Yearly in Poland we ritualistically lament the nation’s low-level readership, however we’re but to see the state take any significant motion. What are the implications of this lack of regulation, when readership is clearly not vital sufficient for the state to create circumstances that may assist each publishing homes and feminine writers – usually undervalued – to develop?
Debates concerning the guide market, feminine authors’ pay, and the challenges going through publishing homes have been occurring for years. The concept of setting a typical worth for books was mentioned as early as 2007, then later revived in 2021 when author Andrzej Sapkowski sued the pc video games firm CD Projekt for PLN 60 million (€14 million) after its adaptation of his Witcher novels proved extra profitable than he had anticipated. This adopted an earlier dialogue about novelist Kaja Malanowska’s earnings. Every of those debates was adopted by silence. They introduced no change.
This time the silence was damaged by Joanna Kuciel-Frydryszak, writer of Chłopki (Peasant Ladies) and Służące do wszystkiego (Servants for The whole lot), who introduced on Instagram that the courts are to settle the dispute she has been combating together with her writer, Marginesy, since August 2024. Regardless of being printed in 2023, Chłopki stays one among Kuciel-Frydryszak’s bestselling books in Poland.
It isn’t clear how a lot cash she has comprised of the guide, however preliminary estimates put the determine at PLN 900,000 (€212,000). Kuciel-Frydryszak herself emphasizes the disproportionate nature of her earnings in relation to the publishing home’s income. Within the 12 months Chłopki was printed, Marginesy recorded PLN 14.5 million (€3.4 million) extra income than within the earlier 12 months. Kuciel-Frydryczak is claiming a share of the income and is entitled to take action underneath the so-called ‘bestseller clause’ (i.e. Article 44 of Poland’s Copyright Act).
The writer has are available in for heavy criticism for having signed such an settlement. Nevertheless, she shortly discovered assist from writers similar to Jakub Żulczyk, Katarzyna Tubylewicz, Grażyna Plebanek, Małgorzata Rejmer and Jacek Dehnel, who, like Kuciel-Frydryczak, had managed to flee the ranks of the precariat. To go to courtroom, you want cash. And to keep away from being branded a problematic author and ending up unpublished, you should achieve success.
It gave the impression to be a dispute between authors and publishers, with the latter supposedly ripping off the previous. In spite of everything, an writer who receives an advance that allows them to dwell modestly for 3 months out of the 12 months it takes to put in writing a guide received’t be going up in opposition to anybody.
Precarious work
In fact, contracts differ, and we don’t know a lot about them as a result of imposed confidentiality clauses. Nevertheless, a survey carried out by the Literary Union reveals that between 2017 and 2021 the common advance was between PLN 4,000 (€940) and PLN 27,000 (€6,360), relying on the style and the writer’s gender – proof that the pay hole additionally impacts the guide market. The median gross month-to-month wage for an writer is PLN 2,500 (€590). But, within the phrases of Maciej Jakubczyk, ‘Hey presto: they take it’, as ‘the work is socially momentous, bestowing satisfaction and honour. The truth is, it’s not even a job, it’s a mission. And while you’re fulfilling a mission, you don’t speak about cash’.
This mechanism was described way back by David Graeber in his guide Bullshit Jobs. Work that’s socially vital, carried out in accordance with one’s beliefs and based mostly on accountability, is undervalued. The ethical, social or creative values of labor are usually not thought-about within the capitalist market. As a substitute, these values are cynically leveraged to exert psychological strain and cut back resistance to exploitation. This is applicable not solely to artists, but in addition to lecturers, nurses, scientists, journalists and different precarious staff. And much more so when they’re girls.
Capitalism requires sources, together with low-cost labour, low-cost creativity and low-cost care, which it then transforms right into a commodity. The way in which to manage these sources is to tie folks to a month-to-month wage that daunts threat and forces them to search for work on the aspect. This leaves no time for leisure or, above all, for understanding one’s state of affairs. That is compounded by the embarrassment of supposedly being clever but incomes solely PLN 2,500 a month.
It’s someway symbolic that Kuciel-Frydryszak has damaged her silence over her guide Chłopki, whose reputation stems from a collective transforming of the legacy of serfdom and patriarchy – an unjust, violent and unequal system that assured low-cost labour and which we couldn’t rid ourselves of on our personal. This technique contributed to the short-lived success of the wealthiest when the grain of the First Polish Republic flooded Hanseatic ports, adopted by a protracted, painful decline.
Borderland opacity
Nevertheless, it will be mistaken to imagine that the connection between an writer and a writer is equal to a feudal one. Publishing homes are additionally exploited. That is very true of smaller, extra bold ones, that are searching for authors and thematic niches. Finally, it’s a case of the extra you care, the much less you get, as a result of when you care a lot, you’re going to do it anyway. Your dedication is a useful resource.
Publishers usually say that working a publishing home in Poland is a raffle. The guide market is small and deregulated. Poles don’t learn a lot, so promoting 2,000 copies is taken into account affordable and promoting 3,000 copies is taken into account superb. The Czech guide market is twice the scale of ours, regardless of serving a inhabitants of 10 million in comparison with Poland’s 38 million. Studying isn’t in trend in Poland. There isn’t a cultivation of a studying tradition. Most poles solely learn when they’re at college, the place it’s obligatory. Those that suggest college studying lists appear to know this, in order that they embody as a lot as they’ll whereas they’ll. Nevertheless, books nonetheless lose out to TV collection and social media, which require no focus.
Above all, it loses out to the tradition of onerous work described by the cultural semiotician Zofia Smełka-Leszczyńska. We’re one of the overworked nations. On the identical time, the worth of our work stays a lot decrease than the worth of labor in different Central European international locations: the median gross wage is lower than PLN 7,000 (€1,650). Since 1989, now we have been the japanese frontier of capitalism, supplying Western Europe with low-cost labour. With an schooling system that the majority of us go away behind with a sigh of reduction after 12 years, books are related to compulsion.
The authors of ArtRage, a podcast dedicated to the publishing business, declare that publishers conceal gross sales figures, which makes it difficult to research and perceive the market. Polish bookseller Bonito has determined to disclose its gross sales figures and embrace the truth that promoting 50 copies in a month makes a guide a bestseller. Szczepan Twardoch has offered 170,000 copies, Wojciech Chmielarz has offered a million, and Joanna Kuciel-Frydryszak has offered 500,000. Whereas this may occasionally appear so much, for a inhabitants of 38 million, it’s a paltry sum.
In keeping with the guide market analysis company Nielsen BookScan, 130–150 million books are offered yearly in Poland (based mostly on the 20-35% of the promote it has been capable of entry). Two-thirds of those are college textbooks, a big proportion of that are youngsters’s colouring books. This leaves an estimated 1.6 books per inhabitant per 12 months in Poland. In France and Germany, by comparability, the determine is 10.
Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore, the authors of the guide Historia świata w siedmiu tanich rzeczach (A Historical past of the World in Seven Low cost Issues), just lately printed by Krytyka Polityczna, use the class of the borderland to analyse capitalist processes. Its traits are opacity, ambiguity and ignorance – as a result of it’s within the borderlands that devaluation takes place, the transformation of what capitalism needs to promote into sources.
Devaluation is a becoming time period for the precise borderland, the buffer zone between Poland and Belarus / Ukraine, the place human life and well being is disadvantaged of worth unwitnessed, and for contracts on the guide market, the place the work of authors and publishers is devalued, hampered by confidentiality clauses and the shortage of entry to distribution stories. The opacity of the market isn’t any accident, and the state ought to be eager to remove this, as it’s not in our curiosity.
In monetary phrases, as calculated by Marcin Bełza within the on-line literary criticism journal Mały Format, the worth of all books printed in a given 12 months in Poland is round PLN 4.5 million (€1.06 million), of which literary fiction accounts for lower than 20%, or PLN 600,000–800,000 (€140,000-189,000). Bełza compares this determine with the beer market, which generates PLN 26 million (€6.1 million) per 12 months.
The deregulated
This tiny publishing cake has been divided very inconsistently. Why? As a result of it has been deregulated. It’s a very free market. However wait a minute! There may be additionally a free publishing market in France and Germany, but these international locations have laws in place and a better literacy price. Additionally they work fewer hours and spend extra on well being and schooling. They worth their work, their time and their tradition.
In the meantime, no Polish authorities since 1989 has acknowledged the strategic significance of readership for state growth, regardless of analysis clearly exhibiting its correlation with well being, civic engagement, the flexibility to establish disinformation and an understanding of worldwide challenges, relationships and schooling. There isn’t a regulation, even though cultural items and books are described within the structure as ‘a supply of identification for the Polish nation’. Moreover, Article 167 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union dictates that books shouldn’t be handled purely as marketable items however ought to be supported and promoted.
Nevertheless, somewhat than investing in tradition, Poland depends on custom. This custom is known as parochial, conservative, xenophobic, patriarchal, Catholic and feudal. It’s averse to and distrustful of dwelling, progressive, equal, accessible and subsequently emancipatory tradition. One want solely recall the holding of rosary prayers exterior theatres or the ’rainbow Virgin Mary’ case. As a substitute, most holidays are celebrated with a navy picnic and a mass.
And but, within the face of the challenges posed by a altering world, it will be extra applicable to foster an open and alluring creative tradition that might embrace followers of quite a lot of traditions, not simply parochial Catholicism.
The Polish state is ready to create beneficial circumstances for numerous enterprises. The state is subsidising the mining business with PLN 9 billion (€2.1 billion) this 12 months, though it’s unprofitable. It has allowed coal mines to empty brine into the Oder, as an alternative of forcing the acquisition of a system to desalinate mine water. The Oder disaster of 2022 didn’t result in any modifications. In 2024, the Ministry of Local weather and Atmosphere didn’t challenge a right away deceasement order to mining firms however merely really useful that they develop a plan, timetable and pricing, which isn’t anticipated for an additional 5 years. It is a good instance of shifting prices onto nature – and onto us, as a result of the cash for the clean-up of the Oder is popping out of our pockets.
Clearly, if the state needs to assist industries, it will probably. Within the case of the guide market, nonetheless, it doesn’t need to. Pressured by stakeholders, the Ministry of Tradition has proposed that market gamers get collectively and give you a joint proposal themselves. Nevertheless, it’s troublesome for small publishers to barter with an oligopoly of distributors.
5 earn as a lot as 300
A report by the Polish Economic system Community (PSE) in December 2024 highlights the elemental challenge recognized by publishers. The guide market is dominated by 4 main distributors (some additionally depend Azymut that’s making losses), which management 80% of the market. The biggest is Empik, adopted by Ateneum, Dressler Dublin (previously Olesiejuk) and Platon. They don’t compete with each other. If one lowers its costs, the others observe swimsuit. They will afford to have interaction in a worth struggle and promote at a minimal worth as a result of they make their cash from the lots anyway. In the event that they personal chains of bookshops, they’re successfully transferring cash from one pocket to a different. Publishers can’t afford such low margins, however distributors can. Marcin Bełza calculated that in 2023 these 5 distributors earned PLN 4 billion (€9.4 million), which is as a lot as 300 publishers mixed.
The Workplace of Competitors and Client Safety (UOKiK) is liable for guaranteeing aggressive circumstances. It permits the focus of capital and market monopolization, for instance, by approving Empik’s takeover of Platon and the Foksal Publishing Group. The report ready by the PSE additionally highlights that UOKiK is late in initiating investigative proceedings in opposition to a number of main entities.
On this association, a distributor who owns a publishing home and a sequence of bookshops can do no matter they need. As Krzysztof Cieślik and Michał Michalski clarify on the ArtRage podcast, smaller publishers are primarily given the selection of ‘agree or get misplaced’ when coping with distributors.
In keeping with the PSE report, the common low cost for distribution is as excessive as 50% (typically reaching 70%), whereas for bookshops it quantities to 38% of the duvet worth. Bookshops are going bankrupt, with one in three closing between 2010 and 2020. E book costs are rising as a result of publishers should increase the duvet worth to keep away from promoting under manufacturing prices.
Intervention wanted
There are methods to extricate cultural creators, who play an vital function within the formation of ‘nationwide identification’, from the realm of sources. However they require a state that believes that tradition is a strategic sphere that have to be protected by laws.
The authors of the PSE report have some solutions for regulating the business, one being standardized pricing. This concept isn’t new. The publicist and Krytyka Polityczna contributor Piotr Wójcik wrote about it in 2021, and even then it wasn’t the primary try. The proposal ready by the Polish Chamber of Books (PIK) on the time envisaged setting a typical worth that may stay in place for one 12 months. The authors responded at size to the objections, most of which stemmed from the capitalist dogma of the free market, explaining that competitors isn’t just about taking part in with costs, and that publishers ought to be capable of compete with attention-grabbing titles.
Smaller publishers are involved that the introduction of a typical worth for books will solely lead to a rise in guide costs. Distributors will proceed to take books on consignment at reductions of over 50% and will even make the most of the usual worth to demand greater reductions as a result of their gross sales will fall.
Different laws supporting publishers ought to subsequently observe the introduction of a typical guide worth. The state may buy books from publishers on the cowl worth for libraries, regulate top-down reductions for distributors and get them organized to reveal gross sales information. It may additionally create a stabilization fund for publishers and deal with bookshops as cultural establishments, which might entitle them to advantages similar to diminished lease. As well as, the state may present assist for writers within the type of scholarships and insurance coverage packages. If the state helps farmers and monks, why not writers too? The state’s initiative to scale back VAT on books to five% has solely benefited builders – sorry, distributors – however this error is hardly surprising, is it?
Solidarity amongst those that are being exploited would even be helpful. PSE proposes the institution of a cooperative to carry collectively publishers and booksellers, who would collectively have higher bargaining energy with distributors. Literary organizations such because the Polish Writers’ Affiliation and the youthful Literary Union may work in the direction of introducing higher transparency in contracts. They may additionally assist smaller publishers by encouraging revered and broadly learn writers, similar to Jacek Dehnel, to publish with them somewhat than with bigger publishers, which often poach bestselling authors. Because the largest gamers available in the market are capable of keep away from competitors, maybe the smaller ones may additionally act in opposition to the established guidelines that drive the oligopoly.
A frontline nation in polycrisis
Poland is a borderland nation, and for a number of years now it has additionally been a frontline nation in polycrisis affected not solely by struggle but in addition by the event of AI, international warming and migration. Now we have reached a turning level. Now we have a selection: both to proceed down the trail set out originally of the transition, competing available in the market with low-cost sources – low-cost labour, low-cost schooling and low-cost tradition, permitting particular person gamers to develop – or to start out valuing ourselves and dealing collectively in order that as many individuals as doable can take part in tradition. We ought to be opening up tradition as an alternative of forcing migrant youngsters in integration centres to assimilate ‘Polish sensibilities’, as Inside Minister Maciej Duszczyk places it.
And superficial measures are usually not sufficient. It isn’t sufficient to say that we have to begin with schooling, as a result of schooling is in the identical place as literacy, and the disaster is already right here. The collapse of healthcare and state brutality in the direction of migrants are eroding the worth of life. Tradition and science have gotten much less precious – AI is being skilled on stolen books and the work of scientists. Creators and scientists don’t get a penny for this. But, it’s tradition that may assist us on this polycrisis and function a discipline of freedom and dignity.
Ukraine has skilled a growth in studying through the struggle. Individuals are publishing, shopping for and studying books, and discussing them in cafés whereas on go away. Within the face of fixed hazard, tradition is proving to be a unifying and mobilizing power, offering solace and dignity. Ukraine is combating in opposition to barbarism, standing agency on the aspect of civilization and basing its identification on this.
Now can be an excellent time for the Polish state to handle the legacy of serfdom, of the agricultural property and of the tradition of onerous work that’s driving us right into a lure. The state ought to aspect with society by imposing mounted reductions on distributors and negotiating taxes from massive tech firms which have been capitalizing on our time, consideration and creativity for years. This would supply sufficient funding for a fundamental revenue. Even a minimal fundamental revenue would permit us to work much less and liberate time for studying, pondering, relaxation, focus, freedom, engagement and creativity. It should allow us to reclaim probably the most human points of ourselves that we’re dropping and rescue us from the borderlands, even when we stay geographically near the frontline.
This text was first published by Krytyka Polityczna on 19 April 2025. Its English translation was commissioned as a part of Come Collectively, a venture leveraging present knowledge from group media group in six completely different international locations to foster progressive approaches.
