Open Society Publishing Forum5 March 1999, Issue 29****************************************************************
In this issue
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FORMER PARTICIPANTS TURNED TRAINERS IN KYRGYZSTAN “Standards in Publishing” held in Bishkek on 16-17 February was the first seminar in a cycle of workshops titled “How to Publish Books” organized by the Publishing Program of Soros Foundation - Kyrgyzstan for university publishing centers and small private companies just beginning their publishing activities. This series of training events targets new publishing initiatives that the foundation have not supported so far. Further seminars on topics of management, finance and accounting, typography and fundraising will take place this year. The trainers of the seminars are publishers and specialists who participated in earlier foundation seminars and have enough experience to share with other publishers and printers. During the seminar “Standards in Publishing” the following issues were covered: laws regulating publishing activities in Kyrgyzstan including copyright law, ISBN, technical editing and typography. The presentations were delivered by specialists of the Kyrgyz Book Chamber, Agency of Intellectual Property and the Publishing House Ilim. The second half of the day was devoted to individual consultations and practical training on, for example, how to fill in catalogue cards. Sale of books organised by the local firm Raritet accompanied the event. Twenty-two publishers from Bishkek, Osh, Talas and Naryn regions took part in the seminar. During the event the participants had an opportunity to buy, at a special discount, books provided by the local company Raritet. The cost of the seminar was $480. [based on information provided by Irina Rodionova, Soros Foundation - Kyrgyzstan <irina@soros.kg>] AZERI EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS STUDY HUNGARIAN EXPERIENCE A group including the head of the Textbook Department of the Ministry of Education, four Azeri publishers and a foundation staff person, visited Hungary to study the local textbook market on 20-26 February. During the visit they had an opportunity to become acquainted with various elements of the textbook system: originating a textbook, textbook approval procedures, information and marketing and sales. They visited the Ministry of Education, several publishing houses and bookshops, both in Budapest and in the country, and a textbook exhibition room. They also met representatives of trade organisations and school teachers, who told them about their perception of how the system works. Hungary has an open market textbook provision system, which results in a number of publishing houses (165 in 1998) competing with about 3,000 titles for their market share. There is almost always a choice of textbooks for any given subject, for example, there are as many as 39 textbooks for geography for the 7th grade. All but one publisher is private. In spite of an initially critical attitude (“the system results in much waste”, “the quality of textbooks will inevitably deteriorate if they are produced by profit-driven publishers”), the group came to appreciate the advantages of a market-based system. During a closing dinner they were arguing for demonopolising the textbook market in Azerbaijan, reform of the legal framework of publishing and encouraging private publishing. The tour was co-organised and co-finansed by the OSI-Azerbaijan and CPD. The total cost was $10,000. The program of the visit was designed by the Hungarian Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Association. [JC] CROATIAN FOUNDATION HELPS PUBLISHERS ESTABLISH THEIR OWN WEBSITES POI-SON (Publishers on Internet - Soros Network) is the name of the project created by OSI-Croatia in order to help small, private, independent publishers establish their own websites for promotion and sales. So far sites for ten publishers have been set up with the help of the project and they enjoy considerable public interest. In the future the foundation plans to teach the publishers how to maintain the sites and possibly support establishing English versions of them. The list of the websites created within the project is as follows: www.barbat.hr
[based on information from Natasa Petrinjak, OSI-Croatia <npetrinjak@soros.hr>] TRAVEL GRANT TO DEVELOP PUBLISHING STUDIES IN POLAND The director of the Postgraduate Publishing Management Studies Center at the Warsaw University received a travel grant to visit the U.K. during 21 January - 9 February. The grantee visited the Oxford Brookes University, the Publishing Training Center in London and several publishing and bookselling companies. The visit, among others, will help her develop a new stream of studies in Media Publishing Management. The center is a new successful initiative, which was launched in early 1998. The grant in the amount of $1,150 was provided by the Batory Foundation and CPD on the matching funds basis. [based on grant report by Dorota Myko, the grantee, for further information contact Olga Szotkowska, Batory Foundation <okszot@batory.org.pl>] “JEWISH BUDAPEST” – A NEW TITLE FROM CEU PRESS The book was edited by Geza Komoroczy, Kinga Frojimovics, Viktoria Pusztai,
and Andrea Strbik. From the catalogue:
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STUDENTS DECIDE IN A NOVEL BOOK SUPPORT SCHEME IN HUNGARY When the Hungarian Ministry of Education allocated each university a pool of money to use for book support instead of distributing it centrally some universities decided that it is the students who should make the decisions about how the money should be used. In Miskolc (the third biggest city in the country) the local university allocates each student a sum of money per term (at the moment about $10-20 depending on the department) which they can use for purchasing books at their discretion. To make sure that the money is used for this very purpose the students obtain cards with a magnetic strip which they can use in the accredited bookshop at the university. The shop has been recently computerised, which permits tracking down each student’s individual account. The users of the system are free to use their allocation whenever they want on practically any book available in the bookshop. They can accumulate the money over years and use it even as late as graduation day. Some trade the allocations, the going rate is 50% of the value on the card. The cards serve also as IDs and as the means for stipend payment. Both the bookshop and the university are satisfied with the cooperation. The former makes some 40% of its turnover from the card-related business, and the latter maintains that books are now affordable and that new titles make it quickly to the bookshop to meet demand. Although students do not find the allocation quite satisfactory as it covers only about 30% of their book needs, they try and manage by sharing books and using the library. [JC] =======================================================
IN SEARCH FOR GLORY AND MONEY: AMAZON.COM AND THE BRITISH LIBRARY LINKED
Amazon.com, the internet bookseller, has just launched its new marketing initiative: it is sponsoring the British Library’s online catalogue. Amazon has helped to thoroughly improve it and expand it as well as to make it accessible to the public for free. Having found the book you have been searching for, with just one click you can move to the relevant page of Amazon’s website where you are able to decide if you wish to purchase the book. Since the library, as one of the biggest one in the world, has more than 9 million bibliographic records, combining it with amazon’s site has greatly enhanced the attractive power of both of them. The only problem is that many items from the library’s catalogue which it boasts cannot be purchased: amazon does not stock either early editions of John Keats or the original manuscript of the Magna Charta. [Monika Horvath <mhorvath@osi.hu>] =======================================================
NEW TITLES PUBLISHED WITHIN THE CEU TRANSLATION PROJECT: CEU TRANSLATION PROJECT BULGARIA Weber, Max (edited by K. Koev): Meaning and Value, grant $3,924 SLOVENIA Kuper, Adam: Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School, grant $7,000, YUGOSLAVIA 1. Avishai, Margalit: The Decent Society, grant $3,981, $209/author’s
sheet
EAST TRANSLATES EAST CROATIA Mocnik, Rastko: How Much Fascism? grant $2,200, $314/author’s sheet =======================================================
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