Critic reveals what’s behind Stephen King’s ‘trophy’ edition

“For fun and dashing, some guys indicated the publishing house and the city of Luhansk”

The poet and literary critic Mikhail Gundarin commented to MK on the sensational “publishing” in Russian of the new novel “The Tale” by Stephen King, moreover, in Lugansk, in the publishing house “Trophy Book”. So it is indicated on the flyleaf of the book, which few people held in their hands, but everyone has already heard about it.

Our interlocutor immediately pointed out that the “novelty” does not have any ISBN (that is, a unique edition number), but supported the very idea of ​​a “trophy” edition of foreign literary production. He proposed a more effective than banal theft way to overcome the ban of EU and US writers on the release of their new works in Russia.

– I think there is no publishing house “Trophy Book” exists. This translation of the “Fairy Tale” exists on the Web and is available there for free. Two translations were made in the fan community, in the 90s it was very common. The authors of Western fiction – Philip Dick, Philip Farmer, Harry Harrison, and many others – “went” in printouts, the fans translated them themselves. When the book publishing boom happened, these translations were published. I think the same thing happened here.

Obviously, some guys printed one of the translations under the cover, like a book is made to order. For fun and dashing, they indicated the publishing house and the city of Lugansk. And how many copies they made – ten or fifteen, is unknown. But the high sales price indicates “ordered circulation”.

– However, the mainstream media gave the news about the “import-substituted” Stephen King.

– This is the case when media generate reality. The news that got into the tops will give someone an idea, and he will download it, publish it, and also sign it with the “Trophy Book”. So that which does not exist will begin to exist.

– Do you personally like such “parallel import”? Or is it still necessary to resolve the issue of the unwillingness of the American master of horrors to share new products with the Russian audience in a civilized manner?

– There are some subtleties here. In general, the idea of ​​respecting copyright has many critics both here and in the West. In the West, there is a whole movement of “info-anarchists” who advocate the abolition of copyright. They say: behold, we have violated the law, have we taken something away from you? The text is yours! They consider the work to be in the public domain. And there is something in this.

Stephen King is wholly a commercial writer, and can only be called an author in the narrow sense that he created this text. So it’s not a copyright issue, it’s a brand protection issue.

Formally, intellectual property is protected in Russia, and even parallel imports are not counterfeit products that are still being fought against. The closest situation is the screening of Hollywood novelties in our cinemas, in good quality and with good translation. Behind the scenes, they turn a blind eye to this, but domestic producers oppose this, for example, they set the condition that those who receive a licensed copy of a fresh domestic blockbuster remove “smuggled” American films from the poster for the duration of the show.

– In the LPR, after the formation of the republic, local entrepreneurs “dabbled” with such things – they copied the Zhivchik drink, popular in Ukraine, and even Coca-Cola with almost the same font and label color, and signed: “Made in Luhansk, address such and such “. Is “Lugansk” book publishing a reference to all this?

– Maybe. It has been a “gray zone” for so many years. But you need to understand something else, copyright was not originally inherent in society, like the right to life and so on. This is a later occurrence. This concept was imposed on us only a couple of hundred years ago. Many states, including the USSR, did not sign the Berne Convention, which was not considered a sin.

The Berne Convention needs to be looked at. I am not in favor of just “stealing” something, it is somehow petty. Although I do not see this as a problem: this Stephen King needs it. But this practice has its drawbacks, so it is better to withdraw from international agreements on the protection of intellectual property at the state level.