An upscale bookstore in Prague. Image – Getty: Tuayai
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘We’re Seeing Lower Print Runs After Each Crisis’
Held in digital sessions in September, the hybrid Frankfurt Rights Meeting program culminated again this year in an in-person reception on the eve of Frankfurter Buchmesse’s opening, and featured a series of rights-related presentations across four weekly online session.
One of those events focused on the Czech Republic, which is scheduled to be Frankfurt’s guest of honor market in 2026.
Richard Klíčník, the editor of Argo Publishing, spoke to the international participants in the program on September 10, and he agreed with Sonia Draga of Poland and Iulia-Cristiana Stan of Romania that the trend toward Europeans being interested in reading in English when a book originates in English appears to be growing, especially among younger readers.
“For example,” Klíčník said, “We’re the publisher of Dan Brown and if there’s a new book from him, we want the Czech translation ready for the international release” to make it as fast and easy for a Czech reader to buy it before reaching for an English edition.
“We lose out on about 10,000 copies if we don’t publish it quickly.”
As Draga put it, this is also an issue in Poland—where Sonia Draga Publishing House is also a publisher of Dan Brown.
“If we’re too late with our translation, readers might go for the English version. Timing is crucial,” she said.
Richard Klíčník
Klíčník spoke about the overall stance of a publisher in Prague, noting that, “Right now, manga is very popular, so we’ve started translating classic manga. Another house dominates the manga market, so we focus on niche classics. we also do limited editions.
“For example, we released a limited adaptation of a French novel with only 100 special, numbered copies in a custom box. It sold out quickly and helped with the financials. Without these 100 copies, we wouldn’t have been able to publish the book.”
He also talked about working in a volatile environment being impacted by several external circumstances at once.
“In the Czech Republic,” Klíčník said, “the pandemic, energy crisis, and the war [perpetrated on Ukraine by Russia] have been devastating.
Sonia Draga
“We’re seeing lower print runs after each crisis. As Draga said about her experience in the book market in Poland, we’re publishing books about the war, but interest is limited. People seem to want to avoid the topic.
“We continue publishing to inform our audience, however, since the war is so close to us.”
The titles that Argo Spol is releasing relative to the war on Ukraine fit into a serious part of the company’s work. Klíčník said, “Nonfiction makes up about 10 percent of our market, with fiction still dominating at 90 percent. However, we’ve seen success with memoirs and interviews with notable figures. And some historical and esoteric nonfiction also does well.”
Several more of the statistical points Klíčník brought to the Frankfurt Rights Meeting program were enlightening.
- With some 10 million inhabitants—”just one million more than London,” as he puts it—the average Czech salary is €1,600 per month (US$1,754).
- Around 73 percent of the population reports reading at least one book per year, while 62 percent reports buying at least one title annually.
- Women in the Czech Republic read twice as many books as men, surveys show, with an average household owning around 253 books.
- With laws that require municipalities to establish libraries, the country has a very dense ratio of library-to-consumer. There are some 6,133 libraries in the market.
In a trend that trade visitors and rights professionals from other markets could relate to, however, Klíčník said that despite the very high library count, the Czech book business sees “the number of readers decreasing every year.
“According to surveys, the average Czech can concentrate for 15 minutes.”
And the holidays are important. “Seventy percent of books in the Czech Republic are sold around Christmas, Richard Klíčník said. “A book is a traditional Czech Christmas present.
This is a story from our 2024 Frankfurt Book Fair Magazine, now is available in a digital edition here.
Download your copy here.
You’ll also read our focused coverage of issues and events in the Guest of Honor Italy program; book market trends in Brazil, France, the Philippines, and Poland; perspectives on the international rights trade from Matthes & Seitz Berlin’s Meran Mentzel; commentary from independent publishers from Greece, Colombia, and Kenya; and PEN International president emerita Jennifer Clement on censorship ahead of the IPA’s International Publishers Congress.
More from Publishing Perspectives on Frankfurter Buchmesse is here, more on the world’s international trade shows and book fairs is here, more on Frankfurt’s guest of honor programs is here, and more on guest of honor programs in many parts of the world is here.
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