Current story about this year's Book Fair in Belgrade perfectly fits into the story of two Serbias: while the management of the Belgrade Fair announces a successful upcoming one Book Fair, until then many of its exhibitors, publishers and distributors cancel their participation in this most popular book fair.
What does the management of the Belgrade Fair promise?
This year's 68th International Belgrade Book Fair will be held from October 25 to November 2 under the slogan "Your new story". More than 400 direct exhibitors are expected from Serbia and Cyprus, as well as Romania, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Greece, Germany, Belarus, Russia, Iran, Georgia, Morocco and Tunisia, who will be distributed in halls 1, 1a, 2a and 4, representatives of the Belgrade Fair administration said at a press conference.
"We expect a nice fair, a big visit and maybe break a record," they concluded.
What is really happening?
At the same time, Vladislav Bajac, the founder and editor-in-chief of the publishing house "Geopoetika", submitted his irrevocable resignation as a member of the Book Fair Committee, the chairman of this Committee, Dušan Kovačević, retired from that position three months ago, and almost all members of the Association of Professional Publishers of Serbia (UPIS) announced that they would not appear at the Book Fair.
Vladislav Bajac was a representative of UPIS in the Board.
"Neither of the two requests that the Group of Publishers, Booksellers and Distributors at the Serbian Chamber of Commerce presented to the Book Fair Board was accepted," Bajac said.
The demands were: that the beginning of the fair be moved to October 23, as the penultimate day of this fair, Saturday - the most visited day, would not coincide with the anniversary of the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, and a 30 percent reduction in booth rental prices.
On Wednesday, his "Geopoetika" announced that this publishing house "will not participate in the Book Fair this year." It will be the first time since 1994 that "Geopoetica" does not participate in the Book Fair.
Primarily moral, but also business reasons
Vladislav Bajac and the director of "Geopoetika" Jasna Novakov Sibinović say that they neither can nor want to "participate in the Book Fair under these conditions and in this way, primarily for moral, but also for business reasons."
They remind that "The Book Fair is a cultural manifestation financed by the participants - publishers (in contrast to other cultural manifestations such as Bitef, Fest... for which money is provided by the budget of the City or the Republic). That is why it has been announced that it will take place. The company Belgrade Fair does not bear the majority of the risk, nor does the City Assembly as the founder. This year, the risk of the participation of publishers would increase due to the impossibility of predicting the visit more precisely, with the certain fact that it will be significantly smaller. Consequently, a loss to the publishers would, as the main financiers of their event, be great in this situation."
"And why did we originally want to participate? Because we had already run out of funds from the purchase of books by the Ministry of Culture of the RS (we boycotted it, because numerous requests from publishers about the way in which this purchase is carried out were not even considered, let alone adopted, for months, as well as because of the decision to purchase only works printed in Cyrillic). The city of Belgrade did not even announce the competition this year," writes the press release of "Geopoetika".
Who is not participating?
Apart from "Geopoetika", Clio, Archipelago, Helix, Phaedon, Evoluta, FMK, HeraEdu, Zavet, Albatrosplus, Makart will not participate in this year's Book Fair. The list, say publishers, dominated by UPIS members, is increasing day by day.
The Association of Publishers and Booksellers of Serbia, led by "Laguna", will decide on participation in this year's Fair in two days.
Zoran Hamović, president of UPIS and director and editor-in-chief of the publishing house Clio, tells "Vreme" that they are giving up this biggest annual opportunity to show and sell their books, because "they are neither materially nor morally suited to the conditions offered by the Belgrade Fair".
The story says that they asked for the Fair to start "two days later and to end on Friday evening, instead of Sunday. At the first meeting with representatives of the Belgrade Fair, it seemed that they would accept, however, they changed their minds."
Hamović reminds that last year's Publishers' Fair ended at zero.
"Therefore, this year, when due to social events, even fewer visitors are expected, and when it will be even more difficult to bring foreign authors, especially those from neighboring countries with which interstate relations have deteriorated, we expect to leave the Fair in the red. In a year without any support from the state, when the Ministry of Culture canceled the purchase of books by publishers publishing in Latin, participation in the Fair would be our material loss."
The publishers offered a compromise solution - a 30 percent reduction in the rental price of the exhibition space, but they were rejected.
However, regardless of all that, the management of the Belgrade Fair announces the great success of the 68th Book Fair, even greater than last year's.
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