Publishers withdrew books by Akunin and Bykov from sale because of their public statements
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The publication and sale of books by writers Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov (recognized by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as foreign agents) are temporarily suspended due to the political statements of the authors, the AST publishing house reported. Books by these authors quickly began to disappear from the shelves of bookstore chains and from marketplace catalogs. According to market participants, publishers and booksellers have made negligible financial sacrifices in the current situation.
Boris Akunin (Grigory Chkhartishvili) and Dmitry Bykov now live outside of Russia. A few days ago, pranksters Vovan and Lexus published a recording of telephone conversations in which they introduced themselves to Messrs. Bykov and Akunin as Ukrainian politicians. During the conversations, the writers made pro-Ukrainian statements. After their publication, State Duma deputies Elena Drapeko from the party “A Just Russia – For Truth” and Alexander Sholokhov (“United Russia”) proposed banning the sale of books by Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov.
AST Publishing House has suspended the distribution of books by foreign agents Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov; a corresponding statement was published on December 15 on the publishing house’s website. “Public statements by writers that have caused widespread public outcry require legal assessment. Until the situation is clarified, the publication and shipment of books will not be resumed,” the words of the publishing house’s general director, Pavel Grishkov, are quoted on the AST website. Eksmo-AST also noted that the decision to stop selling books by Dmitry Bykov and Boris Akunin is made by the trading partners of the publishing holding themselves.
Trading partners responded promptly. Books by writers are no longer available for purchase in the book chains “Chitai-Gorod-Bukvoed” and “Book Labyrinth,” a Kommersant correspondent was convinced. Representatives of bookselling chains, in conversations with Kommersant, clarified that the books were removed from the stands by order of management on December 14. The works also disappeared from the catalogs of online platforms: Liters (affiliated with Eksmo-AST), Ozon and Wildberries (from the official supplier). Wildberries noted that they recommended that distributors also remove advertisements for the sale of books from the site.
The refusal to publish and distribute books by Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov, judging by the available statistics, will not cost much to the business of publishing houses and large bookselling chains.
According to the Russian State Library (RSL), in the nine months of 2023, 59 publications by Boris Akunin were published with a total circulation of 259 thousand copies and four publications by Dmitry Bykov with a circulation of 10 thousand copies. For comparison: at the end of 2022, AST Publishing House published 9,650 book titles with a total circulation of over 42.9 million copies.
According to Kommersant’s interlocutor in the book market, the share of all authors recognized by the Ministry of Justice as foreign agents (except for Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov, these are writers such as Dmitry Glukhovsky, Linor Goralik, Mikhail Zygar, Elena Prokasheva and Ekaterina Dudko) in the publishing portfolio “ Eksmo-AST” takes up less than 1%, the works of such authors – less than 3%. “Eksmo-AST”, despite previously incurred significant costs for marketing the books of Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov, will survive not only the refusal to sell their books, but also the refusal to sell the works of all foreign agent writers combined, emphasizes Vladimir Kharitonov, technical director of Freedom Letters .
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