55%


education and science made a surprise decision that textbooks should be provided free of charge to students. Rather than pay publishers for those textbooks, the government simply used publishers’ electronic files to have the books printed. It then distributed the schoolbooks without regard for the publishers’ or authors’ copyrights. State-run monopolies in


textbook publishing oſten fail to deliver the qualit resources that teachers, students and their parents deserve and expect. This has happened in Georgia during the past five years—the Georgian government was not up to the challenge, so, for the school year in 2018 new management at the ministry decided to negotiate with publishers again. New textbooks have been


writen and the government is again buying them from publishers (they then distribute them to students free of charge). But still the government has plent of blemishes in this


Publishing is one of the most active players in Georgia's wider culture, always offering something new and innovative


but small new ones have been founded as well.


The number of Georgian readers is increasing year on year, especially among the younger generation, which gives us optimism and the motivation to develop different kinds of campaigns to reach more and more sectors.


Who are the major players in bookselling? What are their challenges and opportunities? Is the number of physical shops growing or declining? The majorit of Georgian publishing houses co-operate with distributors—the two top are Iriatoni and Bookland— to distribute their books. But some houses do not, and sell to bookshops direct, or straight to customers through the internet. There were around 50 bookselling companies registered in 2016, most of them small- sized. Specifically, there are 41 small independents, while until recently Biblusi was our only really big chain, with 60 shops across all of Georgia. But in 2018 another bookshop, Santa Esperanza, opened new branches. It has seven shops, with more on the way.


renewed negotiation with Georgian educational publishers—it needs to become a much healthier negotiation. Georgian publishers and booksellers managed to over- come huge financial difficulties over this period. And we can say that the book market has shown significant resilience in a period of hardship, and continued to develop. In recent years the Georgian book market has achieved stabilit. Some small players have leſt the market,


TheBookseller.com


What are the trends in Georgia? Are any genres or authors doing particularly well? What is the spread between books sold in Georgian and translated titles? More titles are published in Georgian (around 55%) than in translation or in its original foreign language (45%). But in the past five years, translated or foreign-language literature has sold twice as much as Georgian- language literature. As a result of Georgian publishers’ recent huge promotional activities, YA, fantasy and science fiction have became more and more popular among the younger generation. Classics are still very popular among Georgian readers and huge modern, 21st-century bestsellers, or bestsellers from the 20th-century, gathered in


Of titles published in Georgia are in the native tongue, with the rest in translation or another language


one series under a certain theme, always works quite well.


What about e-book sales? Will they grow significantly in the next few years? The two biggest, and relatively longstanding e-book sellers, are Saba.com.ge and Lit.ge, which sell around 2,600–2,900 titles per year. Incidentally, Georgian publishers tend not to create their own e-books, instead using e-tailers to create them. So the e-book market is quite small— we’ll need several years to make it stronger.


Georgia In Numbers


12.97m


Revenue generated (in Lari) by Georgian publishers in 2016, equivalent to £3.8m


20.11


Average selling price (in Lari) in Georgia in 2018, equivalent to £5.90


45%


Market share of fiction in the domestic market in 2016; academic sales grabbed 20% of the market, children's 11%


42%


Market share of Georgia's leading publisher, Bakur Sulakauri, in 2016


36%


Market share of Palitra L, Sulakauri's biggest rival; thereafter, the next-biggest player (Intelekti) claimed just 6% of sales


What effect do the think the Guest of Honour programme will have on the Georgian market? The Guest of Honour scheme is mostly focused on exporting Georgian literature to the rest of the world, but of course it has already impacted greatly on the Georgian market itself. During the official prepara- tions for the programme—which took place in the last five years, plus a few prior to that, when we were aiming to be accepted as a Guest of Honour—our publishers have become more experienced, travelled more, participated in different professional programs and had a plent of opportunities for networking and exchanging experiences with their foreign colleagues.


German publishing experts have oſten visited Georgia to hold seminars and workshops for Georgian publishers, who have therefore become more experienced in selling rights abroad, as well as becoming more professional, developed and modern, too. Today, [publishing is] one of the most active players in Georgia’s wider culture, always offering something new and innovative. Also, the competition among key players in the book market has risen during the last few years.


But we hope that in the near future sales of Georgian literature copyrights abroad will become a much bigger part of Georgian publishers’ revenue.


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