Lucia Ciocan is Copyright Manager at ARC Publishing House în Chișinău. She graduated from the Faculty of Letters of the Ion Creangă State University in the capital of the Republic of Moldova. Lucia worked for a few years at a radio station, and then at ARC Publishing House, founded more than 20 years ago. She is in charge of the children's book collections, which she oversees from the acquisition of the translation rights (when necessary) until they reach the publishing house's warehouse, the bookstore shelves and then the readers' hands.
You are Copyright Manager at ARC Publishing House. What does this position entail?
To make it more understandable – it means looking for titles published abroad, but which would also meet the expectations of Romanian book buyers, in Moldova and Romania. I pay more attention to children's books. That is my line of work, but my tasks do not end when I buy the rights to the selected titles. I only consider them done after the whole print run is sold. But until then I am part of the team. I work with the copy-editor, after the translator sends us the text, with the book designer and with the person who prepares the printing. Obviously, I am in close contact with the printer, because after the print run goes off the press, I also make sure that the books arrive safely and on time at our warehouse. From this point on I am also involved in sales activities, presentations, fairs, etc. The range of things done is so wide that it is not a routine job, which suits me in every respect.
What does a working day look like now, when the threat of the pandemic fades under the weight of the news from Ukraine?
For the first few days I was frozen in front of the TV, obsessively looking for news on Ukrainian channels. I remember the manager calling me to ask if a ship carrying some of our books printed in China had been hit in Odessa. It had entered the port the day before the war started and he had learned that a cargo ship had just been hit in the Black Sea. It had been days without sleep, with many phone calls, chats on Telegram, WhatsApp, Messenger, etc., days of anger, despair, helplessness. Many acquaintances immediately left Moldova. We had been informed that the printing house in Kharkov had closed so as not to endanger the lives of employees. We intended to print 14 titles there and the paper had already been bought. It took more than a month to find another printing house that was suitable and could print quickly. In the last few days, several people from publishers abroad texted me to ask what was happening in Moldova, if it was true that we could be a target of Russia. I told them, in a detached manner, that we had been living with this thought since the very first day of the war. We had managed to get used to it in the two months, to talk about the war and about books at the same time, with the same people, in a cold, calculated way.
How did you start working at ARC Publishing House?
As a Philology graduate, it was natural to end up at a publishing house. I also worked in radio for a few years, but in the end the books were more appealing. I think because of the balance I felt around them.
You have a very rich portfolio, ranging from art books to fiction and from children's activity books to school materials. Who selects the titles and what are the most important criteria you use as a guide?
Behind each book genre there is a publishing house employee, who pays attention to market signals on the one hand, but also to the publishing programmes announced by state institutions on the other, and who commission authors for specific projects. So, everyone minds their own business. The art albums were the books that brought recognition to the publishing house, thanks to their quality, from the very beginning, when the 14 albums of Art of the 20th Century Basarabian Masterswere printed. Every time we come to Bucharest, at book fairs, art connoisseurs ask us if we have reprinted this collection. Running out of stock and knowing that someone wants to buy for others what they bought for themselves is the happiest situation. I do not know if anything could be more flattering to a publishing house. It is quite difficult to achieve that kind of performance with all books. However, we always expect a book to make an impact, to not leave the reader unmoved, to sell, because when a book sells, there will be money to publish another book (I do not know why people still think publishers operate differently than any other business and can operate without profit).
Have you had books along the way that you liked so much that you didn't quit until you convinced your colleagues to publish them?
I remember taking home a couple of books from a publisher in Lithuania once. Oana, my 5-year-old niece, was visiting me, and she took a series of little cat-girls to colour, out of all the books. I found the collection bizarre. Oana was absolutely delighted. So I took the books back to the office. It was clear that we had to print them in Romanian. I was not wrong, but I had to argue my "case" very eloquently.
You sell both in the Republic of Moldova and Romania. Which distribution channels are best for you?
Physical bookshops remain out of competition in the Republic of Moldova, even after the revival of online with the pandemic. And I should say that most bookstore chains have expanded in recent years. There are not many, but they have opened new stores in Chișinău and other smaller cities. Probably in a better situation, without the crisis, this would have boosted sales as well.
In Romania, online sales play a more important role, according to my sources. This is one of the differences between the book market in Moldova and Romania. Apparently, there is a common sales market, but each area delimited by borders has its own and very pronounced specificity.
I am thinking that for the market in the Republic of Moldova you compete both with other publishers who publish in Romanian and with those who publish in Russian. What does this dynamic look like? Are there readers who buy both Romanian and Russian books?
Our competitors are Romanian publishers, including those in Romania, who have free access to Moldova’s book market. Romanian titles arrive in Chișinău relatively quickly, and if they are not yet on the shelves, you can order them online, any genre, any title. Even if some buyers might say that it is hard to get their hands on books published across the Prut, I think that everything works pretty well. And I know from the logistics in this field, not from hearsay.
I could not be so sure about books in Russian. I do not know how available they are to the buyer. As far as I know, there is only one publishing house in Chișinău that publishes something for ethnic Russians. Most of the books end up in bookstores in Russia and I think in Ukraine as well. That was until the war. I had read that Ukrainian publishers demanded that Russian books no longer be allowed to be imported into their country. I would not be able to approximate what share of the market Russian books take. What is certain is that some Romanian speakers also read in Russian, especially those aged 35+. Younger people read in English rather than Russian.
I was talking about distribution, but the marketing and promotion of new titles is also vital. What means work best for you in this respect?
We try to reach the buyer through the traditional methods. Few publishing houses have special budgets for communication and PR, so we use what we have at hand: social media, websites, promotions, book launch events, etc. The most effective for us are book fairs, probably because no one can speak more highly of the books they sell than those who have worked on them. During the fair we are all communicators, from the director, to the editors, typesetters and accountants – we all sell the books at the stand.
What is a bestseller for ARC Publishing House and which titles have won this title so far?
The best-selling book, DEXI, was published in 2007. The Illustrated Explanatory Dictionary of the Romanian Language is the largest single-volume explanatory dictionary ever published (it has 2280 pages). Authors from the "A. Philippide” Institute of Romanian Philology in Iași and teachers from "Al.I. Cuza” Universityhave worked on it for several years. In the first years of its publication, almost 30,000 copies were sold. It was a definite success in a limited market (we get the major part of our income in the Republic of Moldova, not in Romania, where we still have many tax and customs impediments to sell), with the lowest purchasing potential in Europe. While in Romania people spend an average of €5 on books, in Moldova – only €2.
Even though fiction authors and their readers have started getting more active, only children's books have the potential to come close to that performance now, perhaps with one or two exceptions. This is how children's books become, in a way, the "saviours" of publishing houses.
You publish many of your children's books in co-editions, many printed in China. What does such a book’s road look like and what are the pros and cons of such a process?
It is a long road. It is an average of about 10 months from signing the contracts to getting the books to the bookstores. But a book that is made from scratch by the publisher can sometimes take even longer. The author/illustrator will not always meet the publisher's expectations. The printing material will require extra effort and time, more than is usually spent on a purchased book. Besides, co-published books have a lower retail price than original projects, so they are more affordable to the buyer. The only drawback – they will never portray the specificity of the place. That is why we have never abandoned the idea of publishing authors/illustrators of children's books from Moldova and Romania. The most recent example is an alphabet book for preschool children. A publishing house colleague, Iulia Iordăchescu, and the illustrator Stela Damaschin-Popa, also known in Romania, have worked on it.
Everyone in the publishing world is now facing a paper crisis. What does this crisis actually consist of and how can a publishing house like ARC overcome these shortcomings?
It is a hard blow to publishers, who have also been hit by the health crisis. Paper prices have skyrocketed in the last 8 months. Partly due to increased demand. During the pandemic, supply chains were disrupted, many stopped printing in China (because transport from there became very expensive and cumbersome) and went back to European printers. At the same time, paper suppliers in Europe started to incur higher production costs because of the energy crisis. And since the start of the war, supplies from Russia, a major paper producer, have stopped. All together, these will make paper about 40% more expensive, according to our estimates.
A publishing house like ARC is quite vulnerable now, because it has to pay the printers in advance, otherwise they will not reserve the paper it needs for the specific order. And the buyer has become more restrained, after the multiple price rises they are facing.
In an interview several years ago, which you offered together with the manager of ARC publishing house, Iurie Bîrsa, you talked about the need for the Republic of Moldova to have its own stand at major international book fairs. Has anything changed in the meantime?
I think the Republic of Moldova has had its own stand, after 1998, only at two editions of the Frankfurt Book Fair – in 2009 and before the pandemic. But it was a bland presence, a small space, hastily set up. However, it was important for Moldovan publishing houses. They were there, along with publishing houses from all over the world, a tangible proof of their belonging to the international book market. It is true that, apart from that, several books by Moldovan authors were exhibited at Romania’s stand.
Do you remember your first experience at such international fairs? How important are these participations for the publishing house’s activity?
I only realised how important international book fairs are during the pandemic, when they were no longer held. I did not have that post fair excitement, inspired by communicating with colleagues at from foreign publishing houses, by coming into contact with dozens and maybe even hundreds of books that you touch and marvel at. The publishing house had unofficially established a rhythm of activity from the Bologna book fair to the Frankfurt one. Because of the war, I could not make it to the Bologna book fair in Italy this year either. And so it was that, during this time, we did not have any opportunities to establish new relations or find more exquisite projects. Fairs are very effective platforms for this reason.
Part of your job is to read dozens (if not hundreds) of book and manuscript pitches. Which books or authors do you read for pleasure in your spare time?
To save time, I keep a close eye on what others are writing about books and I also read author interviews. It was through one such interview that I discovered Icelandic author Jon Kalman Stefansson, who had been at The Iași International Festival of Literature and Translation – FILIT, and his novel Heaven and Hell was one of the best books I have ever read. Narine Abgarian was also a surprise with Three Apples Fell From The Sky, a novel about hope, written with great skill. Now I am reading Human Things by Karine Tuil.
[The photos are a part of Lucia Ciocan's personal archive.] [Translated into English by Oana Dragomir.]
