Publishing for Kids

Vadim Meshcheryakov was in his mid-30s, working in a stable, well-paid job as a senior vice president at Rosbank, when he realized his life was on the wrong track. It sent him spiraling into a depression that multiple doctors, psychologists and psychoanalysts could not cure.

It is hardly the outcome one might have expected. Meshcheryakov comes from an ordinary family – his father was in the military and his mother was a doctor. When he was a child, his family moved around a lot and lived all over Russia, finally settling down in the Moscow region.

After finishing his military service, Meshcheryakov entered law school, and, while a student, he scraped by washing shop windows, selling newspapers on trains and painting houses. He graduated in 1993, got a job at ONEKSIM Bank, working in the loans department. Later, he became manager of the legal department. He was upwardly mobile, doing well in his career and getting ahead in life. But after over a decade in banking, he suddenly felt that he was at a dead end.

The “cure,” it turned out, was rather straightforward: he needed to create something, to follow his passion. So, in 2005 he started Meshcheryakov Publishing House (MPH), which over the past seven years has become one of the most interesting and ambitious publishing houses in Russia, publishing exclusively premium editions of quality children’s books.

Meshcheryakov kept his day job for three years while publishing books on the side. Yet soon he realized he didn’t need banking any more: his publishing business satisfied his creative ambitions, allowed him to use his management skills, and it made the world a better place.

The twenty-first century has seen people’s interest in literature and reading decline rapidly, especially in Russia. And it is not just electronic books that are to blame. People simply don’t want to read because they no longer realize the pleasure that reading can bring. According to Meshcheryakov, the main goal of children’s books should be to prevent the loss of another generation of readers.

It appears that Meshcheryakov’s efforts are paying off. In 2011, MPH’s net profits on R90 million in sales were R8 million (just over $260,000). Meshcheryakov says he reinvests most of his profits back into the business, so his personal earnings are considerably lower than he was being paid as a banker. Yet he is happy. And because MPH carries his name, it keeps him focused on the highest of standards: he will only publish books he is proud to put his name on.

Back in 2005, when Meshcheryakov was deciding what should be his first book, he remembered Tom Tit’s La Science Amusante, a book published in 1937 that he loved reading as a boy. High quality science books for children were rare in the market at that time, and he published the book in near facsimile form, reusing the old images.

During its first six months, La Science Amusante sold about 240 copies. Over the following six months it sold 70,000 copies, sparking foreign rights interest from a publisher in South Korea.

“La Science Amusante was selling very well and I was happy with how well I had predicted demand and published a best seller. I was still working at the bank then, and everything I did I saw through the eyes of a businessman. Then I published a couple more books and they flopped. I started to analyze these failures... and finally realized that you can’t treat a book as regular merchandise. It is not just the joint effort of a writer, an illustrator, a translator, a designer, etc… It is also imbued with the idea and the spirit that unites them – that is what makes a good book.”

One of MPH’s most successful series has been “Book with History,” begun in 2010. It is a series of famous children’s books by writers from all over the world (The Legend of King Arthur, Alice in Wonderland, Evgeny Onegin and others), published so as to look artificially aged, using patina paper and antique-looking covers. Released in small print runs of 1000-5000 copies, the premium-priced volumes go for R1000-1500 ($35-50).

Meshcheryakov confesses, however, that this commercially successful series is not his favorite. Yet it did get MPH noticed by wholesalers, book stores, and of course readers and parents. It showed stores that MPH books will sell; it showed parents that a book could be interesting in and of itself, that it could be something that is nice to look at and hold in your hands.

Meshcheryakov said he personally prefers the company’s “Reflections” series (which he designed). It includes Peter Pan in Kensington Garden, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham, Crane Feathers, Japanese Fairytales, with classic prints, and Among Elves and Trolls, Scandinavian legends illustrated by the Swedish artist John Bauer. Foreign publishers agree: rights have been sold for Peter Pan in 16 countries. The latest in the series, The Legends of the Singing Sands, Arabic fairytales illustrated by Dulac, earned MPH a Book Image award at the 2012 Moscow International Book Fair.

Will there be anyone at Rosbank in 30 years who will remember Meshcheryakov? No. But his books will endure. “It’s okay to work for money in the beginning to provide for oneself and one’s family,” Meshcheryakov said. “But once you achieve the goal of providing enough, you start looking for other goals. That’s why I didn’t want to be a lawyer. Making money out of thin air is not the least bit thrilling.”

In addition to publishing 200 titles a year, MPH has inaugurated a German language publishing house in Austria that has released about 20 titles. He said he plans to open a publishing house for books in French this fall, and ideally will soon publish books in all five of the world’s major languages.

“I’ve wanted to represent Russian writers abroad for a long time,” Meshcheryakov said. “And not just writers, but also illustrators, for example Ivan Bilibin, as well as designers who have grown a lot as professionals in Russia. It is almost impossible to make a best seller out of a Russian book in the West – they have a different mentality and plenty of their own writers. But it is possible to make a best seller out of a book as an object, as an art product – children’s books are ideal for this. The attitude [in the West] to the Russian market is about the same as toward the market of Papua New Guinea, yet the latest fair in Bologna demonstrated that there is a lot more interest in buying the rights for our books than last year.”

Meanwhile, in Russia, the audience for high quality children’s books remains relatively small and centered mainly on the two capitals. “You can’t publish a good book cheap,” Meshcheryakov said. “It is hard to sell fiction books at a high price, but you can sell beautiful children’s books at a good price.” This, despite the underdeveloped nature of both the Russian audience, which he said has tended to see books as cheap entertainment, and the Russian bookselling market.

“It is very difficult here for a good book to actually get to the reader,” Meshcheryakov explained. “The distribution system is designed in such a way that, in the best case, the book will only be read in Moscow. And is that really the goal?”

This led MPH to open up specialized children’s book stores in Moscow and St. Petersburg, followed by stores in the regions. By press time, MPH had 12 “Lavochka” stores in Moscow, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Ryazan, and St. Petersburg. Their design ethic is simple: bookshelves filled with fine books with unusual covers, published by approximately 50 small Russian publishing houses. And of course the books are available online (idmkniga.ru & vlavochka.ru). Meshcheryakov sees the publishing house’s future online store (being reconstructed at press time) as “not just a place where you can order a book. It is also a place to discuss a book related subject with other people, as well as to read the blogs of critics, writers and artists.”

But the restless publisher knows his work is far from done. “People in the provinces are afraid of the word ‘books,’” he said. “For example, a kid pulls his mom into a Lavochka and his mom says, ‘Where are you going? They have books there!’ Or a mom comes in with a kid and says, ‘Why are your books so expensive? We can’t pay for them; we just lost our money on a gambling machine.’ These examples illustrate perfectly the attitude toward children’s literature in the regions.”

Meshcheryakov hopes to make his Lavochkas even more appealing to provincial Russians by adding cafes, renaming them “Pechki v Lavochkakh” (Stoves in Stores). One can’t help thinking people will come around. After all, the only thing better than a book is a book with a cup of coffee or tea. RL