Samizdat turned the page

The growth of the samizdat literature market in Russia in 2022 slowed down to 20%, calculated in specialized services. But even this is better than preliminary forecasts, and publishers hope for a recovery in growth rates in 2023 to 50-70%. At the same time, market participants are preparing to increase the cost of content moderation due to new restrictions, including the law banning LGBT propaganda.

The market for samizdat literature in Russia in 2022 grew by 20%, to 3.2 billion rubles, Boris Makarenkov, the owner and CEO of the largest Litnet service in the segment, told Kommersant. The assessment includes the total sales of books by independent authors (they do not cooperate with publishers, but publish books on their own) on Russian samizdat platforms. The number of authors on the platform, he said, has also grown by 20%.

Litres Group (developed by Litres: Samizdat) provides similar data: in 2022, the market capacity in the Russian Federation increased by 18%, to almost 3.65 billion rubles. “The segment accounted for more than 45% of the total capacity of the digital books market,” said Evgeny Selivanov, director of the Litres content development department. Back in the fall, the Group of Companies expected that sales of samizdat in Russia in 2022 would grow by only 13% (see Kommersant dated November 7, 2022). The number of registered users of “Litres: Samizdat” increased by 57%, and new publications – by 20%. On Ridero in 2022, the number of users increased by 18%, to 679 thousand, says Maria Ryavina, production director of the service.

As Oleg Novikov, co-owner of the Eksmo-AST group of companies, specified to Kommersant, in 2022 the market reached 20% of the total consumption of books due to both paid and free literature. At the same time, the entire market of digital books (including electronic and audio) in the Russian Federation, according to Eksmo-AST, showed no growth in 2022 for the first time, remaining at the level of 2021 – 11 billion rubles.

In past years, the growth rate of the samizdat market was 70-100%, Boris Makarenkov clarified. He attributes the decline in dynamics to the suspension of Litnet in the second quarter of 2022 (see Kommersant dated June 2, 2022). Litres has already noted the saturation of the market and the decrease in the purchasing power of the audience. Ridero believes that difficulties with payments in the App Store and Google Play affected the growth rate (see Kommersant dated July 27, 2022).

In 2023, market participants expect the growth of the self-publishing segment to intensify. “Gradually, we are seeing a return to the usual growth rates and in 2023 we expect 50-70%. The market is not yet saturated. There is room for growth: the presence of new channels, the expansion of the offer within the genre and the emergence of new genres,” says Boris Makarenkov. The independent writers market appears to be “potentially the most export-intensive,” he added.

“We predict that the samizdat segment will grow by about 37% by the end of 2023, its capacity will be about 5 billion rubles,” says Evgeny Selivanov. Maria Ryavina expects that in 2023 growth will be supported by new distribution channels: Bookmate (recognized as a foreign agent) of Yandex, MTS Lines, Beeline Books. But the growth of the segment, in her opinion, will be slowed down by “the uncertainty of the authors in the future and the unwillingness to invest in the promotion of their books.”

New legislative restrictions will also become an important factor for the market. Laws on LGBT people, on fakes and some other regulations severely narrow both the already existing published base and the opportunity to publish for the first time for new books, emphasizes Maria Ryavina. “Here we, like other players in the book market, will lose authors and money for some time until they get used to the new restrictions,” she says.

Given the need to track content on the platform, the new restrictions will also affect the financial performance of self-publishing services, “we will invest more resources in content moderation,” adds Boris Makarenkov. At the same time, he believes that this factor will not affect growth and revenue.

Valeria Lebedeva