February sales of such books in pieces decreased by 28% year-on-year: “This is primarily due to a drop in interest in the genre itself.” Alexei Ilyin, CEO of the Alpina Group, estimates the fall in sales in the category at 25%. “They returned to the indicators of 2021, but have already begun to recover,” the top manager clarifies.

At Mann, Ivanov and Ferber (MIF), according to the head of the editorial group of the publishing house Olga Kiseleva, sales of business literature are stable compared to last year: “The difference from 2022 is less than 1%. Other interlocutors of Kommersant in the book market talk about a 10% drop. Eksmo-AST did not respond to a request.

In general, sales of books on the Russian market, excluding educational literature, according to Eksmo-AST, increased by 10% in 2022, reaching 109 billion rubles. The number of published books and brochures in Russia at the end of 2022 decreased by 0.3%, to 108 thousand publications, according to the report of the Russian Book Chamber (see Kommersant dated February 28).

In May 2022, distributors already noted that the demand for sales of books about business, investment and self-development fell, while the demand for fiction, on the contrary, increased (see Kommersant dated May 30, 2022). Then market participants attributed the trend to the economic situation: business books are “read when you can think about development and system improvement.”

However, individual categories in this segment are already showing growth in 2023. Thus, sales of publications on the topic “crisis management” in real terms increased by 68% in February year on year, LitRes notes: “In conditions of turbulence, referring to the cases and experience of authors in crisis periods can provide answers on how to behave in similar circumstances.” The top in this category in February 2023 was headed by Maxim Batyrev’s book “Management during a storm. 15 rules for crisis management,” the company says. In it, the author tells how companies in Russia survived in the 1990s, 2008, 2014 and 2020.

As in any crisis situation, it is followed by an increase in the share of the domestic product and interest in it, Ms. Kiseleva notes. According to her, the general decline in interest in the segment can be explained not only by external circumstances, but also by the problems of acquiring foreign rights to books: “But at the same time, I cannot say that readers are no longer interested in foreign business authors.” Bookmate (the parent company of Bookmate Limited is recognized by the Ministry of Justice as a foreign agent) and Yandex did not respond to a request.

Interlocutors of Kommersant in the book market believe that the growth in popularity of literature in the field of crisis management can only be associated with the economic situation: cases and try to “try on” them for their business.

Wildberries added that among the most popular topics in the category of business literature on the marketplace, investing can be noted: “The best-selling book is B. Graham’s The Intelligent Investor.” Russians continue to acquire such books in order to learn new professional skills and engage in self-education, representatives of the marketplace say.

Julia Yurasova