This is a brief retelling “Медузы” Interview of an interview with Oleg Novikov, president of the Eksmo-AST publishing group, which he gave to Forbes. The meaning and context have been fully preserved, but some parts of his remarks may have been edited or rearranged.
Everyone must ensure that the laws are followed, even when there are no clear criteria and they have to be developed in consultation with experts. Today, preparing a book for publication requires a series of checks. There are 10 criteria—LGBT propaganda, drug propaganda, the absence of pornography, extremism, discrediting the armed forces, the childfree movement, the absence of foreign agents—a whole list.
We have an AI-powered system. But it makes some strange recommendations: the surname Dragunsky (Editor’s note: Eksmo Publishing CEO Evgeny Kapyev told, that the neural network which checks books for potential violations of Russian law deemed writer Denis Dragunsky’s surname to be “drug propaganda” because of the word “drag” (“drug” means “medicine” or “narcotic” in English) may associate it with drugs, so an editor has to review the comments manually. Sometimes we have to play it extra safe—especially now, after the Popcorn Books case. Have many books ended up on the chopping block?
There are no statistics, but several dozen books could not be completed. Were many books withdrawn from sale? Well, for example, as part of the criminal case against Akunin, all his books were seized and sealed off—several tens of thousands of copies. It is now impossible to buy them.
We can see that people who made a conscious decision to leave dealt a major blow to themselves and their creative work. They found there was no demand for them abroad, lost touch with their readership, and sometimes do not fully understand what is happening in the country today.
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