Not published by myself – Newspaper Kommersant No. 205 (7406) dated 11/07/2022

Samizdat, until recently one of the fastest growing segments of the book market, has sharply reduced its growth rate, and a number of experts are talking about stagnation in it. Publishers attribute the slowdown to the audience’s desire to save money, the suspension of Litnet, and difficulties in arranging payments against the backdrop of sanctions pressure. Market participants expect that interest in the segment will grow due to the lack of major foreign novelties, but at the same time they fear increased censorship.

Sales of samizdat in Russia in 2022 will grow by only 13%, to 3.3 billion rubles, Yevgeny Selivanov, director of the content development department of the LitRes group of companies, told Kommersant. Since the beginning of the year, 30,000 new authors have registered on the group’s platforms, which can be attributed to this segment (that is, those who work with services directly, and not through publishers), 25% more than in 2021. However, maintaining the activity of authors did not help to keep the dynamics of book sales.

“In 2019-2021, the samizdat market experienced rapid growth and the segment was actively developing: in 2020, the market capacity increased by 197%, in 2021 — by 52%. Now the pace has slowed down, which is connected both with the transition of the segment to the next stage, and with a decrease in the purchasing power of the audience,” said Evgeny Selivanov. In addition, he notes, in the second quarter, the work of Litnet, one of the largest participants in the samizdat market, was suspended in Russia, which, like the general decline in the growth rate of the book market, also had an impact on the segment (on June 2, Kommersant wrote that Boris Makarenkov, CEO of Storytel Russia, became the new owner of Litnet.

In 2021, Litnet represented 65% of the independent authors market in Russia, but it closed in March, and the slowdown in growth is due to this event, Boris Makarenkov confirmed. “The platform restarted in June, growth rates accelerated, and now Litnet is actively recovering its positions. Without this, the market would not just slow down, but fall,” he said.

At the end of the year, market growth will be minimal, “even 10% will be a good result,” believes Maria Ryavina, director of production at the Ridero publishing service. In her opinion, the main growth factor was the emergence of new samizdat platforms (for example, Litgorod, Bookriver), which attract new readers. Among the negative factors that determined the stagnation, in her opinion, is the decline in the purchasing power of the population. “People are trying to limit non-essential purchases like books. In addition, a huge part of the solvent audience left the country. Russians living abroad have always been active consumers of books in Russian, but now shopping has become more difficult for them due to the departure of the App Store and Google Play,” says Ms. Ryavina (see Kommersant, July 27).

Despite the stagnation, the services have positive forecasts for 2023. “We expect that next year the market growth will return to the previous figures and exceed 50%. For ourselves, we define the goal as even 70%,” says Boris Makarenkov. The samizdat market will be supported by the fact that publishing houses will run out of contracts with foreign authors, many of which will not be renewed, Maria Ryavina believes. “There will be a void on the market in place of many popular genres, which publishers will try to fill at the expense of domestic authors,” she notes.

At the same time, market participants fear that the number of new items will be affected by tougher legislation. “Everything from increased censorship at the beginning of the year to the expected law to ban LGBT propaganda will certainly have an impact on readers and writers,” says Maria Ryavina. We are talking about bills submitted to the State Duma on October 21 and already adopted in the first reading, they include “materials promoting non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences” in the list of already prohibited information and introduce administrative liability for violation of new prohibitions. Due to the new rules, major publishers are already preparing to revise the assortment (see Kommersant of October 22). Kommersant’s interlocutor in the samizdat segment emphasizes that the segment may be affected by new bans more than others due to the large number of titles, each of which will need to be checked for compliance with the new rules.

Valeria Lebedeva