I haven’t bought a single book in weeks and my conscience is a bit black. After all, bookstores have sales campaigns, and the end of the year is the best time for sales for publishers. Those who don’t buy books for their home at other times also buy books, but before Christmas they still make a forced purchase, even if often not for their own home. It is true that new books are not readily discounted and, according to popular belief, are too expensive. Only writers, designers, editors and book publishers, whose work discount is included in the price of the book, disagree.
The situation on the book market is not good from a commercial point of view. Publisher Tauno Vahter also provided a complete picture of how things are going on the ERR cultural portal, comparing a picture of nations similar to us in terms of population in the Estonian language book market and struggling at the same way for survival1. Vahter’s final conclusion is simple and clear: “If the prices of cultural consumption rise unusually high in a small country, more and more people will be excluded from it, and the general image of people’s culture will be impoverished.” It is equally clear that the levers to change the situation are not in the hands of market operators, readers or writers.
This week, the National Institute of Statistics recalled that a large survey on culture consumption with 10,000 respondents, organized every few years, will last until the end of December and “will help make culture more accessible to people”, because the survey results The survey published next summer will form the basis for defining cultural policy and will provide a measurable indicator required in the country’s cultural strategy: a participation rate in cultural life that must return to 80% by 2030 after a temporary decline.
Between the lines of Statistics Estonia’s announcement it says that there are problems in reaching the target number of respondents, which is why I am promoting the survey here too. I encourage everyone who is hit with an online questionnaire or who is called upon by an interviewer to answer the questions honestly and thoughtfully. There is a certain irony in the fact that the poll’s propaganda is not found in the news feed of the Ministry of Culture, which commissioned the poll. After all, it is not important and not even questionable whether something reasonable is done with the results, because it was already measured in 2003 and then in 2006, but despite the data no change in policy was observed.
As regards books, following these studies2, it is known that half of the Estonian population does not buy a single book per year and 3% of the population buys more than 20 books per year. The picture is equally sad when it comes to reading: 45% read three or fewer books a year (among these, a third don’t read at all). However, the belief that books are too or a little too expensive was common among both readers and non-readers (86% overall, 89% among Estonians), and only 7% thought books were worth the price. their price. This was at a time when books cost two and a half times less than they do now.
Data from the printing industry, regularly collected by the Institute for Statistics, do not give rise to hope that the results of the current survey will indicate an improvement in the situation. Even less do the time series indicate the existence of any decision-making policy. For 20 years, the total annual number of book and brochure titles in Estonian has fluctuated between 3,000 titles, but the total circulation has halved in the same period: it was six million, now three million copies. The printing of school textbooks has decreased the most. For seven years, up to two textbooks per student per year have been printed instead of the previous ten, because the teaching material has moved online and is available there for free.
Only children’s books have resisted very well: on average a million are printed a year, just like at the beginning of the century. But if children’s books then represented a fifth of the total circulation, now they represent a good third. There’s actually a lot to think about. For many years, a good job of promoting children’s literature and reading has been done in Estonia, but the child himself is not the buyer of the book. The books are given to him as gifts on his birthday, Christmas and other festive occasions. I spend an hour every week in the bookshop to keep up to date with news and purchasing preferences (the latter often make me sad), but the educational spirit is to sit among the shelves of the children’s literature department and listen to what the people who they choose the books they are talking to each other. It would be fair to say how tormented they are – and especially the grandparents, who know that they have to buy the book, but whose knowledge of the latest children’s literature is understandably very limited. Based on this participatory observation, I argue that it is the grandparents’ generation that keeps the sales of children’s literature high.
What will happen when today’s grandmothers and grandfathers abandon the shops forever and the new generations will have to fuel the book trade in their place? Perhaps as children they developed a perfectly decent reading habit, but they do not have a purchasing habit, as can already be seen by the depletion of the printed number of books aimed at adults. In a 2003 survey, the main reasons for insufficient reading were lack of free time (56%), the price of books being too high (28%) and the lack of availability of attractive stationery (11%). Conclusions are a matter of taste, but there is no reason to think that people have gained more free time somewhere. And even if there were, aggressive suitors will continue to arrive with whom the books cannot compete. Is the situation therefore hopeless and all that remains is to accept Vahter’s sad offer that “in principle there is also a much cheaper and more self-regulating solution: the adoption of a foreign language culture”?
In 1935, the Year of the Estonian Book was celebrated for the first time in Estonia and the task was set: “To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Estonian book on August 25, 1935, because Wanradt Kõll’s catechism was published on August 25, 1935; deepen the recognition of the great importance of the valuable book in the life of the Estonian people; establish the basis of internal and external propaganda of the Estonian book and begin to carry out its propaganda; solve the problem of publishing and distribution of the Estonian book valuable books and develop the library system; improve the economic situation of creative writers and creative people in the field of national sciences to enable work; lower the price of the book and bring the book to a greater number of people; clarify from the point of view vision of the Estonian nation , requirements regarding the precious Estonian book.”3
If the dangers and consequently the tasks are the same, then in the last 90 years, and especially in the last 30 years, little or no harm has been done, so much so that recognition of the great importance of the book in the lives of people is lacking. like before. A couple of months ago I complained4 that the Ministry of Culture created on its website the title of the thematic year “Estonian Book 500” for 2025, but not a single syllable of information was added underneath. At the moment the situation is the same as before and the sweetest opportunity to carry out book propaganda among residents is simply to sleep. Maybe it should. In this case, and so that we can finally put an end to all the nonsense of books in Estonian, and I underline – by the will of the people – I recommend adding the question “Why don’t you buy books?”, which gives a good political return, to the next study on cultural consumption. with multiple choice answers: a) all writers are greedy bastards b) the interior designer hasn’t seen the home shelves c) the normal text fits on an A4 format d) he doesn’t understand the question e) he can’t read.
1 Tauno Vahter: how have prices increased in different cultural fields? – ERR, December 5, 2023.
2 The studies can be found on the website of the Ministry of Culture
3 The book year is dedicated to a wide-ranging cultural activity. – Postimees 25. III 1935, n. 83.
4 Kaarel Tarand, What is not, has no smell. – Sirp 29. IX 2023, n. 39.
2023-12-10 13:22:00
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