Russian publishers protest over Prosveshenye 'dominance'

Leading Russian publishing houses have filed a petition to the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), asking it to prevent the ever growing domination of Prosveshenye publishing house in the domestic market, especially educational textbooks.

The move follows a recently-issued recommendation from the Moscow city government’s education department to its secondary schools to give preference to Prosveshenye books when procuring literature for their school curricula. According to the protesters, the provided recommendation violates the Russian federal law On Protection of Competition, providing unfair competitive advantages to Prosveshenye.

Among the protesters are such leading Russian publishing houses as AST-Press, ASTREL, Education, Drofa, Eksmo and some others. The publishers stressed that Prosveshenye already makes the overwhelming majority of sales in the books segment for state secondary schools. Moreover, Russian federal education ministry figures state that Prosveshenye’s Russian secondary school textbook and educational literature market share increased from 0.23% in 2013 to 93.2% in 2015. It estimated the value of the segment at Russian Roubles RUB21.6bn ($328m), a significant share of the entire Russian book market, which for 2015 was estimated by the Russian Association of Book Publishers at RUB73bn ($1.1bn).

In an official statement, an Eksmo spokesman commented: “The provided recommendation of the Moscow department of education to primary schools of Moscow is contrary to the existing federal law…as it introduces restrictions for fair competition in the Russian book market.” The company said it hopes that there was "a misunderstanding", and that “the situation will be corrected with the participation of the Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service and the Moscow city government.”

The politics of the dispute are sensitive. According to Sergey Anyfriev, an analyst at the Russian Association of Book Publishers, Prosveshenye’s growth in sales, in particular public procurements of books, could be explained by the political influence of Arkady Rotemberg, the Russian billionaire, and the co-owner of the company. Russian newspaper articles have said he is close to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

Representatives of the Prosveshenye publishing house declined to comment on the issue to The Bookseller.