Gutenberg is alive

The philosopher, publisher Valery Anashvili reflects on the future of paper books

Sergey Medvedev: If anything came in Moscow public and intellectual life, then this is the annual exhibition-fair "non-fiction" in the central house of the artist on the Crimean Val. This is one of the largest points for gathering a thinking, reading public, one of the major annual holidays. There is a city day in Moscow, there is a new year, there is May Day, there is non-fiction, when all people know that you need to gather in the Crimean shaft. Today we have a person immersed in this business - Valery Anashvili , editor -in -chief of the Logos philosophical magazine and a number of university publishers, including publishers of the Gaidar Institute . We will talk about the future of book publishing, about the future of the book.

First about the non-fiction fair. Is there any explanation to the phenomenon of such a popularity? A year after year, these crowds that endure books ... Honestly, I have never seen this even in the world.

Valery Anashvili: In the world, trade fairs are simply not held, mainly all the book fairs are professional, there are publishers, authors, rights on rights and so on. And at our Fair "Non-Fix", people have the opportunity to buy a book at a lower price than in stores. This explains a lot. In addition, many humanitarian scientific publishers have the only chance to get together in the year and show their goods of an interested audience.

There is a city day in Moscow, there is a new year, there is May Day, there is “non-fixed” when all people know that they need to gather on the Crimean Valu

Sergey Medvedev: As a purely social phenomenon, that it is - maybe the legacy of the Soviet book culture, when there should have been a cabinet with books in every self -respecting house?

Valery Anashvili: No, now in every self -respecting house, on the contrary, there is no book shelf. Most likely, this is simply due to the fact that so far in our country, science has not yet finally died and educational institutions continue to work. Students and people who, one way or another, are engaged in research, of course, are forced to read books. Walking shopping is not always convenient and profitable. And here, I repeat, everything is in one place, everything is compact, you can immediately see all the news. I do not think that this needs to be tied to some deep socialization. The Non-Fixh Fair is already an element of the book market, and quite powerful and effective.

Sergey Medvedev: Well, we will not engage in historical socialization, we will deal with commodity socialization. It seems to me that the “non-fiction” phenomenon is in the future one of the formats of the physical existence of the book, because the book can survive as a physical object only due to such tube-fair-social transactions. The book has lost its absolute value of the physical object, which it possessed since the time of Gutenberg . Now, in order to sell the book, she needs to wind up all kinds of clothes of Salome .

Valery Anashvili: You raised a good question. You really broadcast spilled in society, in my opinion, absolutely incorrect ideas regarding the physical book. I will not reproduce your natural fear of the intellectual. What share in the modern American, electronically advanced market, are electronic and physical sales of books? 21% is electronic sales, even at the peak of electronic sales paper-this is 2013, and in 2014 there was already a decline in sales of electronic book publishing compared to physical sales.

Sergey Medvedev: That is, 79% are physical, paper books?

Fair "non-fiction" is already an element of the book market, and quite powerful and effective

Valery Anashvili: It is clear that this is the average figure in the American market. Some publishers who deliberately engage in electronic sales reach the number 36–37% of the total volume of their book trade, but this is rarely - as a rule, less. The total figure is 21%. In Russia, electronic sales, Rutrexer, and so on - is 5% of the market, and 95% is a physical book. The financial share of electronic sales is 1% of the entire book -trade market. In 2014, the entire volume of the official book trade amounted to 60 billion rubles, of which about 500 million was the volume of electronic book trade. It is clear that it will grow, but it will be very gradually, especially against the background of the fact that buyers and other people lose interest to all these readers, readers and other things. All these readers are a rather uncomfortable object, they are hard to see in them, they must be charged all the time, nothing can be done with them, you carry a completely incomprehensible thing with you.

Sergey Medvedev: Then it turns out that the scandal, recently erupted about the blocking of the "Rutrex" , was generally around an empty place?

Valery Anashvili: He was around significant numbers. We have about 70–73% of Russian Internet users, one way or another, use electronic books. What does it mean to use? We opened some book, we liked it, closed, went to the store, bought it. We opened an electronic file on any of the carriers, polystyle, made some kind of assessment, forgot about this book. This does not mean that people read from and to. At the same time, 90% of these 70% that read e -books download books for free on file hosting - this is a rather large figure. But what lies in it? It does not lie in it theft of books in the literal sense of the word, because trackers, torrents are files.

Sergey Medvedev: That is, someone once bought this text, paid and posted, shared with friends.

Approximately 70–73% of Russian Internet users, one way or another, use electronic books

Valery Anashvili: Moreover, posted for free. Therefore, some rhetoric about piracy, about the catastrophe that they rob us, is a completely false, fictitious rhetoric.

Sergey Medvedev: Maybe for the publisher there are some new opportunities, free PR?

Valery Anashvili: You are absolutely right. I am a small publisher. Maybe for Daria Dontsova this is a disaster, instead of one million dollars a month, she will receive 999 thousand dollars - for her this is a significant loss, she will not be able to buy another dog ... But for small publishers, the Rutrexer plays a tremendous role - this is a free advertising. After all, the more people on the network see your books, download them to their computer, share this information with friends, acquaintances or in social networks, the better for you, you actually acquire free public, in which you did not invest anything.

In addition, in my opinion, the "Rutrexer" plays a very important role of the review type. In our country, there are practically no review publications. A person has nowhere to find out what competent people who read it think about a book, and on torrents this system of reflection of users is quite convenient. That is, you opened some book, see comments and you can more or less make some kind of impression of it.

Sergey Medvedev: This is what is called "collaborative filtering", what Dolgin tried to organize at Imphonet , when you watch the rating of users you trust.

Torrents perform a large social mission

Valery Anashvili: This, of course, does not concern scientific books, because a person who turns to the book of a scientist himself already understands what he is waiting for and who wants to read. This applies to books either by the authors, or new books of a particular author, or books in the field in which we are not specialists, we are simply interested in going there. That is, Rutrexer has many additional functions that are in no way connected or are indirect in relation to the main task of access to literature. Torrents perform a large social mission.

Sergey Medvedev: An educational, humanitarian mission. At the exit, users will still appear who, one way or another, will go to a real store.

Valery Anashvili: There are books on our table. No sensible person will read a scientific book with a thickness of 500 pages on the screen. If he, having opened this book in electronic form, sees that it suits it, of course, he will go and buy it on the store or order it over the Internet, but again in physical form.

Sergey Medvedev: It seems to me that the question of the physical presence of the book is really not posed. Although I had similar conversations with a critic, publisher Alexander Gavrilov. He loves to say that a fracture will occur at the moment when all children in schools switch from textbooks to readers, to electronic formats, and the generation of children will grow up who will not know how to study in normal books. This can happen?

"Rutrexer" performs a very important role of the review type

Valery Anashvili: There are several pitfalls. One of them is that it is impossible to learn to read according to Rider. Now in the West there is a huge amount of studies that indicate that reading on a Rider is completely not the same experience in reading as reading a book, there is a completely different type of emotional perception of the text, a completely different memory, a system of attention and so on. That is, these are different types of human behavior - reading a book and reading on a reader, so they cannot be compared. We will get a different type of human practice if the physical book will die as such.

Sergey Medvedev: That is, at least at the school, the book should remain to create a certain mnemonics and memorization methods.

Valery Anashvili: Reading is associated not only with the eyes and with the work of the brain, reading as such is associated with a huge number of related circumstances - tactile, sound, olfactory and so on. That is, this process of memorization of the read has a huge number of additional mnemofactors.

Sergey Medvedev: What is the future of the bookstore? Will large bookstores on the main street die in the future, as there were gigantic megastors of the CDs who successfully went into oblivion, which were replaced by Amazon with their “long tail”?

No sane person will read a scientific book with a thickness of 500 pages on the screen

Valery Anashvili: It's hard to say, I'm not an expert in the field of bookproof, but we can derive some dynamics from the current state. We said that modern sales of electronic books in America, where the most advanced electronic market, is 21% in relation to physical books - despite the fact that the fifth of books are not physically sold, not in stores.

I admit the existence of large and small stores. If we walk along the streets of the city, we see these stores. This means that the disappearance of the fifth of sales did not lead to the mass closing of bookstores. What will happen if half of the stores closed? This, in general, is a disaster, but at the same time the city landscape will still not change much from this. That is, even if every second book is sold in electronic form via the Internet, it seems to me that there will not be a large disaster with places of sales of a physical book. In addition, since the request will always remain, they will still arise certain stores that will create and satisfy the niche needs of readers - specialized scientific stores, specialized children's stores and so on.

Sergey Medvedev: At the same time, if we are talking about the future and the physical survival of the book, which many doubted both 10 and 20 years ago, then the phenomenon of the Amazon and all other stores play a large role. This is exactly what economists call the effect of a "long tail". Roughly speaking, a large bookstore is good because it can sell a huge number of bestsellers in a short time, but it is unprofitable for him to keep books that have been published 500 copies and a small number of users are needed, because there are no warehouses. And the Amazon with its endless warehouses and endless delivery capabilities can find and deliver that very only book about the method of firing bricks in the second half of the 18th century in the Vallonian provinces of Belgium, which you have been looking for 10 years and will not be found on the shelf of the bookstore, but in the Amazon. In this "long tail" a huge number of niche books hang out. What can change if the Amazon comes to Russia?

A store is in some way a library that allows you to buy you like at the same time

Valery Anashvili: With books, everything will be even better. You are rightly saying that the sale of physical books via the Internet, which is engaged in Amazon, is not something contradictory in relation to the store. Still, a store is a place where you go in order to choose something on the shelves. This is in some way a library that allows you to buy you like simultaneously.

In the Amazon is still not so, among millions of books you choose there, most likely, only what you are looking for purposefully. It is difficult for you to see a million names that Amazon offers, although there are special services that help to see which books are bought simultaneously with the one you have chosen, and so on, but still this is not a bookstore where you see several hundred items in the area that interests you. It is always useful: you came to the store, saw a shelf, there are 500 books on psychology, you see-these are new books, these are some classic ones. You have the opportunity to immediately assess the condition of the industry. In Amazon, you cannot see this. The same, of course, concerns electronic sales. So only the book as a physical object allows you to create a picture in the field that interests you: research, field of curiosity or leisure reading field.

Bookstores also in this sense will be preserved as the points of a selection of equally thinking people, as a place where exhibitions are held, presentations of books

Sergey Medvedev: Plus a non-fiction fair as a kind of large social space, as a kind of team, as the interaction of people. It seems to me that bookstores, in this sense, will be preserved as the points of a selection of equally thinking people, as a place where exhibitions are held, presentations of books where there are cafes - you can drink coffee and take a book for coffee, but you can not take a book. There you can meet a girl, after all. I will share my experience of young student years - with the most beautiful girls in my life I met in libraries and bookstores.

Valery Anashvili: Now it is more difficult to do in libraries, so this kind of interest can be moved to bookstores.

Sergey Medvedev: By the way, there are different libraries. In that part of Moscow where I live, there is an Akhmatova library, I just go there, take books for my mother. Photo exhibitions are held there all the time, almost every evening - presentations of writers, they work almost until 10 pm, there are young librarians and a completely fantastic exhibition of new receipts. I myself spend there for an hour, looking at new arrivals. That is, this library is actually the same “non-fictor” in the area. All this was made for municipal money in one of the sleeping areas of Moscow.

The book allows you to create a certain socio-cultural activity

Valery Anashvili: This is a good sign that the book allows you to create some kind of socio-cultural activity.

Sergey Medvedev: Russia is the status of the most reading in the world, the quality and number of the readership ... Does it seem to you, does the same core of the public “non-fiction” remains?

Valery Anashvili: It is gradually growing. Sales of books of intellectual literature are gradually growing.

Sergey Medvedev: The trend generally goes from fixed to non-fiction?

Recently, sales of intellectual literature have been growing from a month to a month

Valery Anashvili: It's hard to say. I think this is better known to those people who publish scientific and non-fiction in the literal sense of the word. I see according to their publishing programs that they also increase the number of books of books in this area. I think that interest in books will gradually intensify, in crisis times especially, on which I am now focusing - recently, sales of intellectual literature have been growing from month to month. People have a need to think about what is happening in this unhealthy world. This knowledge, most likely, can be obtained in books, and not on TV, not in newspapers and not anywhere else. Therefore, books in crisis times always have a good prospect.

Sergey Medvedev: Can a profitable publication of intellectual literature be a market, or is it an educational, humanitarian, sponsorship history?

Our projects are educational in nature and do not imply a commercial effect

Valery Anashvili: At the very beginning of the program, you said that I was in the book business. I have not been a single hour in my life in the book business. Our projects are educational in nature and do not imply a commercial effect. But there are successful publishers. Я очень за них рад, это действительно люди, которые делают коммерчески самостоятельные издательские проекты. Но для того, чтобы быть коммерческим издательством, нужно продавать, насколько я понимаю, не менее трех тысяч экземпляров одной книжки в год. У нас все совокупные продажи какого-либо тиража могут составлять одну тысячу за два-три года. Понятно, что у нас есть книги разного типа, и некоторые продаются довольно эффективно – и по 5 тысяч, и даже больше экземпляров, но средний тираж научной литературы – это тысяча экземпляров.

Сергей Медведев: Наверное, в Америке и в России очень разные экономические модели, ведь в Америке можно позволить себе какие-то научные книги за 70 долларов, которые закажут университеты.

Валерий Анашвили: Совершенно верно. Еще совсем недавно, 10-15 лет назад, там картина была совсем радужной, потому что книга любого университетского издательства (причем в твердом переплете) автоматически закупалась в количестве нескольких сотен экземпляров библиотеками США и отчасти по всему миру. В результате издатель на одной только этой покупке уже компенсировал все свои затраты. Все остальные продажи университетского издательства уже шли в плюс. Именно поэтому в Америке хорошо себя чувствовали университетские издательства, они могли позволять себе книги, которые не выпустило бы ни одно коммерческое издательство, – таким образом, они в прямом смысле слова развивали американскую науку, англоязычную науку. Сейчас там ситуация хуже, уже не закупаются 800 экземпляров каждой книги, это уже гораздо меньше, тем не менее, такие закупки остаются, и это все равно позволяет американским университетским издательствам нормально существовать.

Я обложен книгами как физическими объектами

Сергей Медведев: В России есть обязательная рассылка, но не закупка.

Валерий Анашвили: Ты должен несколько экземпляров каждого наименования бесплатно отдать государству. К сожалению, из-за того, что после распада Советского Союза в 90-е годы разрушилась система централизованных библиотечных закупок, у нас такой практики нет. И это, конечно, очень сильно обедняет возможности университетских и научных издательств.

Сергей Медведев: Будущее книги и в виде физического объекта вам видится достаточно радужным?

Валерий Анашвили: Я абсолютно уверен, что на наш с вами век книг хватит. Я думаю, что и наши дети, и, скорее всего, внуки будут пользоваться физическими книгами, лишь иногда заглядывая в устройства будущего для того, чтобы посмотреть небольшие электронные фрагменты из книги.

Сергей Медведев: Валерий в преддверии книжной ярмарки выпустил ряд новых изданий. Я обложен книгами как физическими объектами. Должен сказать, что они радуют, ведь это вещи, которые находятся вокруг тебя.

Я часто вспоминаю историю про Борхеса . Борхес, главный библиотекарь Аргентины, ослеп в конце жизни. Он рассказывает, что однажды проснулся утром и понял, что в его доме что-то изменилось. Он долго ходил по дому, спрашивал домашних, что же такое изменилось. Оказалось, что с утра привезли новые 30 томов энциклопедии Брокгауза. Он почувствовал, что изменилась атмосфера в доме. Я хочу вам всем пожелать, чтобы у вас тоже постоянно изменялась атмосфера в доме от новых книг.