State taking certain steps to support book publishing and reading in Ukraine

State support is important for all those working in the publishing industry and the readers.

This was one of the topics discussed at a briefing on the start of the National Reading Week – 2023 at Media Center Ukraine – Ukrinform.

Rostyslav Karandieiev, acting First Deputy Minister of Culture and Information Policy, said that despite all the challenges of today, the trends of the book publishing market are very promising – authors are busy writing, translators are hard at work and printers work at capacity.

According to him, the norms of the law on support of book publishing adopted by the Verkhovna Rada a year and a half ago are also being implemented today.

“Next year’s budget has marked those expenses as very important, and they will be used to implement measures to help each and every Ukrainian citizen over the age of 18 to purchase a book. The state has experience, and it is a positive experience, when in the Covid days, via Diia, via the relevant e-certificates, we supported citizens, and through them we also supported the book trade, the book publishing industry, and as they say, the whole system was capitalized. And these funds went to all related areas, strengthened them institutionally, and there was great progress. We see that Covid did not weaken book publishing and reading in the country at all, on the contrary, there was a whole surge. Therefore, we anticipate that such state support will be beneficial, and it is very important for all participants in the book-related processes,” he emphasized.

Rostyslav Karandieiev also pointed out that the state supports book shops.

“Also, we are laying down the possibility of supporting bookstores that rent premises to perform their activities, and such a decision has already been adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers. Yes, today we can and have the right to say that there are priorities, but laws must be obeyed. If the law states that the state supports bookselling organizations by providing them with support to compensate their rental costs, in particular, then we must do it,” he added.

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