Home

The year 2022, a terrible, painful year, ten months of which we are in a state of war unleashed by Putin's Russia, is coming to an end.

The hostilities and destructive shelling by the aggressor on the territory of Ukraine, its industrial and energy facilities caused huge losses to the national economy in general and the publishing industry in particular. And although after three or four shocking weeks of war, the participants of the book market, like the whole of Ukraine, having previously assessed the losses, searched for personnel who were scattered not only throughout the territory of Ukraine, but also throughout the world, the available organizational, material and financial resources, began little by little to restore the work of publishing houses, bookstores and printers, but realized that the damage caused by the war is very, very significant.

Attempts to objectively analyze the real state of the industry through surveys conducted by the Ukrainian Association of Publishers and Book Distributors, the Ukrainian Book Institute, and several sociological services since the beginning of April gave a certain idea of the state of affairs, but their level of objectivity remained rather approximate due to the small number of market participants who participated in these surveys. In addition, the situation in which different subjects of book publishing found themselves in different regions of Ukraine was very different, especially when it concerns issues of loss of equipment, materials, offices, computers with a certain amount of publishing information, stocks of finished book products.

However, the need to see the general state of the industry, determine the trends that prevail in it, as well as the existing potential and prospects for further activity require a more generalized and objective analysis.

The basis for such an analysis is provided by the statistics of printing conducted by the State Scientific Institution "Book Chamber of Ukraine named after Ivan Fedorov". For all the possible errors associated with the complication of the delivery of mandatory copies, this is the most objective source of statistical information, which makes it possible to draw more objective conclusions about the current state of domestic book publishing after ten months of work in wartime conditions, about his gains and losses.

In order for them to be obvious, it is necessary to return to the results of the industry in 2021.

It is worth reminding that the Book Chamber completes the registration of book products submitted for printing by December 31, usually February 1 of the following year. The year 2021 was an exception, because the Book Chamber extended the deadline for accepting books until the end of February 2022. The need for this postponement was related to E-support, which made it possible to use the "everyday" thousand hryvnias received by citizens of Ukraine for the purchase of books. This led to the fact that the publishing houses, which were barely making ends meet during the 2021 "covid" year, received strong financial support from the state through citizens in December and began to mass-send books for printing, the layouts of which were prepared in the previous period.

It was this support for the year 2021, which should go down in the history of domestic book publishing as the worst in terms of the volume of publication of book products, was completed with fairly decent statistical indicators.

If as of December 1, 2021, the Book Chamber registered 12,028 book editions by title with a total circulation of 14.2 million copies, then by the time of the final summary of the results of the publishing year 2021 in February 2022, these indicators amounted to 22,000 publications with a total circulation of more than 42 million copies

These indicators are the basis for assessing the state of domestic book publishing based on the results of work in 2022.

So, according to the number of mandatory copies received and processed by the Book Chamber, the situation in domestic book publishing is as follows. (Comparison of data as of December 1, 2022 with data as of December 1, 2021.)

In 2021, the number of industrial relations participants who sent a copy of at least one book published by them to the Book Chamber was 1,065 publishing houses. In 2022, the number of such participants decreased to 549. The results of the update according to the main indicators are as follows:
As of December 1, 2021, 12,028 titles with a total circulation of 14.2 million copies were registered.
As of December 1, 2022, 6,788 titles were registered (which is 54.4% of the 2021 figures) with a total circulation of 6.1 million copies (42.8% by 2021, respectively).
Ukrainian-language publications:
2021 — 9,121 titles with a total circulation of 11.8 million copies.
2022 — 5,590 titles with a total circulation of 5.5 million copies.
Russian-language publications:
2021 — 1,552 titles with a total circulation of 1.3 million copies.
2022 — 592 titles with a total circulation of 0.4 million copies.
A few more indicators that are most important for evaluating the market.
Publication of fiction:
2021 — 2,734 titles with a total circulation of 2.2 million copies.
2022 — 1,420 titles with a total circulation of 1.3 million copies.
Publication of children's literature:
2021 — 1,411 titles with a total circulation of 2.5 million copies.
2022 — 714 titles with a total circulation of 1.5 million copies.
Educational and methodological publications:
2021 — 2,820 titles with a total circulation of 6.6 million copies.
2022 — 1,415 titles with a total circulation of 1.9 million copies.

However, we emphasize once again that these are losses compared to the figures for December 1, 2021, and not for the year as a whole. In 2022, all the funds provided by the State Budget of Ukraine for the Ukrainian Book Institute for the purchase of books to replenish library funds were withdrawn to ensure the country's defense. It is clear that no one is counting on E-support, which was launched in December last year.

The situation is the same with the funds provided for the purchase of textbooks for secondary school students, which were also withdrawn from the budget of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.

However, it is worth noting that in December of this year, 400,000 copies of mathematics textbooks for the 5th grade were printed at the expense of UNICEF. However, all other textbooks remain available only in the electronic version, of course, only if there is electricity and an Internet connection.

That is, it is not worth counting on very significant changes in production statistics by the end of the current year. At best, by the end of 2022, they could increase by 1,000 titles, reaching 8,000 in total, and by 2 million copies, reaching a total of 8.5 million copies.

Therefore, the percentage ratio of indicators from 2022 to 2021 will be: by titles — 36.4%, by circulation — 20.2%.

Given the fact that the book in the world was and remains one of the main criteria for assessing the cultural, educational and intellectual development of the nation, its moral and social health, we must note that these indicators of the state of the publishing industry are a strict definition of losses not in the number of books , and in the development of the nation. And if today these losses are imperceptible, then in the coming years they will significantly affect the personnel and intellectual potential, the ability of Ukraine to restore and develop its economy, to rearm it technically and technologically.

Deprived of attention and support, the publishing industry of Ukraine will not be able to effectively work on the dynamic recovery and development of this potential. It is also worth taking into account the fact that the publishing house itself is the universal creditor of printing enterprises and bookstores, the middle link on which the entire industry rests. And a rapid decrease in the number of publishing houses and the volume of their production will lead to the liquidation of book publishing as such.

It is obvious that educational book publishing suffered the biggest losses. The current lack of paper textbooks, especially for primary school, and the unwillingness of the state to finance their printing turns the chasm that has formed in education during the two previous "coronavirus" years into a chasm that the entire generation of current primary school students will not be able to overcome, and therefore will be lost both for itself and for the state, which in the coming years will need a powerful educated and intellectual personnel resource.
In fact, we have lost very important areas of the front in the information war with Putin's Russia, and the recovery of these areas will require significant efforts, funds and time.

It is possible to list for a long time what needs to be done to restore the effective and productive work of the industry, but all the necessary measures were prescribed by book market experts, together with the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy and the Ukrainian Book Institute, even before the war in the Reading Development Strategy for 2021-2025 "Reading as a life strategy", which was never approved by the government, despite its support from the publishing community, the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on Humanitarian and Information Policy.

Today it has already become obvious that, without waiting for the end of the war, it is necessary to immediately approve this Strategy and part of the financial aid provided to Ukraine by the allies, to direct it to the implementation of the measures prescribed in it, which concern not only the subjects of book publishing, but also the library system of Ukraine.

The brutal war waged by Russia against Ukraine is not fought so much for territory, but for people's consciousness and reason. And we must win this war on all fronts, and therefore, we must have a sufficient number of not only military weapons, but also Ukrainian books of various genres.