Consumption of print media continues to fall, while book publishers increasingly shift to digital-first formats as printing prices soar. However, some digital-first news media outlets based in Central and Eastern Europe have recently opted to expand their operations into the book publishing sectors. But why?

The Slovak news organisation Denník N, created by journalists leaving a major news organisation due to a takeover, launched its first book as an experiment to offer an additional outlet for its reporters and as a marketing move to gain visibility beyond their usual spaces. It has since grown to form a sizable chunk of the overall business. The Kyiv Independent, a Ukrainian news media outlet serving English-speaking audiences established only a few months before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 in similar circumstances, sees books as a way to overcome news fatigue about their country. For Meduza, a prominent independent Latvia-based Russian news organisation, and Novaya Gazeta Europe, a media outlet founded in Europe soon after the start of the full-blown war due to the introduction of draconian censorship laws in Russia, entering the publishing business means surpassing Russian censorship and offering an alternative outlet to state propaganda.

Can it be profitable?

Profitability is among the first questions a news media outlet would have while entering the book publishing business. Of all the above, the most successful in this department is Denník N’s book press, which nowadays represents 15% of the media group’s revenue.

Meduza started selling books in the autumn of 2023, and this venture has already become profitable. Moreover, it has not only seen a spike in audience but also raised time spent in its own news app, where its followers can also read their books in a digital format.

However, not everyone wants to call book publishing a “business” in this context. “Some publishers think about how to publish uncensored books specifically as a commercial project – but the audience here, I’m afraid, is still too small, and charging high prices for books is wrong for texts that are significant for society. The goal is after all that more people read them,” says Kirill Fokin, who is responsible for Novaya Gazeta Europe’s recent book initiative.

How to start

Regardless of how you envision book publishing to impact your revenue numbers, launching a book means an investment, and there are different ways of managing the necessary resources.

Use your organisation’s capacity, says Denník N’s Lukáš Fila, chief executive of Denník N’s book department. “You have editors, so you just need to refocus some of them to do a book,” he adds, recalling the first days of their in-house book publishing business. As the success of Denník N’s press grew, they hired four editors from traditional publishers, but using available editors can be a good starting point, Fila notes. Moreover, owning a news website means you already have a great platform to promote your books since it benefits from an established target group.

Partnerships are another way of getting around it, and it can be helpful to get a taste of the sector. As a news media outlet, you should consider that book publishing remains a separate sector with its own rules that span from intellectual property laws to editorial work and marketing, says Daryna Shevchenko, the CEO of The Kyiv Independent. The Ukrainian news website has cooperated with several European small presses and recently signed a deal with the British publishing giant Bloomsbury. “If we ever go into publishing independently, I will be very grateful for the experience I’m getting now,” she added.

Partnerships are also the main goal for Novaya Gazeta Europe, but for a different reason: battling Russia’s censorship from abroad, they don’t intend to compete with other publishers in exile but try to join forces in what they have in common, mainly target audiences with similar political views.

Regardless of your approach and the amount of (human) resources you invest at the start, you should take book publishing seriously, Denník N’s Fila says. “If you want to do it for real, you have to have people who focus on it full-time,” he adds.

What to publish?

All of the media outlets above have one thing in common: non-fiction journalistic accounts have been their starting point and – so far – core niche.

“We have had a few fiction books as well, but that’s a much tougher market,” says Fila, “We are careful about proceeding further in that direction because our in-house expertise is mostly non-fiction.” Publishing a book with journalistic accounts from Ukraine or the local economy requires a lot of research and fact-checking compared to releasing fiction titles. But it is a challenge they are ready to take thanks to their overall in-house knowledge.

However, a niche that is dragged on by a new cycle can get saturated quickly, Shevchenko notes. “The competition for books on Ukraine is pretty high now, so I think the publishers are getting more reserved about publishing more books about the war,” she adds. In Denník N’s case, going beyond the journalistic niche meant expanding to other sections within the non-fiction category, such as health, psychology, and lifestyle, and publishing translations of foreign titles in Slovak.

The ‘newspaper mentality’

If the news world excels at something, it is reacting to breaking news. This quality seems to be the main advantage for news organisations willing to break into the book publishing business.

“We have a newspaper mentality, which allows us to experiment and react very quickly,” Fila notes. While traditional book publishers usually have a long-term editorial perspective, which makes it difficult for them to adjust quickly, in Denník N’s case, the company culture is reflected in the book publishing activities, helping them stand out in catching trends, he says. “Of course, publishing books is still much more time-consuming,” he notes. “But if we see that there is a war in our neighbouring country, we try to think what to publish and how fast we can get it out.”

This adaptability in managing publishing materials can also be noticed in how they embrace non-traditional formats of the book business. Meduza allows its followers to read books in its own news app, while one of the main reasons for Novaya Gazeta Europe to partner with Freedom Letters is its flexible distribution system, such as the sale of e-books on different platforms, the possibility of the print-on-demand system and the targeted distribution of printed copies. The Kyiv Independent is also open to grant rights to as many formats as possible. “The wider [the audience], the better,” Shevchenko says.

Book publishing remains a niche business for digital publishers, but it offers an interesting opportunity to diversify revenue. We are yet to see whether this can be enough to tempt more media organisations from the region to start eyeing the book publishing sector.

Source of the cover photo:愚木混株 cdd20 via Unsplash

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