Dangerous for native

Lyudmila Slaboshpitskaya, the chief editor of the "Mahaon Ukraine" publishing house, said that introduction of those quotas can harm native publishing houses as well. "When the "Mahaon" publishing house (Russia) purchases rights for book publishing from foreign publishing houses, those rights become effective both for Russian and Ukraine".

"Ukrainian editions are fully prepared in Kyiv, but most of our circulation volumes are printed abroad: in Slovakia, China, Singapore, Turkey. It’s cheaper that way", she explained.
Slaboshpitskaya thinks that such harsh actions of the government have negative influence on the book publishing. "Mahaon Ukraine" is the official distributor of Mahaon’s books published in Russian. During the whole time of our work on the market sales volumes of books printed in Ukrainian were higher than those of the same books printed in Russian.

Ukrainian books use to sell quite well in the Eastern Regions of Ukraine and Crimea. However, the situation has changed dramatically during the last six months. Ukrainian books are practically do not sell at all in Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine", Slaboshpitskaya told.