In June 2024, the demand for business literature in the Russian Federation increased to 12%

The market segment has shown growth for the first time in a year and a half, say participants. Until now, readers were mainly interested in individual categories, such as crisis management.

Sales of business literature on the Read-Gorod network in the first half of the year increased by 10% compared with last year, a representative of the Eksmo-AST publishing group said. The bestsellers included books on self-help and financial education, including The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, and The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham.

Demand for literature on personal financial management and effective communication is also growing. Eksmo-AST noted that this reflects readers’ desire for stability and success in a changing economic environment.

Alpina’s sales during the reporting period increased by 7% in units and 4% in cash, reports Irina Antonova, the publishing group’s marketing director. The best-selling products include new releases, such as “Design Management Patterns” by Yuri Vetrov, and books by Itzhak Adizes, Stephen Covey and Philip Kotler.

The business literature market has been stable for several years. Significant fluctuations rarely occur, says Olga Kiseleva, head of the product management department for strategy at Mann, Ivanov and Ferber. In the first half of the year, the number of new titles of the company did not change, and sales of business literature in monetary terms increased by only 2%.

Ozon and Wildberries also observed an increase in demand for business literature. Users of the former site were more likely to be interested in books on economics, and the latter on financial education.

According to a senior manager at one of the publishing groups, the business literature segment has not grown for a year and a half. He says that there was only growth in certain categories, for example, in books on crisis management, as noted by Liters in February 2023.

However, the interviewee doubts that this category will be able to grow at the same rate as fiction or youth, since the experience of foreign authors is no longer relevant to Russian reality and a boom in new titles is not expected.