Feature Market Focus


The star of the East W


In 1993, Vija Kilbloka was working at a former Soviet-era state-sponsored legal and education publisher when its director told staffers the firm had gone bust. In the past 24 years Kilbloka has grown the business she rescued into Latvia’s biggest list, by some distance, responsible for almost 40% of the country’s market. She recounts her remarkable publishing journey to Tom Tivnan


ITH A LITTLE bit of passion and a litle bit of craziness—that’s how Vija Kilbloka, c.e.o. and founder of Zvaigzne ABC, sums up how she has developed her company over the past quarter of a century. She is being somewhat modest: she has built the firm from a bankrupt shell of a Soviet-era education specialist to by far the biggest publishing/bookselling concern in Latvia. Zvaigzne’s (a hold-over from its Soviet roots, the name means “star”) sales in 2017 were just under €13m; around 40% of Latvia’s books market. No other Latvian publisher is even within touching distance—the next- biggest house is Lielvārds, whose 2017 revenue is esti- mated to be €1.8m. Across the Baltics, only Alma Litera Group—created by the merger of Lithuania’s two biggest publishers, Alma Litera and Šviesa, in 2002—has a greater turnover (around €22m in 2017). The formation of Kilbloka’s Zvaigzne is a very personal story. She joined the company in 1977, aſter gaining her law degree from the Universit of Latvia. It was not exactly her choice: under the Soviet system, graduates were assigned jobs. But being an editor on the


24 11th April 2018


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