E-books (Russian market)

Main article: Book market of Russia

Who trades in e-books

• Litres
• Google Play
• MVideo

Market size

2023

The Russian digital book market reached 14.2 billion rubles. Leaders

The volume of the Russian digital book market in 2023 grew to 14.2 billion rubles, analysts at J'son & Partners Consulting, whose data was published on May 21, 2024, calculated. According to experts, the costs of such content will continue to increase, and in 2024 they will amount to 18.6 billion rubles (an increase of a third compared to 2023).

As Vedomosti writes with reference to the report of J'son & Partners Consulting, about 62.7% of sales of digital books in 2023 fell on text versions, and the rest (37.3%) - on audio versions of books.

The volume of the Russian digital book market in 2023 increased to 14.2 billion rubles

According to the study, the share of the Bookmate service, which is part of the Yandex ecosystem, in the Russian digital book market in 2023 amounted to 5.5%. The "Lines" platform, which is being developed by MTS, took 2% of the market.

The Litres group of companies was named the leader of the Russian digital book market - its share accounted for 57.9% of sales. Earlier, Litres itself estimated its share in the digital book market at 66%.

J'son & Partners Consulting for the first time presented an assessment of the structure of the digital book market in terms of monetization models. The share of the transaction model (PPD, payment for downloading a book) in 2023 was 75.5%. Subscriptions accounted for 24.5%. In both models, Litres is the leader - in PPD, it accounts for 54.9% of user payments. In the subscription, "Litres" accumulates 49.12% of user payments, "Bookmate" - 27.1%, "Lines" - 10.1%.

According to LitRes, the top 5 most popular genres of digital books include self-development and personal growth, love fantasy, modern romance novels, modern detective stories and combat fiction. Among the areas that show sales growth in monetary terms are Korean literature (plus 61%), humorous literature (21%), mysticism and horror (20%), fantasy (16%) and young adult (15%).^[1]

The study is based on survey data from market participants, J'son & Partners Consulting's own data, expert interviews, as well as open information, including company reports. The calculations took into account data on income from sales of digital books both on the services themselves and on partner sites, including marketplaces.

On the whole, one can agree with the market assessment provided by J'son & Partners Consulting, although it differs from the Litres data in the larger direction, Sergei Anuryev, general director of this group of companies, told Vedomosti.

We in our assessment proceed from the role of ecosystems in the actual target consumption of digital books, so our estimate of the market capacity attributable to them [ecosystems] is much less, "he said.

According to him, the share of the subscription model in the digital book market is 4-5 pp higher , adds Anuriev. It is the subscription that will become one of the key drivers of a further increase in the capacity of the digital book market, in 2024 its growth rate will be 20-30%, the general director of Litres predicts.

Estimates of the digital book market cited by J'son & Partners Consulting are close to reality, a representative of Strokov told Vedomosti. According to him, the company is "satisfied with the indicators":

"We managed to achieve a share comparable to our closest competitor (Bookmate. - note. "Vedomosti"), which has been on the market for more than 10 years. "

In the future, in connection with the merger of MTS media businesses into the MTS Media holding, the development strategy of Strok will be revised - in particular, it is planned to maximize synergy with other services and platforms, which will provide more opportunities for growth due to cross-platform franchises, added a representative of Strok.

Sales growth by 19% to 12.56 billion rubles

In 2023, digital books worth 12.56 billion rubles were sold in Russia, which is 19% more than a year earlier. The situation in the entire market in the Litres group (includes the Litres, MyBook, Litres Samizdat, Litres Reader, Litres Library and LiveLib services) was told in mid-February 2024.

According to Litres CEO Sergei Anuriev, one of the growth drivers in the digital book segment was the audiobook market, which grew by 24% in 2023. The second driving factor was the samizdat market, its capacity at the end of 2023 increased by 30% compared to 2022 and amounted to 4.4 billion rubles.

In 2023, digital books worth 12.56 billion rubles were sold in Russia

In addition, an additional catalyst for the growth of the Russian digital book market is subscriptions, which in 2023 accounted for 23% of sales revenue in the industry against 17% a year earlier. The entry into the market of new digital book services that distribute them in subscription also led to an increase in revenue from this business model: for example, the telecom operator MTS launched Lines, and Yandex launched Bookmate.

Bookmate in the third quarter of 2023 more than doubled its revenue compared to the second quarter of the same year, a service representative said. The growth was ensured by an increase in the number of subscribers and the release of new bestsellers. The Ridero service reported that it increased revenue for this period by more than 35%.

Commenting on the situation on the Russian digital book market, a Kommersant source noted that the main crisis after the departure of large players and problems with payments has already passed, and the continuing rise in the cost of printed books also has a positive effect.

Between Pelevin's novel in print format for 1 thousand rubles and the same work in digital format for 500 rubles, the user in most cases will prefer the second option, the source believes.[2]

2022: Market growth by 5% to RUB 11 billion

In 2022, the volume of the Russian digital book market did not grow for the first time, and it amounted to 11 billion rubles. Oleg Novikov, co-owner of the Eksmo-AST group of companies, spoke about this in mid-February 2023. The audiobook segment was even down 10% and e-book sales were up just 5%, he said.

The demand for paper format, because this [2022] year it was the volume of sales of paper books that was the growth driver. But e-books practically did not grow, which happened for the first time in all the years of the existence of the e-book segment, - said Novikov.

As Vedomosti writes with reference to the data of Eksmo-AST and Litres, digital books traditionally act as a driver of the entire book market, their annual sales growth rates exceeded 30%. So, in 2021, the Russian book market grew by 18% to 99 billion rubles, and sales of digital books - by 34%, to 11 billion rubles.

As the reasons for the zero growth of the market, the co-owner of Eksmo-AST called the cessation of work in Russia of some payment systems, the curtailment of the Swedish service, Storytel as well as the growth of piracy.

Since the end of February 2022, when Russia launched a military special operation in Ukraine, many services and resources have faced great problems with user payments, this is mainly due to the lack of growth in the [segment] of digital books, says Evgenia Rykalova, head of the digital book service "Strings" (owned by MTS) and confirmed in Litres.

After the ban on cross-border payments, Visa and Mastercard stopped working payments from the audience living in Russia in the digital goods stores App Store and Google Play, which accounted for up to 60% of the revenues of our B2C direction. There were also problems with accepting foreign payments, - summed up the representative of Litres[3]

2021

Pirates took a quarter of income from e-book sellers in Russia

According to the Association for the Protection of Copyright on the Internet (AZAPI; represents the interests of large Russian publishing houses - AST, Eksmo, Alpina, MIF, Azbuka-Atticus, etc.), pirate revenues from the sale of e-books in Russia at the end of 2021 amounted to 2-3 billion rubles. The market for legal digital books "Litres" (occupies, according to its own calculations, about 70% of the market) was estimated at 11 billion rubles.

Thus, as noted by Vedomosti, e-book sellers in 2021 received less than a quarter of their income due to the pirate market. According to Maxim Ryabyko, a member of the board of AZAPI, the association estimates the volume of piracy based on the cost of the book from legal sellers and the offer of its illegal copy on popular online sites. AZAPI clarifies that search engines still issue links to sites with illegal copies of books, but the main volumes of pirated content are available on Telegram and YouTube.

Market participants interviewed by the publication stressed that the growth rate of e-book sales would be higher if it were not for the activities of pirates. In their opinion, the accession of book publishers to the anti-piracy memorandum, which has been operating between the owners of audiovisual works and large Internet companies - Yandex, VK and Rambler Group since November 2018, will help solve the problem. The memorandum allows copyright holders to extrajudicially remove links to pages with pirated copies of their works from search results.

Another way to combat illegal content may be the use of digital fingerprints in all social networks - this allows not only to distinguish a legal copy from a pirated one, but also to prevent the indexing of "mirrors" of pirated sites in search results and monetization of illegal resources.^[4]

The digital book market in Russia grew by 34%, to 11 billion rubles

The volume of the Russian electronic and audiobook market at the end of 2021 reached 11 billion rubles, an increase of 34% compared to a year ago. This is more than the growth rate in 2020 (+ 26%), according to data from the Litres Group of Companies (combines the Litres, MyBook, LiveLib, etc.) services, which were released on December 29, 2021.

Its participants call audiobooks the main driver of the market. At the end of 2021, their sales increased by 43% (e-books - by 25%), Sergey Anuryev told Kommersant Litres. He attributes this to audiobooks being a younger segment of the market than e-books and growing from a low base.

It is in the audio segment that new content distributors appear more often, although their share in total revenue remains generally low compared to long-term market participants, said Denis Petrov, deputy general director of Alpina Digital.

Market participants interviewed by the publication noted that the fight against piracy provides the greatest support in market growth. In August 2021, the general director of Litres, Sergei Anuriev, estimated the annual losses of book services from pirates at 10-15 billion rubles. According to one of the newspaper's sources, Telegram and search engines, which contain illegal content, remain the main sources of pirated books on the market.

One of the most popular against the background of the release of the film of the same name was, in particular, the book "Dune" by Frank Herbert. In 2021, many books were first published in audio, says Storytel Russia (specializing in audiobooks) Boris Makarenkov, for example, according to such a model, "Post. Save and save "Dmitry Glukhovsky. Also, some market participants have significantly increased investments in advertising, and this stimulates recognition of the audio category as a whole, he added.^[5]

2020: Growth of the e-book market by 32%, to 8.2 billion rubles

The volume of the Russian e-book market in 2020 amounted to 8.2 billion rubles, an increase of 32% compared to 2019. This was reported in the country's largest publishing group, Eksmo-AST.

E-book sales could have been significantly higher if not for piracy - of which, according to Eksmo-AST, the market loses about 15-20% of revenue annually.

At the same time, digital books remain one of the main drivers of the development of the entire book market. In 2024, as predicted in the publishing group, the volume of the e-book market will double and exceed 20 billion rubles.

According to preliminary data from Litres, sales of e-books in Russia at the end of 2020 amounted to about 8.5 billion rubles, an increase of 31% on an annualized basis. During the pandemic, digital books have become one of the safest ways not only to entertain, but also to gain new knowledge without leaving home, the company noted. They added that the main catalyst for the growth of the digital book market is that they can be read anywhere, anytime.

The volume of the entire book market in Russia at the end of 2020 amounted to 84 billion rubles (including VAT), having decreased by 12% compared to the indicator of one year ago. This data takes into account sales of paper, digital books and educational literature.

The fall of the Russian book market was not least influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. As measures to combat coronavirus, bookstores in Russia were closed from March to June 2020. In April, the Government of the Russian Federation included 79 communications organizations, technological and media companies in the list of backbone enterprises. The list was prepared by the Ministry of Digital Development. Among such enterprises were large book publishers Prosveshchenie and Eksmo, as well as stores of the largest book chain Chitai-Gorod - Bukvoed^[6]

2019

Market growth by 35% to 6.5 billion rubles

In 2019, the volume of the Russian electronic and audiobook market reached 6.5 billion rubles, an increase of 35% compared to 2018. The indicated amount amounted to 10% of all book sales excluding educational literature, calculated in the Litres group of companies. The data were released in early February 2020.

According to experts, the implementation of audiobooks in 2019 accounted for about 2.5% of the total book market in Russia, which corresponds to 1.5 billion rubles in money.

Litres says that several factors contribute to the growth of the electronic and audiobook market, including:

• low cost of the Internet;
• increased penetration of remote payment methods;
• widespread use of mobile devices.

The audience's involvement in the use of formats is also increasing: if 2018 users listened to audiobooks at least once a week 45% year, then in 2019 it was already 58%.

The increase in the number of users smartphones and the Internet was the main engine until recently, and now it will come to the fore that many will begin to use Internet on a daily basis, says Bookmate CEO Andrei Baev.

"Of course, the price of books plays an important role. Over the past few years, print circulation in Russia has been steadily declining. Publishers tend to compensate for their fall by rising prices. Now the price of a regular book in a Moscow bookstore is about 600 rubles. It was difficult to imagine such a thing three years ago. Prices for e-books and book services are not growing at such an insane speed, "he stressed.

According to Bookmate forecasts, the growth of the electronic and audiobook market will continue, and in 2020 its volume will be at least 8-9 billion rubles. Litres predicts that the segment's share this year will exceed 12.5% of the book market, excluding textbooks.^[7]

Market growth forecast up to 7 billion rubles or 10% of book market capacity

In June 2019, Sergey Anuriev, General Director of the Litres Group of Companies, and Yevgeny Selivanov, Head of Integrated Publishing Services of the Group of Companies, spoke about the state and trends of the samizdat and digital book markets in Russia.

According to Sergei Anuriev, one of the key trends is the growing demand for the non-fiction genre. Sales of non-fiction literature in 2019 in the first five months (January-May) increased by 67.7% compared to the same period a year earlier. Secondly, audiobooks became the driving factor in the development of the market.

According to Sergei Anuriev, all of the above trends, including the emergence of new services and the development of existing ones, will lead to market growth by about 35% at the end of 2019 and bring it closer to 7 billion rubles, or about 10% of the capacity of the book market.

"We note a twofold increase in sales of audiobooks in the first five months of 2019 in relation to January-May 2018," said Sergei Anuryev.

In addition, the samizdat market is actively increasing:

"This segment has a three-digit growth rate. In 2018, in the total turnover of the LitRes service, the share of samizdat reached 4%, and in 5 months of this year it has already exceeded 6%, "S. Anuryev emphasized. - Even 5-7 years ago, large publishing houses faced an outflow of the same science fiction writers, they left the writing craft in search of a better way to earn a living. Now, thanks to subscription services and samizdat, the opposite trend is noted. There are precedents when people who had nothing to do with the book business before were able to help out more than 1 million rubles to their first book. "

As the head of integrated publishing services of the Litres Group of Companies Yevgeny Selivanov noted, the service plans to occupy 60% of the samizdat market by the end of 2019. One of the key indicators of the project's success is the hit of the works of the authors of samizdat in the top 100 sales books at Litres (up to 23 books in the first five months of 2019). The authors of the project "Litres: Drafts," which was launched in April 2019, can expect the same success.

"A draft is a book that the author publishes as he writes, without waiting for it to be completed. By subscribing to the draft, the reader receives regular updates with a certain frequency set by the author, - said Evgeny Selivanov. - Interested in the book, the reader begins to wait for the continuation, and this, one might say, brings the draft into the same competitive field with television series and podcasts. More importantly, the author can communicate with readers during the process of publishing the draft in pieces. By providing feedback on what is read, readers have a real opportunity to influence the plot, thus becoming participants in the process of co-creation. "

Evgeny Selivanov also added that the project can help authors develop scripting skills, learn to stop at the most interesting place, fueling the reader's interest.

2013

The e-book market in the world is a nascent segment of digital content that is growing at a high rate due to the growth in sales of reading devices. In 2013, the e-book market increased by 37% compared to 2012, and in 2013-2014, the market is expected to grow by about 28%, and its volume will reach $11 billion.

According to experts from J'son & Partners Consulting (Jason & Partners Consulting), the Russian e-book market reached $13 million in 2013, which is 6 times higher than in 2010. Most of the market is occupied by purchases from personal computers (hereinafter referred to as PCs) and laptops, a smaller part of the market, but a rapidly growing part - purchases from mobile devices (readers, tablets, smartphones).

According to J'son & Partners Consulting forecasts, the Russian e-book market by 2016 will grow by 132% compared to the results of 2013 and will amount to $30 million.

The main growth drivers of the e-book market are:

• the growing popularity of mobile devices suitable for reading electronic content: tablets, smartphones, readers;
• enrichment of technical equipment for e-book readers;
• development of legal content sales infrastructure;
• increasing the range of digitized books;

The main indicators of the Russian e-book market:

• 70% of Russians have ever read e-books;
• 92% of users download books for free from the Internet, this includes pirated file downloads;
• in recent years, the book market in Russia as a whole has developed "difficult and unstable," primarily due to the consequences of the 2008 crisis;
• the legal book market in Russia in 2013 is estimated at 60 billion rubles, e-books account for about 1% of the total market volume;
• In 2012, the competitive structure of the market changed significantly, one of the main internal factors was the collapse of AST due to the inability to pay debts, while the main competitor (Eksmo) gained control over AST, strengthening its already significant position in the market;
• in June 2013, the Russian government announced its intention to invest $100 million until 2018 in the country's book industry and improve its infrastructure;
• The book industry of Russia was greatly influenced by the opening of Apple's iTunes store in December 2012, and then Google's Play Store. The British company WHSmith and the German XinXii also announced an initiative to enter the Russian market, in which they see good potential.

The main barriers to e-book market growth are:

• prevalence of illegal services in the segment of book content. The absence of such major international players as Amazon in the Russian e-book market;
• lack of culture of consumption of paid content, which is typical for all segments of the Russian digital content market.

Forecast to 2016

According to J'son & Partners Consulting experts, the Russian e-book market by 2016 will grow by 132% compared to the results of 2013 and will amount to $30 million.

Piracy

Main article: Copyright on the Internet

Pirated content is popular in Runet: according to a study by Romir (2013), 69.7% of respondents read e-books, but only 15.3% pay for them.

E-Book Creation Services

• UnderPage - as of September 2014, the cost of developing a book using a service from 100 thousand rubles.

History

2021

Ministry of Digital Development: Smartphones in the Russian Federation will be sold with downloaded e-books

At the end of January 2021, it became known that new smartphones in Russia will be sold with downloaded e-books. The Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation Maksut Shadayev supported the proposal of the head of the Organizing Committee for the support of literature, book publishing and reading in the Russian Federation Sergei Naryshkin on the inclusion of a literary application in the list of software to be pre-installed on electronic equipment, the press service of the department reports. Read more here.

2019: Launch of Litnet's new e-book distribution model

December 23, 2019 it became known about the appearance in Russia of a new model of distribution of e-books. The Litnet service offers customers to rent digital content. Read more here.

2013: MVideo - first retailer to launch e-book sales

In the spring of 2013, it became known that the bookstore was Amazon.com going to sell electronic texts, videos and Kindle readers through its website on Runet.

In October 2013, it became known that M.video was opening an online store on its website for the sale of digital content, said network representative Anton Panteleev. He will start with e-books (in standard formats rtf, pdf, mobi, txt, fb2), the copyright for which belongs to the largest digital e-book store in Runet "Litres."

People who went to M.video for a tablet or even more so a reader often wonder where they can buy legal digital books, Panteleev explains. And the online store will allow, for example, to give discounts on digital books to those who bought a reading device at M.video, or to install links to the online store in tablets and readers. In the first half of 2013, according to M.video, 2.7 million tablets were sold in Russia, of which 241,000 were in its stores. And the Russians acquired smartphones (on which e-books can also be read), according to M.video, 7.4 million.

In the next few months, the M.video online store will begin trading other digital content - computer programs, audio and video recordings. Nikita Tikhvinsky, head of the M.video media direction, explains the retailer's interest in such content by the fact that buyers turn away from content on physical media - CD and DVD. If the scheme for buying digital content is simple, then this will increase the turnover of M.video and help combat piracy.

Despite the decline in content sales on physical media, large retail chains continue to work with them. For example, Euroset it sells videos on DVD and books, and you can buy them on the website euroset.ru. Representatives Euroset did not talk about the prospects for the sale of digital content. However, the general director of the online store for sale ON Softkey Felix Muchnik says that his company successfully cooperates with "," Euroset"" and Dorado other retail chains: when customers purchase software in stores, sellers purchase keys to activate these programs on the site softkey.ru.

When buying digital devices, inexperienced users often want to saturate them with content right in the store, says Muchnik. But many prefer to buy content later via the Internet, so the launch of the M.video online store is a reasonable step, he believes^[8].

Audiobooks (Russian market)

Main article: Audiobooks (Russian market)

Notes