From Publishing Perspectives:
Tamara Megrelishvili is the founding managing director of Prospero’s Books and Coffeehouse on Tbilisi’s Rustaveli Avenue, a central avenue named for the 11th-century Georgian poet. Megrelishvili says that book sales at the moment are going better than they were during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that consumers’ visits to the physical store are picking up again after having been driven online during the coronavirus’ onslaught.
Nevertheless, she says, the kind of government impositions on freedom of expression are causing her to hold off on making some international book orders in a market that traditionally reads quite readily beyond its own borders.
The buzz that Prospero’s Books puts out about itself is that it has the largest international selection in bookselling in the Caucasus region.
. . . .
Megrelishvili’s store is certainly prominent among Georgia’s book retailers, which are logically concentrated in urban areas and particularly the capital. Frankfurter Buchmesse‘s 2018 guest of honor market of some 3.7 million people focused five years ago at the trade show on its unique alphabet and its literature’s function as a cultural bond both before and after Soviet rule. In bookstores today, this is reflected in shelves of well-known Georgian writers such as Aleko Shugladze and Giorgi Kekelidze, alongside many titles from the international market.
. . . .
In a conversation with Publishing Perspectives, Megrelishvili says that despite generally good growth rates in Georgian book publishing and what she describes as a rising interest in reading, she doesn’t expect to see significant market growth in the new year.
One of the reasons she anticipates a flat market is a slowdown in tourism to Georgia.
After the announcement of the Russian mobilization for Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine, as many as 100,000 Russians entered Georgia, according to published figures attributed to the Georgian ministry of internal affairs, with some 222,250 or more in September 2022 alone. This has led, Megrelishvili says, to a growth in book sales and also to an increased share, of course, of imported Russian-language books in her market.
Following the initial rush, however, many of these displaced consumers have moved to other parts of Europe and elsewhere, creating, she says, a need for a new impetus for growth in sales of books in Georgia.
Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives
The problems of American and British booksellers pale in comparison to those caused by an influx of hundreds of thousands of Russian troops.
PG – I believe the reference was to hundreds of thousands of Russians moving into Georgia because they don’t want to be troops. Georgia is heavily dominated by it’s neighbor – but not to the point where Russia raises conscript levies from it.
(Ukraine publishers certainly have serious problems, but from what I have read, those seem to be more due to disruption of production and distribution even far from the front lines.)
Indeed.
The full numbers are unknown but even the admitted numbers are massive compared to the Georgian population, 200,000+ in a country of 3.71M is almost double of the US uninviteds under the gerontocracy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_emigration_following_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
The problems of American and British booksellers pale in comparison to those caused by an influx of hundreds of thousands of Russian troops.
That’s the problem for Ukraine. In Georgia’s case (this time, anyway) the Russians were fleeing there in order to avoid getting drafted for Ukraine. (Though some might have been infiltrators/spies.)