Publishing Trends in the Contemporary Hungarian Book Market
America and Western Europe has been dictating highly market oriented editorial and book distribution trends in the Eastern European region. (Schroder 2015) The Hungarian book market has been submitted to evident changes throughout the last fifteen years. Today, Hungary's smaller editors with a single profile and editorial and distribution activity hallmarked by old school businesses are replaced by department stores and multi profiled editorial enterprises. One of the main aspects of the modern bookselling is the conquest of marketing and PR (public relations) Today, the mercurial market has a different definition of the task of the editors and the writers. Besides writing, the author also has to participate to advertising the book (Kinberg 2014) More and more editors encourage the authors to use the social media to promote themselves and the book, and to go to festivals and writer reader meetings. My paper presents the nature and tendencies of the contemporary Hungarian publishing and book distribution trends.Phenomena like the editorial activity of the Alexandra book emporium, the high paced expansion (then cessation) of the Ulpius haz, the conquest of Bookline.hu lead us to the conclusion that the Hungarian editorial and book distribution scene seems to have shifted through the past 25 years. Smaller editors with a single profile and editorial and distribution activity hallmarked by old school businesses seem to be replaced by an editorial practice directed by market logic. This consumer oriented trend inspired the topic of this paper, since the company policy of the publishing houses influences the selling, and the books that are sold influence and shape reading habits, needs and public taste. Nowadays, the themes and authors of some of the more popular books are assigned by the market and the mass media (Wallin and Maceviciute 2014).The operation of the contemporary Hungarian book selling market is focused towards three large book trading companies: the Libri Shopline Company, the Alexandra group and the Lira Books Corporation. As a result of the 2013 merger of the Libri Publishing House and Book Trading Ltd. and Shopline Web Shop Plc. (that also runs the largest home online book web shop: Bookline) the Libri Shopline Company was created, an exchange listed public limited company. Publishing houses belonging to Libri's sphere of interest (Libri, Park, Trubadur, Kolibri, Helikon, Diafilm and Bookline) have received a platform in Libri's shop network according to their market shares. The merger also owns a commercial sector (members are online book trading enterprises and web shops like Libri, Shopline, Bookline, Libri Antikvarium, Liners and eKonyv) and a media branch (Port.hu, Fidelio, Bobita, Szinhaz.hu) After the merger, some publishers of Libri Shopline left the Hungarian Publishers' and Booksellers' Association1 (HPBA) a decision that was meant to be a message among Hungarian publishers and book traders. Their secession, the Hungarian book sector has somewhat become polarized between the HPBA and Libri Shopline. The directors of the company have expressed, in several interviews, their concerns about the professional operation of the Association. They sensed the lack of modern changes in organizing professional events in the book sector, in the communication of the association, and in the lobby of validating professional interests (Rostas, Ruff 2014; "Egy cegcsoportban." 2013).The another, aforementioned relevant actor of the Hungarian book sector is the Alexandra group, which has significantly and visibly expanded over the last decade, nationwide. Behind the curtain of building the wide shop network and the opening towards editorial activity hide some grave financial problems, as various media sources later revealed. According to the experts, the large scale developments have caused the company's problems, since the executive of the company spent a high percent of the incomes on these. Over the last few years, significant increase has not occurred in sales rates.