2004-2024 – Why and how has the top 10 of Romanian publishers changed?

From Cultural Curatorship to the Digital Revolution

If we were to view the book market in Romania as a living map, the one from 2004 would be a simple landscape, with a few clear landmarks – Humanitas, Polirom, RAO – around which the entire Romanian reading was centered. The map from 2024 looks completely different: it is a complex territory, intensely digitized, populated by online communities and dominated by players that didn’t even exist twenty years ago.

In these two decades, the universe of books has not only expanded – it has fundamentally transformed. The total value of the market has jumped from approximately 69 million euros to nearly 200 million. But beyond these impressive figures, what has truly changed is the way books reach readers and, especially, who decides what is read.

2004: When Publishers Shaped Public Taste

At the beginning of this journey, in 2004, the book market had just emerged from decades of communist isolation. (And book marketing, to a large extent, still hadn’t succeeded in breaking out). Romania was rebuilding its fundamental libraries, recovering banned authors, discovering Western thought. In this context, publishers had an almost messianic role: they not only sold books but educated the public and built a cultural canon.

Humanitas dominated the rankings with a turnover of 2.3 million euros. The publishing house founded by philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu was the symbol of post-December intellectualism. Publishing with Humanitas meant recognition. Its catalog – philosophy, memoirs, essays, the recovery of major interwar authors – was a true cultural program.

Alongside, RAO Distribution (2 million euros) brought international bestsellers and thrillers that had been missing for decades, while Polirom (1.8 million euros) built monumental collections of world literature from Iași and promoted contemporary Romanian prose.

It was a smaller, almost artisanal world. The entire top 10 of that time generated approximately 15 million euros – less than today’s leader. But it was also a world where the publisher had the power to dictate what was worth reading. The public, eager to recover censored information, accepted this guidance. It was a supply-driven market, not demand-driven.

2014: The Book Becomes a Consumer Product

The leap to 2014 reveals a matured and, above all, diversified market. The clear leader is now Media Litera Group, with a turnover of 9.9 million euros, over four times larger than the leader in 2004. The rise of Litera is the story of a silent revolution: that of distribution through press networks. Through partnerships with newspapers, Litera brought books to kiosks, at accessible prices, transforming them from a luxury cultural good into a mass-consumed product. Encyclopedias, children’s books, popular fiction – their model democratized access to reading, attracting a new audience that may not have frequented traditional bookstores.

Old prestigious publishers resist. Humanitas reaches 3rd place (5.8 million euros), Polirom 4th (5.4 million euros). Their figures grow substantially, but not explosively. They maintain their identity, network, practices. They keep their loyal audience.

However, the landscape is fragmenting. Publishers emerge that no longer seek to build a universal canon, but to respond to very specific interests. Nemira creates a passionate community around science fiction and fantasy through the imprint "Nautilus". Editura Trei capitalizes on interest in psychology and brings Scandinavian thrillers through the "Fiction Connection" collection. Curtea Veche discovers a profitable niche in personal development, gastronomy, and biographies.

The market is no longer dictated by intellectual supply. It is shaped by public demand and its segmentation into interest communities.

2024: The Triumph of New Marketing and the Power of Online Communities

The map of 2024 is almost unrecognizable. At the top is no longer a traditional publisher, but a newly established one. Bookzone – with an astonishing turnover of 19.7 million euros – is the first publisher built by marketing people and overturns the common vision of the publisher as a source of authority. The book becomes a product (or a service!) offered to an increasingly diverse audience. The digital, ignored or quasi-ignored by "prestigious" publishers, becomes a central element in the new editorial offensive. Bookzone perfectly illustrates the paradigm shift: an online-born company that sells directly to readers, bypassing physical bookstores, using extremely aggressive and intelligent digital marketing.

Although they haven’t invented anything, the editors of the new market leader have understood, ahead of many, the power of online communities, book influencers, and the BookTok phenomenon on TikTok. Their catalog reflects these trends: personal development, romantic fiction, entrepreneurship, books that promise quick solutions to concrete problems. Bookzone doesn’t just sell books – it sells belonging to a community and the promise of personal transformation.

In 2nd and 3rd place are two giants often invisible to the ordinary reader: Art Klett (13 million euros) and the Art Publishing Group (12.9 million euros). Their success comes from the educational market: school textbooks, auxiliary materials, atlases. It’s a less spectacular segment, but extremely stable and profitable. The "mandatory" reading from schools remains a strong economic engine.

Media Litera Group firmly maintains its 4th place (12.3 million euros), continuing to excel in the children’s and family book segment. Polirom (7th place, 6.1 million euros) and Editura Trei (9th place, 5.1 million euros) demonstrate remarkable resilience, maintaining their relevance through consistent quality and reader loyalty.

But the most revealing case is Humanitas, which has reached 10th place, with 5 million euros – almost the same figure as in 2014. In absolute terms, the publisher is stable. However, in a market that has nearly tripled, a constant figure actually means a dramatic decrease in influence. Humanitas has not remained faithful to its mission. The problem is that the general public has diversified enormously, and new generations are looking for references elsewhere, often guided by algorithms and influencers, not by curator-editors.

Who are the main players and what profiles do they have?

To better understand this transformation, let’s take a closer look at some of the editorial profiles:

Humanitas remains the guardian of intellectual values – the house of philosophy, essays, memoirs, and classic fiction. Its audience is educated, loyal, seeking depth. The authors it has cultivated for decades (Mircea Cărtărescu, Radu Paraschivescu, Mihnea Măruță) maintain popularity and (along with other names of similar amplitude) continue to drive sales for the publisher. However, its audience, like the publisher, remains constant, tends to become a niche one as the market gains volume and complexity.

Polirom continues to be the architect of great libraries, the pillar of translations from world literature, with special attention to contemporary Romanian authors and the academic area. The main asset of the publisher remains that for decades it was practically the only one that systematically promoted contemporary Romanian writers. Today, this has become an important symbolic capital – but also financial. Gabriela Adameșteanu, Dan Lungu, Dan Coman, along with dozens of other relevant names, have reached massive reprints, just like important names from contemporary world literature, brought to the country by Polirom.

Media Litera Group has earned the role of democratizing reading – the giant of the mass market, specialized in children’s books, encyclopedias, and accessible fiction, with an extensive distribution network. The strategy of the group’s publishers is not based on a few star authors, but on large volumes of popular and accessible titles, including translated fiction (e.g., historical novels, airport bestsellers, encyclopedic collections).

Nemira has built one of the strongest fan communities in the country around SF & Fantasy literature, becoming the publishing house typically associated with this genre. Although efforts to diversify the offer (and the audience) are to be taken into account (contemporary Romanian literature, children’s books, biographies), the publisher’s identity remains in the SFF area. Its authors: Frank Herbert, Stephen King, Andrzej Sapkowski.

Editura Trei explores the human psyche – a leader in the psychology and psychoanalysis niche, but also an important player in the thriller and crime fiction market. The most important collection is "The Library of Psychoanalysis," where fundamental authors such as Jung and Freud have appeared. Like other top publishers, Trei is the center of a publishing group. Through Pandora M, an adjacent publisher, the group addresses children and young people. Another adjacent brand is Lifestyle Publishing, with a self-descriptive name.

Bookzone is the publisher that has produced the most significant shock in the publishing market. Champion of online marketing, its catalog is a barometer of trends generated by social media, from romance to personal development. In the Young Adult version, the love book from Bookzone represents a significant sales core. Also, screen adaptations – especially those behind successful series on streaming platforms. Personal development and religion are the other genres through which the publisher generates most of its turnover.

Art Klett and the Art Publishing Group are the silent giants of education – their books are in the backpacks of millions of students, generating immense revenues, but they remain invisible in cultural debates. Their impact is given by the teams of authors and experts who develop school textbooks and teaching materials, not by individual figures from fiction. In the same group, the Arthur publishing house aims to stimulate the pleasure of reading for very young readers.

Publishers and Trends

This 20-year journey shows us that the book market in Romania has become more democratic, more diverse, but also more fragmented. There is no longer a single center that dictates public taste, but a multitude of centers of interest, each with its own community.

Today’s reader has more power than ever. Their choices, aggregated by algorithms and amplified by social networks, can transform an unknown author into a phenomenon overnight. But this also comes with a challenge: the risk of losing the broader perspective, of remaining trapped in the consumption bubbles created by automated recommendations.

The challenge for the future will be the coexistence of two seemingly incompatible models: the traditional one, based on curatorship, prestige, and long-term cultural construction (represented by Humanitas or Polirom), and the new one, based on agility, digital marketing, and rapid response to market demand (exemplified by Bookzone).

We will likely witness a hybridization: traditional publishers will be forced to adopt more sophisticated digital strategies to reach young people, while new players, after financial consolidation, may invest in prestigious catalogs to legitimize their cultural position in the long term.

The structure of readers in Romania (Eurostat data, quoted according to the blog Asta-contează.

The last two decades have brought major transformations in book consumption. According to Eurostat data from 2022, Romania is no longer last in the EU in reading practices, although many categories are significantly below the European average. Thus, men (regardless of age, but especially those over 55) have the lowest scores. At the same time, young women (16-29) have frequent reading practices and dominate the internal ranking as a share of reading.

In the end, what is changing is the power relationship between the book, the publisher, and the reader. From a model where the publisher proposed and shaped tastes, we have reached one where the reader chooses, and the publisher responds to demand. The old prestigious publishers remain essential landmarks, but the new territories, discovered through the speed of digital connections, increasingly define the future of reading. Not coincidentally: if the book market has doubled in recent decades, much of the growth has come from the emergence of new publishers, which have proven to be game-changers. And their superpower has been to bring to the book market – not necessarily innovative titles or genres – but new segments of the audience.

https://revistacultura.ro/2004-2024-cum-si-de-ce-s-a-schimbat-in-top-10-edituri-romanesti/