As we go with the discovering the history and current processes in Moldovan publishing industry, we switched our interviews between local bookshop owners, book illustrators, technicians that make books in big machines and now, it is time to focus our attention on a publishing house that exists on the local market for more than 20 years. We are referring to ARC publishing house that specializes in children’s books.
For this episode, Veronica Zubcu had a discussion with Lucica Ciocan, the acquisition manager for foreign children’s books at ARC.
As Lucia told me, her work implies to buy copyrights for foreign books and to find for ARC the newest titles that comply to the market’s demand.
There is no magic database with the existing books that you can find on the market. Actually, buying copyrights requires a trip or two, or even ten trips to the biggest book fairs, such as Frankfurt Book Fair, Bologna Children’s Book Fair, London Book Fair and others.
Before going to a book fair, ARC’s representatives, including Lucica, establish some meetings with their partners from other publishing houses from around the world. They see each other every year and usually their meeting starts with catching up, then Lucica and her team see some new books and decide what would be interesting for the Moldovan customer to read and after that, the debates on the price begin.
ARC Publishing has partnerships and collaborations with international publishing houses such as Presses Universitaires de France, Larousse (France), Ariel (Spain), Bompiani (Italy), Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Pearson Education (UK), Harvard University Press, Houghton Mifflin Company, University of California Press (USA).
Unfortunately, during COVID-19 pandemic, all book fairs were moved to online formats, and in consequence, Lucica’s working process suffered.
As she says, book editors are very social human beings and when they meet at/for book fairs, negotiations feel different, being more pleasing and interesting and you have the occasion to see the books with your own eyes , to touch the pages. All these moments influence the rhythm of communication and favours a good price on the deal, the lack of contact creating some challenges for the publishers.
The cancelation of book fairs influenced the number of titles published by ARC in 2020. Their number decreased.
Let’s talk a bit about local book fairs. Do they have a chance to buy some copyrights or to sell the ones for books that you make entirely local?
For us, local book fairs are only to communicate with our customers. Local publishing houses do not sell copyrights for books they produce. We tried to sell some books to an international agency but to this moment we have not encountered success. The problem is not that Moldova does not make interesting and good books, but that some publishing houses sell books for many years and have an established list of customers. The competition is huge on the international market.
Local book fairs like Salonul Internațional de Carte pentru Copii and BOOKFEST are important for ARC because they offer an insight on what the local reader wants to read and buy.
I was always wondering how local publishing houses chose what books to bring on the market. One thing is when readers go to book shops and choose from what is on the display, and another thing is when the publisher knows what will be in demand next year and buys those books. How are things happening at ARC?
Well, sometimes we just take the risk. If something is selling well in Italy, for example, there is a big chance it will sell in Moldova as well, because some markets are similar in book consumption. But that is not always the case.
Curious fact: In Russia, there are some laws that censor children’s books and publishing houses have difficulties in publishing books with topics on human rights, discrimination, death, divorce, puberty, LGBT and other. They are forced to write age limitations on book covers and change the original content. Therefore, their book circulation and industry’s development suffers a lot.
Samizdat was eager to know if Moldova has similar legislation or impediments for the local industry?
First of all, we know what topics are not interesting for local readers and we just don’t buy those books. For example: environment issues and ecology — a very popular topic in EU countries — for Moldavians represents no interest. If we talk about puberty and sexuality (books for boys and girls), we have such books and they sell very well. For other topics, it also depends on how open minded the parents are. Lots of moms now reject tales where there are violent scenes, or death of the characters, but these stories have an educational potential. Our only limit is: would someone read this kind of book or not? As from the government, we did not encounter some censorship.
As for Moldovan parents, we observed an increased interest for children’s books and more young parents come to local book fairs. Some of the factors are that local books shops started to order a more diverse selection of books, on the market appeared musical books, books with flaps and parents find them interesting for their children. They are also looking for encyclopedias, cognitive books and in general, books that contain more information and are functional.
Moldovan traditional tales, as the tales in other cultures, often have death represented as the final punishment for the evil character.
Lucica Ciocan’s book suggestions on ARC Publishing are from two collections: “Why?” and “Primavera”.
As we are willing to discover and talk more about local book illustrators, we decided to ask Lucica with whom ARC is currently working.
Right now we published an ABC illustrated by Stela Damaschin-Popa. Last year we had a book illustrated by Aliona Bereghici, we worked with Tatiana Lagaeva on her book “Papagal și Chițcaval” and we really enjoyed it. For the big series “illustrated classics” we worked with Dumitru Iazan. We try to help all of them to get known.
Here our little encounter with Lucica Ciocan ended. We want to thank her for sharing some experiences from the local publishing industry and particularly how a big publishing house, such as ARC, is acquiring copyrights for great books and bringing them to Moldova.
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