The Publishing History of Lithuania

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, I picked up a number of “Book Publishing in ____” books from various cultural stands. Personally, I’m really interested in the business of publishing and to see how it developed in other countries is quite interesting. (In other words, this could develop into a series of posts . . . )

I’m still catching up on Frankfurt stuff (and will be, at least until the next FBF), and just got around to looking at the “Book Publishing in Lithuania” pamphlet I picked up.

The beginnings of Lithuanian history are interesting and troubling. Due to occupations, bans on printing in the Latin alphabet, etc., most Lithuanian books were actually published outside of Lithuania and smuggled in. This was the case for most of the nineteeth-century, then again during the Soviet occupation.

What caught my attention though was this paragraph about publishing in the 1990s:

The publishing needs of the newly formed public structure and the reformed education system steered the publishing business too. Another determining factor was the fact that in the economic crisis, the purchasing of books had become a form of investment of devalued money. Before long, publishing ranked among the most lucrative businesses, with profits reaching 500 per cent. This resulted in an increasing number of publishing companies. For instance, 500 publishing entities, which had produced at least one title, were registered in 1992, whereas the total was merely 71 in 1990.

“Among the most lucrative businesses”? That’s not something you often hear about publishing . . . In fact, there’s that famous old joke: How do you make a small fortune in publishing? Start with a large fortune . . .

What’s also interesting—and logical—is the fact that as more titles were produced, the average number of copies per title declined rapidly. In 1991, 2,482 titles were published, with an average of 13,935 copies per title (which is pretty large, even by American standards). In 1998, the total number of titles had jumped to 4,109, but the average number of copies had fallen to 3,269. (In other words, total output in 1998 was about 40% of what it had been in 1991.)

Nowadays, the average edition is 1,808 copies, and “if 4,000 copies are sold in two months, the book is hailed a bestseller.” And publishing, unfortunately, isn’t as lucrative as it once was.

Most publishing companies now run bookstore chains though (which happened here long ago, but no longer) and the average book costs 10 Euros (around $15).

Here’s some other fun things:

Publishers started a lottery practice in the distribution of books. For instance, in the Big Game by Alma Littera and Reader’s Digest one can win 100,000 litas by purchasing books in a certain order. [. . .]

On average, a single publishing company publishes eight titles a year. [. . .] Two major companies, Sviesa and Alma Littera, which merged in 2002, today produce nearly 20 per cent of Lithuania’s overall annual book output.

And in contrast to the famous 3% number, in Lithuania, 33.3% of all titles publisher are in translation.

John Freeman will cringe if he sees this:

A small circulation of cultural publications does no favour to book promotion. Notwithstanding some initiatives to promote literature, daily papers don’t devote as much attention to books as their foreign counterparts, nor do they employ regular book reviewers, who could make an impact on the choice of books.

And finally, in terms of general funding:

For a long time, the Open Society (Soros) Fund Lithuania was one of the major supporters of publishing in the country; however, it is about to terminate its publishing programme.