OREANDA-NEWS  The German and Spanish divisions of Penguin Random House have resumed work in Russia. This is reported by Kommersant with reference to the general director of the publishing group "Alpina" Alexey Ilyin.

One of the world's largest publishing houses returned to the country after the Frankfurt Book Fair, held on October 18-22. The company's portfolio includes Liu Qixin, Nicholas Sparks, John Grisham, Stephen King, Lucinda Riley and other authors. Such a return "gave hope to Russian publishers" who hope to buy rights directly from foreign partners again, a source in the media market noted.

At the same time, these divisions can only dispose of the rights of local authors. "Taking into account the fact that the share of foreign works in the total revenue of the Russian book market is about 40 percent, the share of Spanish and German writers is estimated at 8 percent of translations, and English — 60-70 percent," said Vladimir Kharitonov, technical director of Freedom Letters.

A number of foreign authors, including J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and other writers, suspended work with Russian publishers after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine. According to Eksmo-AST, the lost share of sales of novelties by such authors will be about seven percent. The most significant books that Russian publishers have lost were called new projects by Rowling, King and Norwegian Yu Nesbe.