Stephen King found in Lugansk – Kommersant

Stephen King’s novel “The Tale”, which was not officially released in Russia, is sold on marketplaces. The book was released without an ISBN by the Trofeynaya Kniga publishing house located in Lugansk, but no official information about it could be found. The former copyright holder of Stephen King’s publications in Russia, Eksmo-AST, cannot fight to remove the novel from platforms, as the writer has suspended cooperation since March last year. The situation is becoming typical for the Russian market, and marketplaces will have to develop new copyright protection mechanisms, analysts say.

Pirates began to illegally sell in Russia through marketplaces Stephen King’s fantasy novel “Fairy Tale”, published in September 2022, told Kommersant in Eksmo-AST. The publishing house also found cases when a book was made publicly available on Internet resources for free: “Unfortunately, we cannot do anything in this situation, since we do not have the rights to this book and we cannot defend a foreign author in court “.

You can buy paper copies of the work at the Avito and Yula sites for 2–2.5 thousand rubles, Kommersant was convinced. The imprint indicates that the novel was published by the Trofeynaya Kniga publishing house, located in Lugansk. There is no data on such a company in the SPARK-Interfax system. There is no ISBN in the imprint of the book (a unique book edition number, which, in accordance with the international classification, is assigned to each published book). This is a mandatory component of the imprint of the book, which is planned for official distribution.

The sellers can also find the novel by Joan K. Rowling (under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith) “Inky Black Heart” about Detective Cormoran Strike. The book was published in August last year and was also not officially published in Russia. It was not possible to contact the Trophy Book representatives: Kommersant could not find the company’s phones.

“Yula” and “Avito” are private classified services, they cannot independently take actions, for example, to protect copyright. In Yulia, they noted that the copyright holder can apply to the service team with a request to remove the ad. Avito clarified that content can be removed from the platform on the basis of a “reasonable request” from the copyright holder: “In the case of these books, the copyright holder did not contact us.”

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, many foreign publishers and authors ceased cooperation with Russian partners. Stephen King announced back in March 2022 that he was suspending work with the AST publishing house on new contracts. Then the publishing house confirmed that there really won’t be any new novels and renewal of expired rights “in the near future.” The release of new works by Joan K. Rowling was also stopped, this was announced in October last year by the Azbuka-Atticus publishing group (part of Eksmo-AST).

“Counterfeiting of licensed books by publishing houses will be closed. And they won’t be able to do anything with those that are not licensed: they have no obligations to the copyright holder,” explains Vladimir Kharitonov, ex-head of the Association of Internet Publishers.

“Now in Russia there are no official copyright holders of Stephen King’s Tale. They are unlikely to be found in the near future, and other of his new works will not have them either. Marketplaces will have to solve this problem themselves, including developing new mechanisms for regulating user agreements, ”a Kommersant source in the industry believes.

Wildberries told Kommersant that a set of measures is working on the site to prevent the sale of “dubious products”: entrepreneurial sellers need all permits, and the entire range is regularly monitored to verify goods. In addition, they say in Wildberries, the company has implemented the Digital Arbitrage service, which is also used by book sellers: “It allows publishers to directly check title documents on their own if there are suspicions of violation of their copyrights by other players.”

Julia Yurasova